Your Biggest Teacher Questions- Answered By Me! [episode 100]

Kelsey  0:00

You are listening to episode number 100 of wife teacher mommy, the podcast your biggest teacher questions answered by me from balancing home and life to toxic family members and decluttering to wanting to fit reading with your kids into your day. We are talking so many teacher questions that have been asked to me that I think will be relevant to all of you who listened to the podcast, so I can’t wait to share all of these with you let’s go.

Welcome to wife, teacher mommy the podcast. I’m Kelsey Sorensen, a former elementary teacher and current homeschool mom. And even though I’ve been a resource creator since 2014, I’ve realized that printables alone aren’t all you need in order to thrive as a teacher or homeschool parent. That’s why I also created this show and got certified as a life coach to help you finally kick burnout to the curb and feel competent with whatever challenges come your way. With the right mindset strategies and new teaching inspiration, you’re going to be well on your way to your best teacher life. Now let’s go.

I am so excited to be here today. If you couldn’t tell from that intro, I’m very excited about hitting 100 episodes, this is a huge feat. And in the podcasting world, it is a big deal because so many podcasts never make it to this milestone, especially the fact that I have been consistent with releasing at least one episode, every single week four, I mean, not 100 weeks, because I’ve done two episodes for quite a bit of that time. But for 100 episodes, we have been completely consistent with at least one episode per week here for all of you. And for me, I want to celebrate that because I want to be here for you. I want to be that support system that you can count on every single week to get that little mindset fixed to get tips to get inspiration, whatever it is you need, and you glean from this podcast, I am so grateful for you for being here for allowing me to do this show because as I’ve mentioned so many times, but I honestly couldn’t say it. I can say it all day long. I’m so grateful to be able to do this podcast, I love doing it. It’s one of my favorite things that I get to do. I mean, my very favorite thing I get to do is the actual coaching and face to face time with members. But probably my second favorite thing I get to do is record this podcast for you each and every week. So I’m really excited. And I want to celebrate with all of you. So if you’re listening live in August of 2023. We are doing a big celebration in the wife teacher mommy zoo night Facebook group to celebrate 100 episodes. So with that we will be doing and for those of you who have been around wife, teacher mommy for a while, like even before the podcast. In the Facebook group, we used to do these giveaways and call them our wife, teacher mommy giveaways. It hadn’t, you’re probably like, Wait, that’s just your brand name. But here’s the thing, here’s what it was. So for each day, we would give away a wife labeled prize. So be like something for like date night or for you and your spouse or partner. And again, you don’t have to be married. It’s just themed to our brand name. That’s the one that we always try to emphasize like, you know, I have people on my team who aren’t married who don’t want kids or you know, whatever you don’t have to be a wife and a mommy you can be is great. But to play on our brand name, we have a wife themed giveaway we like for that we’ve done like press on nails for date night we’ve done like Fandango certificate so you can go to a movie, just different things that would relate to date night then for teacher we do lots of teacher giveaways. We do more teacher giveaways than the other ones. But those would be like, you know, a resource from our shop or friction pens or a laminator or one of our teacher planners or all sorts of prizes that relate to the part of your life that is teacher. And then finally we have mommy prizes. So these are related to your self care, or as a mommy taking that time for yourself, or you know, things that you might want to do with your children or whatever. So we have themed prizes, which I’m not going to tell you what they are yet because that will be part of the big announcement on the first day. But that is happening the very last week of August. So starting on the 28th. So the 28th and 29th will be the days that the giveaways are posted it will start with me going live inside the Facebook group at I believe it’s 3pm ish mountain time it’s like so it could be after school you know, but you can also catch the replay if you need to. Because I go live for about an hour I’m showing all the prizes and then basically immediately as ends at 4pm Mountain Time I believe is when the giveaway prizes will start posting each link

Half hour, I believe, like, there are so many incredible prizes. And all you need to do to enter each one. This is the fun part. It’s not like jumping through a million hoops like, oh, you can follow us on Instagram photos on Tiktok. And you know, do all the things or whatever. All you do is you like answer a fun question that is related to the price. So let’s say it’s like friction pens, for example. I mean, I can’t remember that. It’s actually one of the prizes. One of my amazing, incredible team members, Carol actually put this all together. I just showed her kind of what we’ve done before, like, Hey, this is the past giveaway. Can you do it and also her images? Like because last time we did it, we had old branding, like a different style, different fonts different the colors were a little bit more pastel. So she took it and she like her images are adorable, like so amazing. I love it. But she put that all together. But anyways, like an example of where we’re like Frixion pens, but what is your favorite color or whatever. So just like fun get to know you giveaways like for our community to all like chat and realize that this group is an amazing place to be. And that is all you do. Like you just answer a bunch of fun questions. And in the process, you’re entered to win these giveaways. And then on the 30th, I will go live to announce the winners now you don’t have to be on the alive to be a winner. But there’ll be also a big prize for those who attend the live. So it’s going to be a lot of fun in the Facebook group. So if you’re listening live and you’re not in that Facebook group, head over to wife, teacher mommy is Unite is what it’s called, and is the one that is wife, teacher, Mommy is Unite wife, teacher, mommy club is our paid memberships. So for that you need to put in your email and we verify the but the giveaway is happening in the free Facebook group is called wife, teacher mommy unite. Okay, so now let’s get to the content that I have for you today. Because I’m also very, very excited about that. So what I want to explain kind of where these questions came from. So these are all questions that are from our Aska, Coach portal inside wife, teacher mommy club. And what this is, is our members, they can come in whenever they want and submit a question. They just kind of put a title. And then they put their question and then one of our coaches, which right now is me, and Christine Nichols, one of us will answer the question, and then it will be posted for everybody to see, but it’s anonymous. So like, I’m not going to share any names of who posted these questions. If even inside the club, you would be able to come in and read it and you wouldn’t know who posted it. But you would be able to get to learn from everybody’s questions. And that’s what I love about it. Because the thing that I’ve learned about group coaching is that one person’s coaching is everybody’s coaching. And people were saying this over and over at like educate and rejuvenate and our three day teacher transformation. And so many new members of the club are the participation in the coaching is like off the walls right now, like so many teachers are excited and engaged in the community has just been amazingly incredible. Just the vibe, just such a high vibe environment, all these people who’ve been joining us and the relationships we’re building, I just, I can’t even I can’t even with it. So good. But these questions, anybody can come in and ask them and everybody can read the answers. But again, you just get to put those in Chris here, I will answer them. We’ve actually had so many members putting in questions that we’re still like catching up on some of the questions because it’s so, so incredible. We aim to answer all of them within once a week. But we had a challenge where there was daily entering questions, and so many members rose to that challenge. It was incredible. So I have to help Chrissy because usually Chrissy answers more of them, but I have to to help. I answered a bunch of them. And then I took some of the favorite ones that I answered. And that is what this episode is today. It took quite a bit of time like because when we do when we answer your questions, we don’t just like tight, whatever the first thing comes to our mind, we want to make sure that we have a really good really thorough response for those of you who are members who submit to ask a coach. And I was like, You know what, I took a lot of time answering these questions. And I know our members can go in and look at it. But I really want even more people to benefit from this. So that is why I decided I wanted to do a podcast episode and share some of these questions and answers because I know those of you who are here on the podcast will also greatly benefit from them. So what I will do is I will read the title, the question and the title of the question and the question itself, were user generated that means they were submitted by a real teacher or be a homeschool parent who was inside wife, teacher mommy club, and then the answer comes from me. So I will be reading what I previously wrote to this person. Okay, so let’s start with question number one, which is titled How to balance home and life. And this person asked, I have a hard time balancing life with my family making sure my daughter gets the attention and time she needs but also my husband. I feel like either one gets more than the other and it is tough for me to make sure to have enough time for them between everyday cleaning and regular home things to do. I tried to tell myself the house stuff will be there the next day, but it drives me nuts to help. Now the answer from Coach which is me. Well, I have to say was one thing you could try to ponder on here is what your expectation is for your home and your life. It sounds like you might have what we call a manual for what you believe your home and time with each family member should look like a manual is an unwritten and unspoken agenda that we hold ourselves or other people to. We will teach them more about this on future club calls. But this is an opportunity to get curious about why you’re what you’re expecting of yourself and then asking if

what you’re expecting is serving you or not. We could also try putting this into a model, which I want to explain to those of you on the podcast. That is the self coaching model that I mentioned in the podcast that we teach inside the club. Now back to this, try picking a specific sample to go into the model. An example your circumstance might be that example on Tuesday, I spent this amount of time with my daughter, and this amount of time when my husband and did this cleaning task, the thought would be what do you think about that? Feeling? How do you feel about that? Actions? What do you do or not do results? How do you show up, feel free to come back to ask a coach with this model or more clarification for us, if you would, like from Kelsey, and that is what we also encourage our members like we’re like, we’ll give you an answer. But if you want to come back and give us more and keep talking over this or bring it to a call, we’re always happy to do that. Okay, the next question is mom and teacher guilt. The question says, How do I deal with teacher guilt when I choose to do things with my own kids and mom guilt when I choose to do things for my class? It’s hard to deal with both? And the answer that I gave such a great question that many members can relate to is we balanced the roles of wife, teacher, mommy and beyond? In fact, I’d recommend checking the answer to the asker coach question titled How to balance home and life which may also be helpful to you. Now, for those of you listening on the podcast, notice that I recommended that she read the one that I just read to all of you, because you’ll see that there are themes in this coaching, a lot of people have similar things and answers will be helpful to each other. And members have told me that they find this helpful that when we refer to other ones for them to learn from as well. Okay, back to the answer. One thing that can help is to decide what is mom time and what is teacher time ahead of time when you do this, you aren’t making decisions later, or wondering if you should be doing this or that because you made the decision with your prefrontal cortex rather than your permanent brain that makes decisions. In the moment when you notice these feelings come up, you can remind yourself of the decisions that you made ahead of time. That doesn’t mean thoughts won’t creep up. Now, when again, our brains are trying to protect us and make sure that the things that we care about are taken care of. And clearly you care about both of these things. You can redirect your brain and say to yourself something like hey, brain. Thanks for looking out for me. Remember right now is mom time t shirt time will happen again at eight o’clock AM tomorrow morning. Thanks for the reminder, but I’ve got you this can help settle down those ruminating thoughts. Try that on and see how it feels. Let us know how it goes. And feel free to bring this back to ask a coach or any of our coaching calls from Pelosi. Okay, next question. Homeschooling is the title of this one. And the question says, Hi, I feel a little embarrassed to be active here because I’m not really a teacher. I’m still in the planning stage of homeschooling my girls, my biggest fear is that I might do it wrong. I’m scared of failing my girls. Now here’s what I had to say. No shame in being here, my friend. The last question I just answered here was also another mom here in our group. And as fellow amazing coach Christie in here has said in our one of our very first ask a coach responses to another homeschool mom, we believe that a teacher is someone who has ever taught anyone anything, we are so glad that you were here. It makes sense that you were feeling afraid because you were telling yourself I might fail my girls. What does it mean to fail your girls? Try getting curious about that and see what comes up for you. We can also put this into a model to observe what this thought is currently causing for you. As a reminder, the five letters stand for circumstance, thought, feelings, actions and results. So the C circumstance, homeschooling my girls, the thought T I might fail my girls, the feeling scared or fear, the actions. What do you do when you are feeling this way? And this is what I’m telling her to fill it in with? What do you do when you’re feeling this way? What don’t you do when you are feeling this way? And the result is what is the result of these actions. Feel free to fill this out and bring it back to ask a coach or any of our upcoming coaching calls. We’re here for you, Kelsey, because the next one is called one girl buys coffee. The question says one girl buys coffee for the special ones I feel left out, I want to be strong and get out of my head. Now here’s what I said. Notice that in these few sentences, you are sharing the circumstance and the feeling of this situation. So you can see here she’s sharing the circumstance. One girl buys coffee for the special ones, the feeling of feeling left out. As we know from what we’re all learning here with the model it isn’t our circumstances that make us feel certain ways is what we think about them. So in order to get out of your head, we need to understand what thought is triggering this feeling. So let’s get curious and figure out what thought is in between the circumstance and the feeling. Here’s what we have so far of your model, circumstance co workers by coffee thought question mark feeling left out. So what does she think is making her feel left out? And then we want to look at what her actions and results are if we were to flush out this model. In order to start filling this in more ask yourself why do I feel left out when this coworker buys coffee for other team members? I would love some more information about the situation to support you even more with this feel free to pop back into ask coach or bring it to any of our live coaching calls. We’re here to support you Kelsey. Okay, next is motivation is the title and the question just says how to deal with lack of motivation. Now, this is what I definitely got into teacher mode because my okay lack of motivation, I can talk about this.

So what I had to say is this and

Such a good question. I hear this from teachers and homeschool parents all the time and I totally get it is easy to feel down about not feeling productive or as motivated as we’d like to be. We start questioning ourselves thinking that we must be wrong. But guess what, nothing has gone wrong here. Here’s the deal, your brain is rocking its efficiency game just like it’s supposed to. It’s all about conserving energy and focusing on the crucial stuff, our incredible brains pick and choose what’s absolutely essential. The project you’ve been mulling over like sprucing up your classroom or revamping your curriculum, there won’t be major consequences if you don’t tackle it today. So your brain is like nah, not critical, not efficient and toxic out of it. So the first thing is first, understand that your lack of action doesn’t make you lazy or indicate any kind of flaw, beating yourself up over it will only zap your desire to get things rolling. So give yourself some love. Now we do want to be able to work on the things we want to do. And that is where we use making decisions ahead of time and create an attentional schedule that works with our goals. If you haven’t yet, I recommend checking out our replays of the educating rejuvenate sessions about goal setting, but from day number one and the club member bonus day, and attend our coaching call happening next week, where I’ll be walking everyone through the process again and bring someone on to go through it together. When we break down our goals into more manageable pieces, it becomes easier for our brains to understand than our brains don’t freak out at us as much about it. We make the plan and then we remind ourselves to follow through with the decisions we made ahead of time and baby steps laid out to get there, Kelsey. Okay, so those are the first questions we’re going over. After a short break, we’re going to discuss negativity among teachers finding time to read with your kids, toxic family members, too much clutter and so much more. So don’t go anywhere. I’m interrupting this episode for just a moment to share an experience from one of our newest incredible members of wife, teacher, mommy club. Her name is Ashley and I just love having her as a member of the club. Here’s what she’s had to say so far. I joined wife, teacher mommy cub, because there are just so many resources available to club members, classroom resources, and the personal side with the coaching. That was a huge resource that I did not have prior to joining the club. And it’s been really great getting an outside perspective on problems and issues that I might be facing. And it really helps me to see them from another perspective for me, wife, teacher, mommy Club offers more than just the resources. It has that coaching component and it has the Facebook group and community component. It also has, you know, that professional development component, the Educate, rejuvenate series, and all those things together I think helped me in my job as a teacher, it’s not just a one off thing. All of that together really helps make the whole package I want all of the things and wife teacher mommy gives that to me. To learn more about wife, teacher mommy club, go to wife, teacher mommy.com/club To request an invite for the next time that we open the doors. I hope to see you inside the club soon.

Okay, we are back. And our next question is how do I handle negativity among the teachers. She says I teach three year olds at a small preschool this summer, we are getting a new director who most of us know already and we are applying for a new type of license. The new license involves a lot of changes. And I’m expecting lots of drama and negativity when we return to school at the end of August. I do not like negativity at all. I get very anxious and closed off and I have a physiological reaction when the Talk turns negative especially when those complaining want me to agree with them? How can you be proactive in preparing myself for complaining and drama that might come with having a new director and other changes that will be taking place? And here’s what I had to say about that such a great question. I see if you options here that you can try on and see what feels best for you. First, we want to do some mindset coaching around this to start you can get curious and ask yourself what am I thinking about what these teachers are saying that is causing me to feel anxious seconds if a physiological reaction comes up, this is a good chance to practice processing your emotions. To do that, start with a body scan. Start at the top of your body and check in to see how your body feels then ask yourself where am I feeling this? Is this feeling open or closed. really lean into the feeling and envision the feeling settling down and take some deep breaths to help calm your body. We are happy to help you do this process. We have even more questions that we can ask on any of our coaching calls as well. Finally, it is 100% Okay to set a boundary if this is simply something you do not want to participate in. In fact, boundary setting is a skill that can be very beneficial to develop. It is important to remember that boundaries aren’t things that we tell other people to do instead is boundaries what we make clear what we will do to set a boundary you could have a conversation with these teachers and let them know how you feel about this. You could do this in a loving way and yet make it clear that while you love talking to them, this topic is one that you aren’t comfortable discussing. So if the topic in conversation leads to discussing or gossiping about the new director license, etc. You will simply exit the conversation. Feel free to bring this back to ask a coach or any of our coaching calls to get more support with any of these options. Kelsey

Okay, next question new team dynamics. And this person says we have two new team members coming in this year. One isn’t thrilled to have been moved, and the other is coming from another school and is quite hyper. We obviously have different personalities and a couple of strong personalities. As team lead. I’m nervous about how to help unite and create collaborative community within our team. I’d love ideas on how to help our team be successful and have a great year. Now, here’s what I had to say for her. This is such a great question as we get ready for the school year. The circumstances of this situation is that you have two new team members coming to your team and some of them have different personalities, we’ll go ahead and see the different personalities and part of the circumstance rather than the thought is I think everyone would agree that every person has a unique personality in some way. If we can agree on that, we can say that every team has mixed personalities. As each person’s personality is unique. It happens every day in schools and other workplaces, for people with different personalities to be assigned together as a team sounds like the problem here is your concern about this specific group of people being able to unite as a team. It sounds like you are taking your role as team lead very seriously and want the team to unite and collaborate. There’s nothing wrong with that. We want that as leaders, I mean, I want that for my team as well. But there’s that somewhere in there that is causing you to feel nervous. Let’s take a look by starting on model, circumstance group of teachers with their own unique personalities assigned to my team and I on the team lead that and then ask them questions, they’ll help her identify what this is, what do you think is causing you to feel nervous? To me, it seems like it may be something along the lines of one of these, I don’t think I’ll be able to unite these people, these people won’t work well together. I don’t know if this is going to work feeling nervous. Then when she’s feeling nervous, we want to look at actions. What do you do when you’re nervous results? What are the results of these actions, we would need a little bit more of information to see where this leaves but this is a great place to start and reflect as a leader, it is important to remember that your job is to provide vision, support and encouragement to your team. And as long as you are doing that you are doing your job as much as we wish we can’t force people to unite boy when That’d be nice. But we know this because other people and their actions are circumstances to us. When we create a model, what they choose to do is out of our control, the most we can do is cultivate an environment that encourages our team to do so this is where it gets interesting though, if the thought ruminating in the back of your mind is that these people can’t unite or that there’s a problem with this grouping put together, it could potentially shape the way that you show up as the team lead and how you show up for the part that is your job, the vision, the support and the encouragement, I’d encourage you to try filling out this model and see what comes up for you. I have some additional exercises that may help as far as team building. But before we get into that, I think it’s really important to understand this piece first, feel free to give us an update if you’d like we’d love to hear more and support you in your leadership role. Kelsey. Okay, next question toxic family members. What do you do when you have a toxic family member, this person always seems to cause tension and drama in the family and never takes responsibility for their actions. I feel frustrated and annoyed whenever they are around. But I also don’t want to be unkind and tell them to never come near me as this would upset other family members. And here’s why I had to say families, we’ve loved them. And because of that they can bring up lots of thoughts and feelings. I want to focus for a moment on the second part of your question, you stated that you didn’t want to tell this person not to come around you. I agree that we may not want to do this as this is trying to tell someone else what to do. However, there is nothing wrong with holding a boundary if someone is treating you or others around you in a way that you don’t want to be around. A boundary is something you create for yourself and not to control other people. healthy boundaries promote self responsibility and empowerment and can actually lead to closer relationships. But first, you must be clear about what your boundary is, what is crossing the line for you what behavior this family member does is too much. When you get clear on that ahead of time you know what your boundary can be. This can simply be that you will leave the room or wherever you are when the person does those things. You don’t need to communicate the boundary until it has been crossed. For example, say your boundary is that when this person starts raising your voice, you’ll be able to say something like listen, I don’t want to be talked to you that way. If you continue to do so then I’m going to leave. This still allows your family member to choose how they’re going to behave. But instead what you are going to do with it continues to happen. Also, while I honed in more on the second part of your question about boundary setting, we’d be more than happy to also help you work through a model on the situation as well. If you’d like to get more insights on what thoughts about this family member causing you to feel frustrated and annoyed this might be another route to go if you feel that holding a boundary is not right at this time, such as you want to be able to be around the other family members when this person is around. Feel free to come back to ask a coach or any of our coaching calls for more support with this Kelsey. Okay, the next question what is the best way to prepare for an interview? How should I prepare for a teaching interview to keep help keep my nerves calm and relieve anxiety? And here’s what I had to say another great question in ask a coach. Thank you for bringing this up for all of us to learn from. Let’s talk about the nervous feelings you’re having about this interview. One thing that is scientifically proven to help us calm our nerves is to take seven slow deep breaths all the way down to your diaphragm, like stomach bear some other chest breathing that we always do. Another thing that you can do when you notice your nerves at the moment since you can’t stop and take a break to coach yourself mid interview is to channel your nervous feelings into excitement. It may sound crazy but

Have you noticed that the sensations in our bodies between nervousness and excitement are very similar? blood flowing a little faster heart pumping bursts of energy? before your interview, you can think about why you were also excited about this interview. Are you excited to share all that you have to offer this school and your unique skills? Could this be a great opportunity to make connections whether or not you’re offered the position, then when the interview is happening, you can notice that nervousness in your body and quickly remind yourself this is exciting because that reason you decided ahead of time and channel the energy towards the excitement. If that doesn’t work for you, you can simply remind yourself that you see and feel the nervous feelings and that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. And you can keep going with the interview. Just tell the nerves Hey, nurse, I see you I feel you no problem. We’re doing this interview and it’s okay that you’re here. If you want to work through any specific models related to this scenario, feel free to bring this back to ask a coach or any of our coaching calls. We’re rooting for you and you’re going to rock your interview. Kelsey, next question read aloud question. I think reading with your kids as a homeschool mom as well as a non homeschooling parent can be a pretty crucial activity in a child’s life for so many reasons. My question is, so you’re extremely limited on time, such as a single mom or mom who works outside the home but homeschools her kids or a mom who has had a ton of responsibilities and that Centerplate, what are your favorite tips about incorporating read aloud time with your kids in a day, that’s already maxed out? And here’s what I had to say. Great question. So often, we feel the need for things like this to be significant every time to be meaningful, but it’s more around building habits and routines than anything else. What if we set a minimum baseline, a minimum baseline is something that you can do any day, no matter what, no matter how busy or how long the day, for example, this could be reading one page of a book with your kids before bed. The key is that a minimum baseline is something that is really easy and doable. It might even feel silly or pointless, but it’s not pointless, every little bit helps. And setting a minimum baseline helps us build a habit. It takes 21 days to build a habit but not very long to break one. And this example, we know that at a minimum will read one page, but that can easily be more pages on days that we have more time or if we didn’t feel like it. We might build momentum and get to more than one page. But you’ll know that all you need to do is that one page. Let us know how this goes feel free to bring this or anything back to ask a coach or to one of our live coaching calls. Okay, the next question is too much stuff. How can I convince myself to get rid of things they haven’t used in at least a year or more both at school and home example I have fabric ribbon and other things in my school uncovers but what if I need them later? If I get rid of it and then need it I will have to go out and buy it helped me. And here’s my head to say such a great question to ask as many of us are doing our summer cleaning the thought slash question of what if I need it someday, we’ll encourage you to hold on to everything just in case. What if you believed that you could get rid of this item to make space in your life for something you desire more such as a clean cupboard as teachers and parents were resourceful if you got rid of the supplies but six months from now you needed some ribbon, you’d find a way to get it right now don’t get me wrong. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with keeping things if that is what you want to do. But it sounds like you’re wanting to declutter and create space in your home but are having a hard time letting things go due to a scarcity mindset which is coming from fear rather than from abundance. Here’s a potential model based on what you told me here. circumstance haven’t used within Fabric and other things that have been seen and covered for a year thought I may need it later feeling scarcity, action what do you do or not do example I keep things in my cupboard I ruminate about how messy my cupboard is result what is the result of this potentially putting off having a clean cupboard until later. Another potential model for this circumstance could be circumstance haven’t used ribbon Fabric and other things have been sitting in cupboard for a year thought example and making room for insert your why feeling abundance action getting rid of the things having a cleaner cupboard less whatever the benefits be. Result what is the result examples of a cleaner classroom I become a person who trusts herself because you are allowing yourself to let go with something and know that you will find it again if you need it. We have no preference of whether you get rid of these things. The most important thing is that you like your reasons for it. Okay, next question new member where to begin? I just joined wife teacher mommy club yesterday and I’m trying to navigate everything to the best of my ability. Where would you say a teacher who’s feeling overwhelmed with the coming year should start on the website. being overwhelmed is coming from switching grade levels fourth to fifth having my students two years in a row departmentalized in for the first time and expecting my first baby in December. All these changes I’m excited for but just feeling very overwhelmed as well. Welcome to the club. We are so excited you are here and eager to help you start in your journey. I would recommend starting with a member success hub here you’ll find some intro videos that I recorded as well as the replay for our most recent member success call which I would recommend watching and then it gave her the link. These will guide you through everything there is to know about the club. Next I would recommend choosing one coaching call and adding it to your calendar so you can get a feel for the coaching and see what is like you can bring any of these topics to coaching, switching grades, departmental lazing you name it, we’re happy to walk you through what’s causing your overwhelm or process the motion on the call simply pop in the chat if you’d like to be coached. You can also submit any questions to ask a coach just like you did here. And finally I would head over to the member shop and pick a resource

Download and get ready for your classroom. As you’re having a baby in December, we have some great maternity leave resources that you’ll want to check out. Remember, you will get exactly what you need for the club. Don’t feel the need to utilize every resource. Listen to every coaching call or watch every educating rejuvenate session. Just like if you signed up for a gym, you wouldn’t be able to join every class or the fact that you weren’t able to watch every movie on Netflix, you get to choose what is right for you. We are rooting for you with all the changes this school year if you have any more questions about specific resources are working your way around around the club, email Hello at wife teacher mommy.com for a quicker response time, but feel free to pop any questions in here related to your overwhelm cheering you on Kelsey facing conflict with coworkers. When I suspect that someone is upset with me, I immediately start worrying. It takes up so much negative energy in space. Also, when we do meet to talk it over I’ve usually magnify the problem to where it is even bigger than it was any advice and so from poach. This is a question that I’m sure many of your peers and wife teacher mommy club will relate to as well. So thank you so much for bringing it here to ask a coach. First off, I’d recommend taking a moment to read my response to the question entitled confidence, which will show up in just two questions below yours. A lot of what he said there is applicable here as well notice that you are getting into someone else’s model. This means that you’re not staying in your own lane about whatever the situation is, but you’re getting into their thoughts, feelings and actions rather than your own. Oftentimes, this leads us to make assumptions whether they be true or not example, they use a certain tone of voice and we automatically assume they are upset. Maybe they are or maybe they even tell us as such. But other times we are making up situations in our heads that aren’t reality, since we don’t have all the information about what’s going on inside their head. And oftentimes, this leads to people pleasing and unintentionally trying to manipulate or control the situation to fix it. If that is the case, this is often where making the situation worse happens. The question to think about when this is coming up? Am I trying to fix this for that person sake? Or do I want to fix it so that I can feel better and stop worrying? Sometimes we when we stop and think about it, it is the latter. And generally as humans, we don’t like feeling negative emotions. This is a good reason to stop and think about possibly run a model about what you’re thinking and feeling about the last time something like this happen. Feel free to come back and bring this to ask a coach or any of our upcoming coaching calls. Next question. Prioritizing is hard. Sometimes I get stuck on my to do list and prioritizing what is most important. At the end of the day, I feel burnt out I go to sleep feeling like it didn’t connect with my kids enough. I feel like it’s the same thing every day. And I don’t know what to do. And here’s what I had to say. I think many of us have had this thought before that prioritizing is hard. You say that you go to bed feeling burned out and that you think is the same thing every day. It sounds like you’re onto yourself and perhaps that you’ve been putting too much on your plate. But it’s time to get curious about why this is the case, stop for a moment and reflect as you were looking at your list. Is there anything that doesn’t need to be there or it could be simplified, or encouraged you to get curious about your to do list about what is most important versus what is urgent. They’re not always the same thing. Urgent is time sensitive, important isn’t always time sensitive, but it keeps getting pushed off to do more urgent tasks. I go over this in depth in the replay of the past club workshop, how to create an intentional schedule and actually stick to it. And then I discuss how to keep this in mind while designing your week ahead of time in a way that alleviates burnout. You can find it in the coaching section of the member dashboard or listen to it on the members only private podcast we’re rooting for you, Kelsey. Confidence. And I should have put this one before the other question that referred to it. But that’s okay, confident since my experience with last year with the K to three grade level team, my confidence has been crushed. I’ll be going back to the 46th grade team teaching sixth grade, the teacher I’ll be working with his closely mentioned to me we’re going to build your confidence back up. The 46th grade team and I have worked for seven years prior to last year. However, I pretty much taught the grade levels on my own because there was only one teacher needed at the time. And that was probably two years at a grade level partner. So I don’t want to disappoint the other sixth grade teacher or the rest of the team. I know I always have room to grow. And I’m by no means perfect. I’ve been joining a couple different teacher groups and taking PD but I’m having anxiety thinking about the next year any ideas or suggestions.

And here’s why I had to say thank you for sharing this update with us and ask a coach we are here to support you and cheer you on as you transition back to grades four to six. One thing to look closer at is that when you say I don’t want to disappoint them. This is putting all the power back on other teachers in this situation. You could do absolutely everything in the world you could win teacher the year and they would protect could potentially still be disappointed in you. Or you could barely show up and they may not bat an eye. Whatever they think about your teaching is a circumstance that is completely out of your control. But when you think I don’t want to disappoint them, it is causing a lot of anxiety and no wonder because as Christina said to educate and rejuvenate when we try to control what we can’t control, it tends to control us completely. Be sure to have some compassion on yourself as these feelings come up. Now competence doesn’t begin with others. It begins internally. I’d recommend this episode from wife teacher mommy the podcast which talks a bit more about the difference between self competence and competence in your capabilities. And that was the episode titled How to Be confident as a teacher I believe it is number 67. One additional tool I would like to share with you when it comes to understanding where we’re at in our competence is the four C’s from Dan Sullivan. They are as follows commitment, then COURAGE then capability and finally confidence so you can take a moment to assess on that scale.

Where do you believe you are and go from there rooting for you. Okay, we’ve got just two questions left. In this episode. I’m having so much fun sharing all these with you. Okay, next question. Letting go of last year, my last day of school was June 7, and I’m still struggling with letting go of all the feelings from last year, I had a tough class that consisted of five or six kids that would disrupt the class talking, writing notes, stirring up drama, trying to be funny, etc, and get everyone off track. I would get reports from other teachers that they were misbehaving and specials. I tried many different things such as class meeting surveys, talking to the class, talking to just the five to six students, but nothing seemed to work. I felt that I was being reactive instead of proactive. Needless to say, I felt like an ineffective teacher. I have had tough classes before and have been able to leave it behind enjoy summer and look forward to the next school year. Unfortunately, I’m having trouble doing that this year. I feel stuck. I’m worried that it won’t be able to recover before the new school year starts on January 31. What can I do to move on and enjoy the rest of my summer? Now here’s what I had to say. Thank you for bringing this to ask a coach. This is part of the human experience with our emotions. And I would like to offer that nothing has gone wrong here. There are four different things that we do when we feel strong emotions. The first is react. This is generally when we have a large physical reaction that others can see an attempt to push our emotions onto others. resisting this is when we try to stuffed down the emotions and bottle them up. Avoiding this is when we try to do other things to distract ourselves from the emotions, we oftentimes call this buffering as well. And the final one is allowing this is when we acknowledge the emotions are there and allow ourselves to bring it up, process it and fully lean into it. If your emotions are lingering, there’s a good chance that you’ve been avoiding reacting to or resisting instead of allowing or processing them. Usually when we allow ourselves to fully process and emotions the feelings will settle. to process an emotion. You can set aside some time to lean into the emotions and ask yourself the following questions. What am I feeling right now? Name it. Where’s that feeling in my body? What color is the feeling? Is it hard or soft? Then you can do a body scan by closing your eyes and visualizing going down into your body and feeling the emotions. There are many guided meditations that will help you do this and I’d recommend pulling up Lizzie’s meditation and the educating rejuvenate replays inside the club. Feel free to come back to ask a coach anytime, or come to the live coaching call this month July and raise your hand if you’d like to help guide through the process. Christy and I always leave some elbow time for coaching at the end of every call. We also plan on adding an additional call in August about processing emotions as well. Kelsey, how do I change my perspective of my wins, I always have difficulty thinking of something to celebrate a win. I often suffer with depression. And when I can’t think of a win, it makes the depression worse. I start feeling frustrated and disappointed with myself when I can’t see my wins. Logically, I know that I have something even if it is something small, like a calm during a student meltdown or completed one thing on my list for today. Or even I just got up in the morning, even when I do think of these things that end up telling myself that it’s not a witness. This is something that should be done anyways. Okay, now here’s what I had to say to that. Getting out of bed when you have depression is definitely a win in my book. In fact, in our coach training, we were told that clinical depression goes into the sea line meaning that it is a circumstance out of our control. So let’s keep them in mind while we dig into it and give so much grace as we go. Sidenote, while we are here to support you inside the club, if anyone reading this or listening to this is in need of more support with depression, we highly recommend working with a therapist if you’re not already. The nine the nine eight suicide and crisis Lifeline is a 24 hour toll free confidential suicide prevention hotline available to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress. Okay, back to the question. Let’s put this into a model to start circumstance wrote down my three wins help a student from a meltdown, I completed something on my to do list got out of bed, thought I should have done that anyway. Feeling How does it make you feel when you think you should have done this anyway? Action? What are you feeling when you are feeling that way? Because you think you should have done it that way? What do you do? What don’t you do? And result? What is the result of these actions? One thing to notice in the thought is the should in general, when we tell ourselves we should do something, we tell ourselves that we aren’t good enough. This may be tied to expectations you’re creating in your own mind about your wins that aren’t realistic for you. Maybe at this time or maybe not at all, we may think we wins need to be big deal things but what if that isn’t the purpose of owning our wins? Here’s an example in the winds list that I do in my journal each day are almost always things I will be doing anyway or that would have already been on my to do list. The difference is that we are taking the time to own those wins instead of just letting them pass us by and moving on to the next thing. What if you’re already doing this exactly right. sending all of our love. Okay, that was the final question that I have for you today. But if you enjoyed this episode and you want more like it, be sure to head back to Episode 13 where I read some other Aska coach questions that Chrissy answered at that time. But better yet, if you want to be able to ask your own questions, anytime, anywhere where Chrissy or I can answer your questions. These are so much as many of the questions inside our Aska coach portal inside wife teacher mommy club. Now I know some of you are listening are already members and a lot of times we have members that were like wait, I don’t know how to do this. So if you’re a member what all you need to do is log in. Use your account that you use when you joined. In your dashboard you click on the coaching

intersection and then you click on Ask a coach portal and then you’ll see it. There’s just a form that you fill out, you type the question, you type the answer you hit submit, and then Christy or I will come in weekly and answer as many well we answer every question and answer all the questions that we can. This is something that everybody in the club gets to do. And if you’re not in the club yet, you also not only the ask a coach portal is really just such a small part of the club too. We also have the weekly coaching calls, we can come on and you can ask questions, you can be coached, you can listen to others be coached, we have the members only private podcast where you get to listen and consume coaching on the go. So if you you know, we’re back to one episode on this podcast, if you’re like, I need more, the club is a great way to do that because you get that members only private podcast as well. You also get access to our resource library. If you’re on the annual plan. It’s unlimited downloads, and it’s still a ton. It’s 50 downloads on the monthly plan, or 100 downloads per month on the quarterly plan. Now the doors to the membership are closed right now. But as a podcast listener, you can request unlimited one time invite and a special link just for podcast listeners, go to wife, teacher mommy.com/podcast Invite. And there’s also a link in the show notes where you can learn more about the club. And I really love doing this work with you. I love working with the members of wife, teacher mommy club, and I love being here on the podcast with you. Thank you so much for listening, and we will talk next week.

If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re ready to take the next step and work with me and take everything you’ve learned on this podcast to the 10x level. I’d love for you to join me inside wife teacher mommy Club, you’ll get access to a library of 1000 plus resources that will help you take back your time the resources alone easily pay off your club membership. Plus, if you join us on the quarterly plan or above, you’ll get our luxury leather bound teacher planner $50 value shipped to your door for free. But in my humble opinion, the most important part of the club is opportunity to get coached on whatever comes your way that you can thrive in teaching and light. You’ll get to join weekly coaching calls with me and fellow club coaches to not only listen and consume this content, but really apply it to your life. This is where the magic happens. The doors are closed the majority of the year, but you can request a personalized invitation as a podcast listener. Simply go to wife teacher mommy.com/podcast Invite to learn more. You can also find the link in the show. I hope to see you face to face on a zoom soon inside wife teacher mommy.