Angela Watson's Truth For Teachers

Join me today as I help one teacher make over her daily schedule so she can maximize her time in school and work less at home based on a coaching call that I conducted with a graduate of the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club. Have you ever wondered how time slips away from you and the entire day is gone? Listen in as I walk Amara, a 3/4 French Immersion teacher from Winnipeg, Manitoba, through each element of her non-instructional time and look for ways that she can streamline and simplify. As you listen in, I encourage you to ask yourself the same questions I’m asking Amara as you are going to be able to relate to her challenges because they’re common to almost all teachers.   Click here to read or share the transcript and audio or participate in the discussion.

The end of the school year can feel super crazy because it means lots of close out tasks for the teacher. We’ve got tons of paperwork, plus bulletin boards to remove, supplies to label and pack away, cleaning, and more. You as the TEACHER have plenty of things to do. But often, the kids don’t. Standardized tests are done, gradebooks have been closed out for the year, and often our students feel like they’re just biding their time until summer break.  In today's episode, listen in as I discuss a simple 4-step system I created for closing out and deconstructing your room in a single day, and pace yourself so the rest of your end-of-year tasks don’t feel so unmanageable. Click here to read or share the transcript and audio or participate in the discussion. Click here to view my done-for-you system for end-of-year close out on sale now.

One of the toughest parts of teaching students who enter our classrooms with a lot of personal and behavioral issues is that feeling of helplessness that comes from working with them. You might feel that there is nothing you can do to reach that student, or that you have no control over the situation at all.  It’s a frustrating situation for sure, but today, I discuss why you have far more power and influence than you may think through having a restorative mindset versus a punitive mindset, and choosing as a school community to approach behavior problems through a lens that is focused on long-term solutions which restore a child to wholeness rather than punishing or criminalizing kids for their behavioral choices. Join me today on one of the most important episodes I've ever done. Listen in on your time — it might shift your perspective in a way that literally changes the trajectory of a child’s life.  Click here to read or share the transcript and audio or participate in the discussion.  

Have you ever wasted half the weekend worrying about the week ahead? Even if you love your job, you might still wake up on Sunday mornings with a feeling of dread and spend the evening in a total state of anxiety simply because there are so many pressures associated with teaching. Join me today for 7 tips to help you relax, enjoy your time off, AND be more productive.  Click here to read or share the transcript and audio or participate in the discussion. Want more resources for tackling the Sunday blues? Check out the Finally Free teacher toolkit for conquering anxiety and overwhelm.  

Almost everyone will experience the challenge of struggling with chronic pain and illness at some point in the career, whether it be from a difficult pregnancy, recovering from a surgery, or dealing with an issue that is more ongoing. On today's episode, I have four key productivity strategies and work/life balance advice that I think will be helpful for teachers with chronic pain or illness to maximize productivity. Click here to read or share the transcript and audio or participate in the discussion.

I’m talking today with New York Times best-selling author Gretchen Rubin. I’ve learned so much from Gretchen's research on happiness from her book The Happiness Project, and I’ve studied her work on habits from the book Better Than Before. Gretchen’s latest book is called The 4 Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People's Lives Better, Too). I invited her on the show because the four tendencies are not just another personality type: They’re about how people tend to respond to and meet expectations. When I first heard about the tendencies, I immediately saw the application to our work in the classroom, because it’s such a challenge to figure out how to get students to meet expectations.  Listen in as Gretchen and I talk about understanding students’ tendencies — as well as our own — so we can be more productive and accomplish the things that really matter. Click here to listen to the audio, or read or share the condensed transcript and partici

What do you do when you’re just not motivated to get things done? Many of us try to force ourselves to be productive and slog through the day.   Today, I'll discuss how I'm experimenting with a different approach. My #1 job — and yours — when we just don’t feel motivated to get anything done, is to GET ourselves motivated to get things done. And that means taking a break from the to-do list to focus on things that get us energized is PART of your work and productivity, not a break from it. Click here to listen in on the discussion, read summarized points, or participate in the discussion.     

One of the issues I’m most passionate about is making teaching more effective, efficient, and enjoyable, so I’ve gathered a group of educators to create a Productivity Roundtable. Joining me are five members of the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club’s graduate program. They have done a tremendous amount of work in experimenting with various productivity strategies in their classrooms and creating systems and routines that work well for them and their students. Since they teach at different grade levels and subject areas, in different types of school settings and communities, in a diverse set of locations throughout the United States, you’re going to hear what works with a variety of teaching contexts and teaching styles. The topic for our first productivity roundtable is streamlining the grading and assessment process. They’ll share their best hacks and time-saving tips related to grading and assessment! Click here to listen to the audio, or read or share the highlights from the roundtable session and participate

Join me today for an interview with Regie Routman, as we discuss engagement, excellence, and equity in the classroom. Regie has over 40 years of experience teaching, coaching, and leading in diverse schools across the United States and Canada, and has been publishing books since 1988. Regie is among the top five people who have influenced my teaching practice and philosophy, and having her on the show was such an honor.  Click here to listen to the audio, or read or share the highlights from the interview and participate in the discussion.  

In this episode, I'm sharing one of the biggest mistakes I made as a teacher. I have a feeling it’s something you’ll be able to relate to, particularly if you have a couple of students who you just don’t feel like you are equipped to handle. The choices I made took a bad situation and made it worse. I'll share what I wish I'd done differently, how I ultimately changed my approach, and what YOU can do to prevent the same problem from happening to you. Want free resources to help you enjoy your work, even when it's super challenging?  Visit https://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/unshakeable and enter your email address. I'll send you a downloadable calendar with ONE simple, actionable step you can take each day to enjoy teaching more. I'll also send you a link to join the online book community for my book Unshakeable: 20 Ways to Enjoy Teaching Every Day...No Matter What. Join more than 9,000 teachers who are sharing ideas around how to infuse more joy into their teaching and stay connected to their purpose.

The biggest pitfall that most teachers face with report card comments is overcomplicating the task, which creates overwhelm. I want to help you keep this super simple, so I created a 5-step formula for generating report card comments for ANY student. The end result? A positive, empathetic, and truthful set of comments that will be helpful for parents and facilitate their cooperation as you work together to help their children succeed, with you spending half the time! Join me today as I discuss a new resource I created for my TeachersPayTeachers store, the Stress-Free System for Report Card Comments: Generate comments in half the time! It's available now to purchase or preview and at a discounted price through March 1, 2018.   Click here to read or share the transcript and audio or participate in the discussion. Click here to view my new report card system resource in my TpT store.

There are a lot of trendy phrases from popular culture and the positivity movement which have infiltrated our thinking and practices as educators. They are helpful with a great deal of truth to them. However, I think we’ve gotten a little bit out of balance with the positivity movement and the rallying cry to be supportive of one another as teachers. Join me today as I discuss three trends from the positivity movement, comparing their truths and how we can take them too far. I believe that we need to be having these critical conversations about the issues and challenging one another to do better. Moving past truisms and getting real is the only way we are going to shift school culture to truly be about what’s best for kids! Click here to read or share the transcript and audio, take a pledge or participate in the discussion.

There's a lot of talk about the importance of morning routines; however, it's not something that I commonly hear discussed in teaching circles. I think for most of the educators, having to be at school so early means that a morning routine is basically just getting yourself and your family out the door as quickly as possible and making sure you're in that classroom before your students are lined up outside your door waiting for you. Join me today in listening to why morning routines are so important for teachers, and how to create a morning routine that works for you through intentionality and new habits. Click here to read or share the transcript and audio, download a free morning planner, or participate in the discussion.

In this special extended episode between podcast seasons, I’m sharing practical time-saving strategies and simple mindset shifts that will help you: * Reduce your workload * Eliminate the unnecessary * Automate processes * Delegate responsibility to students * Get more done in less time * Create a sustainable work schedule From lesson planning to grading, you’ll walk away with lots of ideas for small changes that add up to big results, and get a fresh dose of motivation for the new year. It’s so simple to create change that you can try out just ONE of the dozens of approaches shared and save an hour a week, right away. There’s something for every teacher here–don’t miss out! ----------- Want more support with productivity? Click here to learn about the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club, which is open to new members from Dec. 30th-Jan. 9th.      

What do you want your life to look like? When you look back on it all at the end, what do you want to feel like you've accomplished? How do you want to have spent your time? What will be your legacy? Those are deep questions for sure, and most of us just don't have the time or energy to try to answer them. It's not because we don’t care. We're just too tired to take a step back and try to figure out a better way. And yet, getting clear on what matters to you could change everything about the way you use your time and where you focus your energy. Even though "there’s no tired like teacher tired," a few changes in your mindset and habits can totally transform that.  I created a free challenge called "Goodbye, Teacher Tired" with five of the most important things you can do to stop feeling tired all of the time and maximize your time, and energy and focus. Listen in to get a summary of the five steps covered in the challenge. You can sign up for the challenge and participate in the discussion by visiting the or

Have you ever felt like an imposter? Or the feelings that you have no idea what you're doing as a teacher or that you're not capable of doing everything that needs to be done? If you can relate to any of those feelings, you might be dealing with a phenomenon that’s commonly known as Imposter Syndrome. It’s that feeling of being a fraud, an almost panic-inducing sense that at any moment, other people are going to figure out you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing and have no business being given the level of responsibility you have. This is a real thing, and it can be paralyzing.  On today's episode, listen in as I share some strategies from personal experience that help with countering Imposter Syndrome and managing the self-doubt. I’ve chosen seven specific things that have been helpful for me over the years, and I hope they’ll be helpful for you, too. Click here to read or share the transcript and audio, or participate in the discussion.

During today's episode, I am excited to feature an interview with Dan Tricarico as part of my Truth for Teachers podcast. Dan and I met when we were both speaking at a conference a couple of years ago, and I remember walking away from the conversation with him thinking, “This guy is the real deal.” That’s the phrase that stuck in my head because he just came across to me as being so grounded and so sincere in everything he said -- he was truly passionate about everything we spoke on and had a pure heart for helping kids and teachers. Last February, I was out in San Diego for another conference, and he and I sat down together and hashed things out a bit. We’ve been working for the past 7-8 months on creating something together that addresses teacher anxiety. It’s called Finally Free: The teacher toolkit for conquering anxiety, overwhelm, and the pressure to do more.  Today, we’re going to give you some of our favorite mindset shifts and advice from the toolkit and talk about some ideas that will really make a

Listen in on the second half of my interview with Tamara Russell and Sarah Plumitallo on building trust and relationships with families! I've invited two current teachers, Tamara Russell and Sarah Plumitallo, onto my Truth for Teachers podcast to talk about what they're doing with their students.These two ladies are in the trenches, so to speak, on a daily basis and they share about their work on social media, which is where I first connected with them. We’ve had countless conversations about an issue we’re all very passionate about, which is education equity, and I invited them both on the show so that more educators can learn from their experiences. Our conversation ended up running for over an hour! For the first time ever on Truth for Teachers, I've decided to air almost the entire interview and split it into two episodes. The first half hour of our conversation was focused on classroom-based work, and the last 20 minutes was focused on building trust and relationships with families. Click here to read

Today I've invited two current teachers, Tamara Russell and Sarah Plumitallo, onto my Truth for Teachers podcast to talk about what they're doing with their students. This is something that I hope to do on the show more often because it’s just another angle of expertise that I think is important for you to hear as a teacher. These two ladies are in the trenches, so to speak, on a daily basis and they share about their work on social media, which is where I first connected with them. We’ve had countless conversations about an issue we’re all very passionate about, which is education equity, and I invited them both on the show so that more educators can learn from their experiences. Our conversation ended up running for over an hour! For the first time ever on Truth for Teachers, I've decided to air almost the entire interview and split it into two episodes. The first half hour of our conversation was focused on classroom-based work, and the last 20 minutes was focused on building trust and relationships with

In today’s episode, I’ll talk about 6 steps to stop worrying about problems before they happen. Teachers are faced with an enormous amount of stressors throughout their days, weeks, and school years. Just the possibility of being moved to another grade level or school (and in some cases having no position at all) will keep the teacher's lounge abuzz with nervous energy and speculation about who's retiring, who's taking leave, and what's going to happen to everyone else. You see, anxiety, worry, and apprehension are completely useless emotions because they're based on potential problems in the future. Unlike fear, which is a response to problems we're facing in the present moment, anxiety does not produce anything positive. And, anticipating problems is an especially dangerous habit in the field of education, where policies and procedures seem to change on a dime for no apparent reason and against all logic.  Listen in today to discover ways to consciously set our minds on the present reality and remind oursel