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 e...

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 li...

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 a...

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...

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 ma...

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...

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 foc...

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 syst...

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...

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...

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 to...

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 th...

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 u...

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 ...

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 o...

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 peop...

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 an...

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 wor...

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 a...

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...

The episode of the Truth for Teachers podcast featured here is a free coaching call I conducted with a graduate of the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club . Her name is Kristen, and she's a year 4 teacher in Australia, which is equivalent to 4th grade in the U.S.  Kristen is in her sixth year of teaching and feeling like she's spending way too much time communicating with parents and answering emails, a...

I am always looking for ways to save energy. I shared in my book Unshakeable that energy is one of our most precious resources because unlike time, energy does not naturally replenish itself. We have to be intentional about how we use our energy. If we don't pay attention to the things that drain it and do less of those things and pay attention to things that are energy-giving and do more of those...

Growth mindset has been a buzzword in education for quite awhile and I think a lot of teachers and kids are already familiar with it. But I've noticed a pitfall that seems to occur fairly often: growth mindset is introduced to students near the beginning of the year and then the curriculum demands seem to take precedent. When you have so many skills you have to teach and so many standards for kids...

The majority of the Truth for Teachers podcast episodes are on topics that will help improve your teaching practices with ALL of your students, but in some cases, I like to talk about specific student populations. It's okay to focus for ONE episode on meeting the needs of English Language Learners, or students with special needs. And it's okay to focus for an episode on students of color.  In this...

In this coaching call with a teacher named Rachel, I think you'll recognize a very common dilemma for teachers: spending exorbitant amounts of time doing lesson planning, and still feeling like you don't know what you're doing from day to day. If you're caught in a trap of planning every night for the following day, forgetting to do certain things with students even though it's in the plan, and co...