Ep #227: Enjoy the Last Weeks of the School Year (Part 1)

Hello empowered principals. Welcome to episode 227.

Welcome to The Empowered Principal™ Podcast, a not so typical educational resource that will teach you how to gain control of your career and get emotionally fit to lead your school and your life with joy by refining your most powerful tool, your mind. Here’s your host certified life coach Angela Kelly Robeck.

Well hello my empowered leaders. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome to May. You guys are at the end of the race. I am so proud of you. You have, what, at least four to six weeks to go. Maybe eight weeks for some of you. I know some schools go through the end of June. But you’re almost there.

I’m so excited to share this podcast and next week’s podcast with you. Because for those of you who know, I offered a training last week on how to enjoy the last eight weeks of school. So whether you’ve got eight weeks, six weeks, four weeks, two weeks doesn’t matter. I have decided that this information was so powerful and it helped so many people that I wanted to offer it to you on the podcast in case you didn’t catch the actual live training.

So you can listen to this. You don’t have to watch the video. I’m going to do an overview. I’m gonna break the training into two parts because there’s so much content and information, I don’t want to overwhelm you in one huge podcast. So I’m gonna break it into two smaller components.

I want to just start by saying that this was inspired by my clients who were exhausted and overwhelmed at the end of the school year. They were new leaders who were feeling like everything was going well up until now anyway. Then they started feeling that dread and overwhelm and the testing and the teacher observations and all the HR stuff and the reassignments and the hiring and the letting go and planning for next year. They just got so overwhelmed.

So I just dedicate this work to each and every one of my clients who has worked with me throughout this year. I want you to enjoy and embrace and celebrate all of the hard work and the accomplishments that you’ve done. You guys have done it. Each and every one of you whether you’re a teacher, an aspiring leader, whether you’re a new principal or a veteran principal, or maybe you’re a district official. Wherever you are in the field of education, celebrate yourself. You deserve to enjoy the end of the school year. This is about accomplishment and achievement and having some fun.

I want you guys to have some fun. By the way, speaking of fun, please join the Empowered Principal™ Facebook group because we’re going to be hosting the Summer of Fun challenge for school leaders. So we’ve done this for the past two summers, and I’m launching it again. We’re going to have a blast. We’re going to post about all the fun we’re having. We’re going to indulge in some really big funs, some tiny little funs, all the funs. We’re doing all things fun.

So come on over to the Empowered Principal™ Facebook group where you can win prizes. You can win coaching sessions. You can be potentially a member of this podcast and a guest on this podcast. So it’s going to be a blast. I want you guys having fun. I want you guys to feel lighthearted and enjoy the end of the school year.

So let’s dive into the training. As I mentioned, I really created this webinar for people who were feeling so overwhelmed, feeling that there wasn’t enough time, focusing on all the things you haven’t accomplished, worried that the kids weren’t going to get what they needed or there was certain curriculum not covered.

What was happening was principals were losing sight of the purpose of the end of the school year, which is reflection and growth and celebration and accomplishment and acknowledgement. We want to have fun in this job. That’s why we’re in this job to enjoy the people we work with and our students and our families and communities. So this training is for you if you are dying for the end of the year to come.

Let’s just be honest. There are some of you who are thinking, “I just cannot wait for this year to be over.” You’re going through the motions to get to the end of the year, but you’re exhausted and you’re tired and you’re truly just not enjoying your life right now. Frankly, you’re miserable. This training is for you, my miserable school leader. I promise you. You’re in good hands. We’ve got your back, okay.

Or if you’re the person who’s happy and excited and having fun, but you’re feeling more and more overwhelmed and all of the extra end of year activities and tasks, they feel like a wave of work has descended upon you. That it’s drowning you. So I want you to know that a lot of things come up at the end of the year, and that’s okay. It’s normal. It’s happening to every principal across the nation, veteran principals and new principals alike.

Because there is a certain number of things that have to get done with testing and observations and end of the year events and all the HR stuff. Student behaviors kind of pop up. Parents start to ramp up worrying about what’s going to happen next year, what’s happening to the end of this year. Spring fever kicks in. Senioritis, end of year, all of those things, right. So I’ve got you.

If you’re the person who is approaching the end of the year and you’re super anxious or nervous or worried, like you can’t sleep. You’re thinking about all the things you have to do, but it’s really weighing you down in terms of anxiety or stress or worry. If you’re thinking about parents and teachers and what other people are thinking and if you did a good job and if you’re gonna get it all done and what’s going to happen next year. If you’re kind of spinning out in fear or worry or confusion or anxiety, we’ve got you.

For the veteran principal who’s like, “Hey, I’ve overworked myself at the end of the year. I’ve crossed the finish line completely depleted. I don’t want to do that again.” We’ve got your back. We’re going to help you set up some system and processes. We’re going to teach you how to delegate and how to constrain. All right, let’s go.

I want you guys to know, I have completely been in your shoes, and I’ve done this work. What I want to teach you, and this is what I teach my clients, is how to be relaxed and assured about yourself. A sense of calm and trust in who you are and what you’re doing and what you’re offering and that it’s enough, and that teachers are doing enough. We want to just trust the process, and we want to practice celebrating. Practice having fun. We have to be intentional about fun and celebration.

So here’s what you’re going to walk away with. We’re going to talk about the difference between choice and obligation and get very clear on the difference between the two. I’m going to teach you how to constrain. I’m going to teach you how to delegate. I’m gonna walk you through the process of getting from where you’re at now to where you want to be, which is having fun, feeling lighthearted, enjoying the year celebrating people and focusing on accomplishment versus what didn’t get done.

I’m going to show you some things you need to consider, the skills you need to develop. The best part is I’m going to show you the pitfalls to avoid. Because I did them all. I fell in all the pits, and I’m going to show you how not to do that. Okay.

Why this training is different. I like to show people how this is different than perhaps other ideas or concepts that they’ve been taught. This particular training is different because it’s not going to focus on the to-do list. That’s not the primary focus. We’re also going to make the assumption that it doesn’t have to be completed.

So what we’re used to doing is we’re used to assuming that everything on our to-do list has to get done. I’m gonna say no it doesn’t. We’re not gonna go there. We don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to tie every single little to-do list up in a pretty ribbon and make sure that we are a good principal if we’ve checked all these boxes. Not true.

We’re going to lighten up, a lot. We’re going to laugh and be silly, and we’re going to let a lot of things go. We’re going to do B minus work. We’re going to lighten up about testing. We’re going to lighten up about HR stuff. We’re just going to lighten up. Nothing’s going to happen. Nothing’s going wrong.

I’m going to show you why these HR conversations, all the staffing conversations that you’re having, they’re not a problem. If you’re listening to the podcast, I talk very specifically about how to make all the staffing conversations easy and less stressful and a win/win for you and the teachers. So be sure you go back and listen to those specific podcasts because I’m not going to cover in detail. But I want you to know HR conversations, all the staffing things, hiring, firing, letting go, holding space for people, reassigning them. None of that’s a problem.

We’re going to focus on achievement. We’re not going to look at what we didn’t get done and what we failed at and how much we didn’t do and all the things we said we were going to do that we didn’t.

No, we’re going to look at what we did do, how we did spend our time, what we did successfully, who we helped, who we held space for, who we made feel better each and every day and along the way. We’re going to measure our success based on how good you feel, based on how much fun you’re having, and based on how much you’re celebrating. That is our metric of success.

Okay, here’s what your brain is telling you that you want. Your brain is saying this to you. You need to get it all done, accomplish your yearly goals, get all of the end of year events scheduled, planned, and prepared. Of course, you think you have to do all of that, right? You have to complete staff observations, end of year reports, all the projects, staffing assignments, hiring and firing, holding space for non-returning teachers. You’ve got student discipline issues coming up. You’ve got IEP meetings and your 504s. You want to have smooth parent conversations.

You want everything to go smoothly, and you ultimately want closure, right? You think what’s going to bring you closure is checking all these boxes and doing all the things. On top of that, what you really want to do is have some time set aside. Maybe after all the chaos and the kids are gone. You want to evaluate this school year. What worked? What did you learn? Then you want to think what am I going to do differently?

Oh, by the way, you do have a personal life, and you want to have some plans for the summer. You don’t want to hit summer and then not have had taken the time to plan and have no fun plans. No, we’re not going to do that. So there’s a lot going on at work. So much so that you don’t end up planning your summer. Or you do plan your summer, but you feel guilty for taking it. Or you go and plan your summer without planning for next year because you dread it so much. Okay.

Now, I want to show you how we try to solve this problem of staying on top and getting it all done and feeling good. We’re chasing feeling accomplished and feeling like we’re a good principal. We want to have the thought, “I did a good job. I’m amazing. I was successful. I helped all the people. I solved all the problems. I fixed everything right.”

What we try to do in search of that is we look outside of ourselves. What did you do? How do you do that? Like you read books. You ask other people. You listen to podcasts, which is not a bad idea, especially this one. But you are looking outside of yourself because you think, “I’ve got to figure this out, and somebody else has the answer. I’m going to try and manage my time better. I’m going to try and keep up.”

When we’re trying to keep up, we think we need to work harder, faster, longer. What we do, we do this to ourselves. We do it to our students is we take out the fun. We scratch out self-care. We scratch out sleep. We scratch out exercise. We scratch out planning time. We scratch out journaling. We scratch out all the things that we enjoy doing or that we know we want to do, even things we know that are a high benefit and a high impact activity but might not be urgent, right? So all the non-urgent, important stuff gets thrown out.

We do that with kids by the way. We reduce recess time. We take away art and music and P.E. and all the fun things. We take out the field trips. We make lunchtime shorter. We make the school year longer or the school day longer. We’re crazy thinking that more is better, right? So I’m going to offer that more is not better.

What we do is we get overwhelmed and then we over schedule and we overwork and we overexert. Because the goal in our brain is do more, do it all, and do it right. So what you typically do is make tons of lists—Do you ever make tons of lists over and over and over again? Same list, same tasks. It goes from day to day to day, but you make the new list every day.

Yes, we love to make to do lists. We love to overbook ourselves. We love to put things off to the last minute because we’re so busy doing the one thing that we don’t have time to do the next thing and then we’re rushing around. We’re rushing to the next meeting. We’re rushing through conversations, or we just avoid them altogether. We rush through the process. We run around all crazy.

What happens with that is we get really irritated when we get interrupted because were booked back to back to back. We get frustrated with others who slow us down and take more time than we think they need. We end up feeling discouraged or burned out or exhausted. This is what I call the overwhelm cycle. You are in it. This is how you know. When things start to get chaotic, you feel really uncertain and unsafe and a little nervous that you’re not keeping up. Lots of confusion and doubt kick in.

When you overwork, there’s a disillusionment that happens. You overwork, and you think you’re going to catch up. And guess what? You do five things, five more things come up. You do those five things, 10 more things come up. You’re chasing and chasing and chasing because you think that at some point in the future, there’s an end to the work. You get very disillusioned when you find out that’s not the case. You exhaust yourself. You feel insufficient then you feel inadequate, and it goes back to the chaos. You go round and round and round in the overwhelm cycle.

It’s kind of like those merry go rounds. I’m dating myself now, but when I was a kid, the playground had this merry go round. This metal crazy toy that you jump on. It’s like a ride. People would spin it really, really fast. I would feel so sick, and I hated it, but you couldn’t get off if it was going really fast. That’s what the overwhelm cycle feels like when you’re in it.

Now, here’s why the overworking approach doesn’t work. Intellectually, we know this. You could repeat this to me. This is not new information to you, but yet we find ourselves reacting in the overwhelm cycle over and over every single year. What happens is things get overlooked. We double book ourselves accidentally.

When we do that, people feel kind of brushed off or ignored because we’re rushing around and we don’t have time to listen. We don’t have time to meet with them or talk with them because we’re being so busy being busy. Communication starts to break down. Jobs and tasks get done very hastily, just kind of pasted together last minute. Then we don’t end up accomplishing bigger goals because we’re stuck in this reaction to the urgency. We’re in urgency mode. We just are in reaction to that mode.

We end up losing sight of what and why. What that ultimately creates in the long run is that we just don’t enjoy our job. We don’t enjoy the experience of the end of the year or any part of the year for that matter. Because sometimes we get caught in the overwhelm cycle from day one to the last day. The only part of life we enjoy is that couple of weeks between the end of one year and the start of the other where we’re on vacation. That is no way to live. I don’t want you to live that way.

So you don’t enjoy the experience. You end up feeling resentful. You’re just trying to cross the finish line. You focus on what didn’t get done and what didn’t get accomplished, all your failures, right. Other people around us, when we’re not enjoying our experience, other people around us are not enjoying their experience. Then they feel the same way we feel. They’re overwhelmed, and they’re exhausted. Our energy impacts them. Then the end of the year just ends up being really energy sucking and stressful. You start to dread it. That’s not the purpose of the end of the year. It’s the opposite. It’s supposed to be light and fun and celebratory.

But here’s why we don’t make the change. This is where we have to be onto ourselves. There is a part of us—and I’m talking to you type A people, like myself—that we like the dopamine rush. We love being busy. We love going 100 miles an hour, right? It feels good to accomplish check, check, check the box.

It’s kind of what we’re used to. We’re used to being busy. We’re used to being rushed. We’re used to the end of the year being over busy, over scheduled, overpacked. We kind of think it’s just the way it has to be. We also, school leaders, think that we are the ones that have to do it all. Our way is the best way. We know how to do it right. Other people do it wrong. That’s not what we wanted. They’re not going to do it as good as I do. You get caught in that trap of I can’t delegate because it won’t be done the way I want it. It won’t be good enough.

We think that on top of it, all of it has to get done. I disagree. We think that fun isn’t allowed. That it’s not the priority. We think that we have to be very serious. That school is serious business, and there’s a lot to do. Got to stay focused. No time for silliness, right. We’re so boring. We’re so teachers that way. We’ve got to lighten up and have a little fun here.

I also think that urgency tends to supersede priority. You made a decision at the beginning of the year what the priority of the year was going to be. As you get closer and closer to the end of the year, the urgency is what other people want. Feel more important than the priority. Staying the course and staying focused. So when we feel urgency, it starts to supersede what our priorities are.

We think we can’t slow down, or we’re gonna get behind. Something’s not gonna get done on time, heaven forbid. We can’t slow down. We think it’s got all get done. We’re gonna be behind. Why we’re doing this is because we’re trying to people please, and we’re trying to be perfect. The reason we’re trying to people please and be perfect is because we are attempting to avoid judgment and criticism and failure and disappointment. Basically, what we’re doing is we are chasing positive emotions, and we’re attempting to avoid negative emotions.

But here’s the truth, and I’m going to leave you with this. We’ll talk about the how next week. The truth is that when we plan our future now, when we take time now in the present moment to plan out our future experience, we get to experience that moment with presence. Future planning is how we experience present moments. When we slow down in the present moment and plan for our future right now with our future in mind, we give ourselves the luxury of being able to enjoy being present in that moment. Mind blowing, right? I love this thought.

So the solution I’m going to offer, and I’ll teach you the how next week. The simple solution to all of this chaos is to begin planning your work three months in advance. Sounds simple, right? But your brains like, “That’s not possible because I’m too busy figuring out today to be able to plan for tomorrow.”

Well, next week I’m going to teach you how. How to plan three months in advance, how to put fun into the workday, into the work week, put those celebrations in. We’re going to stop overworking. We’re going to stop over exerting. We’re going to stop over scheduling. Okay. I’m going to teach you all how next week. Let’s go.

For those of you who are ready to sign up for coaching and have a coach by your side every single week for the next school year, I encourage you to schedule a consult and say yes to coaching. Get all your affairs in order so that you’re ready to say yes, and that you’re signed up, and that you secure your spot. My spots do run out, and I don’t want to have to put you on the waiting list you guys. So I’m encouraging you.

I’m trying to incentivize you to take action now so that we can begin planning our three months in advance today. So this is May. You want to be planning. May, June, July, which is the start of the new school year for you. You want to be three months ahead of yourself so that you don’t feel behind, and that you know what you’re doing so you don’t have to overwork and over schedule yourself. Okay.

For those of you who are interested in coaching, if you sign up for coaching during the month of May, you’re going to receive a bonus month of coaching for free. Sign up today. I look forward to working with you. I love you all, and I’ll see you next week. Take care. Bye.

If this podcast resonates with you, you have to sign up for the Empowered Principal™ coaching program. It’s my exclusive one to one coaching and mentorship program for school leaders who believe in possibility. This program is designed for principals who are hungry for the fastest transformation in the industry. If you want to create the best connections, impact, and legacy for yourself and your school, the Empowered Principal™ program was designed for you. Join me at angelakellycoaching.com/work-with-me to learn more. I’d love to support you in becoming an empowered school leader.

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