The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast, Episode 33 Transcript

Jennifer Gonzalez, Host

Listen to the audio version of this podcast.

This episode was recorded in December of 2015. Some of the information about pricing and special offers is out of date. For more current information, visit The 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club.

Gonzalez: This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 33 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast. In this episode, I’m going to share five powerful ways you can save time as a teacher.

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Gonzalez: One of the main reasons that I ended up leaving full-time teaching was time. I was a language arts teacher and I regularly brought home about two to three hours of work every night. I also spent plenty of time on the weekend going into school, letting myself into those dark hallways and just locking myself in the classroom for hours to try to get caught up for the week. I knew that when it was time for me to start a family, that it was going to be much, much harder to maintain that schedule. And so once we did have kids I decided to stay home full time. I was lucky enough to get a university job part time for a couple of years and now I run a website. So my schedule’s just a lot more flexible.

And anytime anybody asks if I plan to go back to full time teaching, I have to consider that piece. I mean first of all, I would definitely have to stop what I’m doing now completely. But I also think is it even possible to sustain or to maintain that kind of a schedule with three kids. I’ve got an eight year old, a nine year old and an eleven year old. I just can’t see how I could possibly keep all those things up. But a lot of teachers do it. A lot of teachers are balancing teaching and a family. Some are caring for aging parents or they are working another part time job or they’re going to grad school. There are plenty of teachers who are balancing the demands of teaching with other things. But my real question is are they really balancing it or are they just juggling? Or are they just cutting a lot of corners and multitasking and sacrificing things like sleep and exercise and their health in order to meet the demands of teaching?

And so time, I know, has been an issue for teachers since forever. In surveys that I’ve done of my readers, pretty much the number one problem that they have is just not enough time, not enough time to do the job well. And I’ve never had an answer for that honestly. I can provide great teaching strategies and I can give you classroom management tips and I can share fantastic tech tools, but the one problem I’ve never been able to solve for teachers is the time problem. Now I think I’ve found something and I am really, really excited to share it with you. This is something that I truly believe is going to change teachers lives and give you back the time that you need. It’s called the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club and it was created by my friend Angela Watson, who is another education blogger, and she’s a consultant and she’s written fantastic books. And this is her new project. She’s developed this systematic approach to help teachers shave lots of time off of their workweek and just get better balance in their lives.

So I invited Angela to come on the podcast and share some of her best tips. We decided that instead of just promoting the club we really wanted to pull the veil back and let you see some of the material she gives to her club members. So what we’re going to share today are her five best, most powerful tips for saving time as a teacher so that even if you don’t end up joining the club, you will still get these and these five are good and they will make a difference. These are things that have made a difference for me in my, in my own work and that is not as a teacher. These are really good time saving tips for anybody and we all need more time. So this is going to be valuable if you’re an administrator, if you are a parent, if you are working in a completely different field. These are just going to be fantastic time saving tips.

Before we get into the tips, I just want to thank you if you have left a review for this podcast on iTunes. It really, really helps to boost the show’s visibility so other people can find it. And so if you’re enjoying the show, I would love it if you would just take a moment to go over to iTunes and leave a review.

Alright, here is my interview with Angela Watson about the five powerful ways you can save time as a teacher.

Watson: Wait, are we on?

Gonzalez: Yeah, sure or we can start over again.

Watson: Okay, I guess we need to start over again.

Gonzalez: Okay, so I’m just going to let my own listeners know that we talk probably every day, so we may burst into giggles every once in awhile. Angela has become a very close friend of mine and so I would just like to welcome her. I’ve been wanting to have her on the podcast for along time, so Angela, welcome.

Watson: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Gonzalez: This is Angela Watson. She– She writes at thecornerstoneforteachers.com. She is an excellent education blogger. She creates educational products. She has written two–three books.

Watson: We’re at four now, actually.

Gonzalez: Four books, okay. So they are The Cornerstone, right, that’s the classroom management book right?

Watson: Yes.

Gonzalez: And then you wrote a companion book to that.

Watson: So after The Cornerstone, I wrote Awakened: Change Your Mindset to Transform Your Teaching. Then I wrote The Devotional Guide for Christian Educators with Awakened, that’s the companion book.

Gonzalez: Got it.

Watson: The most recent one is Unshakeable: 20 Ways to Enjoy Teaching Everyday, No Matter What.

Gonzalez: Okay and I have written reviews of two of those books, so I’m already clearly a big fan of your work. I am an even bigger fan now of this new project that you have going on which is called the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club. So if you could, just tell me a little bit about how you came to start this club. What– What got you to wanting to do this?

Watson: So this has been a really big project that has kind of been in the back of my mind for years, because I feel like one of the biggest needs that teachers have is a need for more time and more energy. And you know, how does a teacher achieve work/life balance? How can– I don’t even know how to wrap my head around a concept that big. So it’s something that I’ve just been researching for many years and just compiling notes on, and writing little bits and pieces here and there. And I wasn’t ever really sure what to do with it. And when it was done, or not even really done but when I looked back at my notes, I saw it was like two hundred fifty pages worth of stuff. And I’m like okay, no one is ever going to sit down and read two hundred fifty pages about this. You know, there were videos that I wanted to include and audio and printable forms and all kinds of different things to help share the ideas. And I just wasn’t sure what kind of format to put it in. So I figured that the best way to do it would be through a club, through a subscription service. So that teachers are getting just a little bit of content every single week and they have support in implementing it. And that way it wouldn’t be overwhelming.

Gonzalez: Okay, and so the club itself is a one year sort of membership and then after that year they just sort of belong to the club for life. But it’s just the one year that they actually pay for, correct?

Watson: That’s right, it’s a one year program, so you can start–There’s three times of year that you can join, and then you, you progress through the twelve different months. And every month there’s a different focus. So for example in December, we’ve been thinking about revamping our homework systems. How do you streamline homework? How do you make it more meaningful for kids? How do you get parents on board with it? How do you make it easier to collect and to grade and to track? So that’s what we’ve been working on this month and then teachers will implement their new ideas beginning in the new year.

Gonzalez: Okay and you also have– So the information is delivered via e-mail?

Watson: Right, so they’ll– They get an email every single Saturday. They get information in there that I call an e-Guide, which is a really short e-book. Usually, they get between like eight and fifteen pages of tips and just various resources. There’s also editable forms and templates, stuff like that to make teaching easier. Those come out almost every single week. And then there’s also an audio version of it. So if teachers don’t want to read through all that, they don’t have to. They can just listen to it the way that they would listen to a podcast. So they get that […]

Gonzalez: That’s a nice feature.

Watson: Yeah, it’s a really, really nice feature. It saves a lot of time. So they get that through their email and they also get it through the Gumroad app which is like a digital library app and it’s also placed in Google Drive. So if teachers are in a Google Drive school or they just really like using Google, then that’s a great way to get the resources too.

Gonzalez: Okay great, and you also have a support community. Once somebody joins the club, then they belong to your Facebook community?

Watson: Right, so all of the teachers who have subscribed to the club have the option of joining the Facebook community. Some people don’t want to be on Facebook and that’s fine, it’s an optional part of it. But it’s a great place to get the support from other teachers. That’s where you can go and ask questions from me and from other teachers to adapt the ideas to your unique teaching situation.

Gonzalez: Okay, fantastic. So I would like to ask you one sort of devil’s advocate question, because I know you struggled with this a little bit when you first launched the club. And the club has been going for just a few months now. When you first started, you got a little bit of pushback from people about the name, the 40 Hour Club. People were saying “How is that even possible?” “I don’t think a teacher can do a good job in only forty hours a week.” So talk a little bit about the name.

Watson: Yeah, that name has been– It’s been a struggle for me. I picked it because that’s about how many hours that I worked as a teacher. I was in the classroom for eleven years and I had about twenty seven hours of instructional time a week. So I devoted about fifteen hours a week to meetings, planning, paperwork, all those other sorts of things. And fifteen hours is a lot of time if you’re focused and you’re organized and you know your priorities. So for me that was a reasonable target number to shoot for each week. And then in the club I help each individual teacher choose an individual target number that works for that person’s teaching context, because forty isn’t the ideal number or a reasonable number for everyone. The idea really is to find out how many hours you’re currently working and then subtract maybe three to five hours from that to start. Just being aware of how many hours you’re working and creating boundaries around your time is really powerful because it keeps teaching from consuming your entire life.

Gonzalez: Yeah and it totally can, too. It really can consume every waking hour. So how has it been going so far? You’ve been in about three months, so your first batch of people, have you had any real success stories so far?

Watson: I have been blown away. I thought that this was just going to be like kind of a side project, you know, that was just going to be one of the things that I tackled this year. But I’m seeing such great results from the members that I realize that this really is going to be my number one focus for 2016. It’s really just going into these teacher’s lives, coaching them, teaching them, mentoring them, because I see how willing they are to change and to look for a better way and to want to innovate. So you know you get into the– You get out of the club what you put into it, basically. And so the more dedicated a teacher is to figuring out how to streamline systems, and set priorities and create boundaries, the more they’re getting out of it. And I mean we’ve had people who have been able to cut ten hours off their work week the very first month. We have people who have said that they no longer take work home on the weekends. They don’t work over breaks anymore. And that’s solely because they have invested time into creating better systems for themselves and thinking about what am I doing now? How can I streamline that? How can I make that time more beneficial for the kids and less time consuming, less energy consuming.

Gonzalez: Yeah, I think– Angela has actually let me in to peek into some of the materials and the Facebook group and I just saw a post just the other day from a woman was talking about how great it was, it was the first time she hadn’t brought work home over Thanksgiving break.

Watson: Yeah, and that’s a powerful story. And I think– You know, I knew that these ideas were going to work, but to see them working, like to hear these kinds of testimonials, from teachers you know in all different parts of the country, all different grade levels, all different teaching contexts, saying yes I can take these principles, I can adapt them and it’s making my life better. I have more time to take care of myself. I have more time for my family. This really is the most rewarding project I’ve ever taken on because I can’t think of anything more valuable to give a teacher than more time for the things that are really important.

Gonzalez: Yeah and that really is the unsolvable problem, and the fact that you’re finding ways to solve it is just incredible. That’s why I wanted to help you promote this. So okay, let’s start. Let’s look at some of your content. You have agreed to share five powerful tips for saving time as a teacher. And this is actually what you start the program with, you start new members with. So you really– We’re giving people a nice little sneak peek into some of your content. So you’ve got five things that teachers can do right off the bat and you call these things the Big Five, correct?

Watson: Right.

1. Eliminate Unintentional Breaks

Gonzalez: Okay, so let’s just start going, going into these. The first one is Eliminate Unintentional Breaks. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Watson: Sure. So the Big Five, these are the big overarching strategies for teacher productivity. And these are things that we return back to every single month as we focus on all these different aspects, as we talk about lesson planning, grading, homework, all of these different aspects. The Big Five really play into that because they’re just basic principles.

And that first one, that Eliminate Unintentional Breaks, is something that we all have to be super mindful of on a daily basis because we don’t realize how much we tend to get distracted from our work, right. So we’ll just check a text message for a couple minutes and then we’ll get a Facebook notification and now we’re on Facebook. Then you know we decide oh we’re going to get a snack. You look at all these different diversions that you didn’t intend to take. You didn’t even realize you were taking them. So they tend to consume more time than you think. You don’t even know that you need to limit them because you’re not aware that it’s happening. And you think, you know, a few minutes here, a few minutes there doesn’t matter but it adds up really quickly. You can easily end up staying at school an extra half hour a day because of these unintentional breaks. So being really mindful of what is distracting you. Are you checking your personal email while you’re at school? Are you chatting with coworkers who are popping into the room all the time? Do you have the t.v. on maybe for background noise while you’re working? All of these things are unintentional breaks. And so it’s much more productive to say “Okay I’m going to set aside five minutes. This is going to be my down time. And I’m going to decompress. And then I’m going to get back to focused work.”

Gonzalez: So the corollary to eliminating of unintentional breaks is to plan intentional breaks and really break when you’re breaking.

Watson: Exactly. You know if you– If you want to take a break you can. Some people just like to work as much as possible and then go home and cut it off. The important thing is not to fool yourself into thinking you know that you didn’t have a choice but to stay at school until dinner time. It really is your decision to stay focused and leave school a half hour, maybe an hour earlier if you eliminate these breaks and are just more intentional with how you use your time.

Gonzalez: That’s fantastic. I think with social media especially this first item is even more important than it was even ten years ago for people to be mindful and keep track of it. Does it help to turn off notifications when you’re at school?

Watson: Absolutely, and I mean I– You know this is something. This is one of my biggest struggles in all of my work is eliminating these distractions and I feel like all the time I’m constantly working on this myself. I still had email notifications on my phone up until about two years ago. So every time an e-mail came through no matter what I’m doing, now all of a sudden I’m glancing down at my phone screen. And then my brain is mentally processing. Do I want to open this? Do I need to respond to this? You know it’s such a big distraction. So getting all those notifications off. Putting the phone away will really, really help with focus.

2. Figure out the Main Thing and Do it First

Gonzalez: Okay so that’s the first one. Number two is Figure out the Main Thing and Do it First.

Watson: Right, so every day we all have a number of different things on our to do list. One of the things that I try to teach educators in the club is not to overload your to do list. To keep it small and to really schedule out your time really well. And we’ll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. But when you’re looking at your time you can say okay before school– You know I’m going to have maybe an hour before school. So I’m going to give myself these two to three tasks. And the idea there is you don’t have this massive to do list because if you have twenty five things on your list, you’re going to get overwhelmed and most importantly you’re not going to prioritize. So you’re going to end up doing all the little things that seem easy or that you can just you know check off real quick but then you look at the end of the day and you’re like. Oh I didn’t get to the most important thing.

So one of the things that we do in the club is every single day members look at their to do list and say okay what is the main thing? What’s the most important thing? If I’m going to leave work today with a sense of accomplishment, what do I have to have done? Maybe it’s a pile of, of tests that have been sitting there for two weeks and you haven’t graded them and it just weighs on you every time you see them. That’s your main thing. You want to get that done first, in the first block of time you have during the day that is long enough for you to get it done. That is when you want to do it.

Gonzalez: That is fantastic. And it’s up to the person what that thing is. It may be something someone else needs or it may be that thing that you’ve been putting off for so long that it’s just been stressing you out so much. You’ll feel so much better to have it done.

Watson: Right, it’s some sort of either urgent or important or overwhelmingly large task that creates anxiety if you procrastinate and work on other work. It’s that thing that when you’re doing one thing that is actually important but in the back of your mind you’re still thinking oh man I still really need to get this done. That’s your main thing. So you want to do that first. And that just really sets you up for success for the rest of the day because if you get interrupted and you have all these emergencies come up at least you know the main thing got done.

Gonzalez: Yeah, that is wonderful. That is fantastic. Okay we’re coming up on my favorite now. This has changed a lot of things for me. So […]

Watson: Me too.

3. Work Ahead by Batching and Avoid Multitasking Unless the Work is Mindless

Gonzalez: Number three is Work Ahead by Batching and Avoid Multitasking Unless the Work is Mindless.

Watson: Right.

Gonzalez: Let’s talk about batching.

Watson: So I think multitasking is like one of the biggest lies that we have been brainwashed into believing, you know, that the human brain can do three or four, or even just two things really well at the same time. And the– You know now as we learn more and more about brain research and just as we see the effects in our own lives of being constantly distracted and constantly trying to do multiple things at one time, we realize that the brain really doesn’t function like that. You can multitask if it’s mindless. Like you can eat a sandwich while you’re putting stickers on student work. But you can’t grade papers and check your email at the same time. You know? So every time we stop grading papers to read an email we’re losing time as our brain tries to register what’s happening there.

So you’re much better off if you can batch similar activities and complete them all together. So check that email once a day, go through and respond to all of them at once. When you’re grading papers, don’t even start the stack until you know you have enough time to get through. Because otherwise you know if you grade one here and one there, you’re going to feel like you’re grading papers all day long and you never going to get finished.

Gonzalez: It’s such an unsatisfying feeling to have all this stuff kind of hanging halfway done.

Watson: It is and you know, it ends up taking longer anyways. Like if you think about when you’re grading like a multiple choice test, by the time you get to like the last few papers in the stack, it goes so quickly because your brain has been programmed to remember the pattern of the answers, like you know what to look for in the paper.

Gonzalez: And so you don’t want to restart every time.

Watson: Exactly, exactly. So you want to go get into that flow and batch through it all at once. Don’t start it until you can get through the entire stack at once. And if you can grade a whole stack of a couple of different assignments at one time, that’s even better because it just trains your mind to get into that flow and stick with that one thing. And how good does that feel when you’re done and when you’re like wow, I actually got something finished today.

Gonzalez: And this– You and I have talked about this so much too outside of just regular work, you can actually do this with real life. Because you know that I struggled with grocery shopping for a long time. And I’ll get into this thing where I’ll just go every day, real last-moment, and just grab a few things for that day and then it’s like the next day shows up and I gotta get more. And I’ve been trying to batch my grocery shopping, and just sit down, commit to it, get everything for the week. Even though I can’t stand it, then when I’m done it’s such a reward to me the rest of the week to know I have everything for the week. it’s already there.

Watson: Yeah. Exactly, I try to do this a lot in my personal life too because you know when you batch the best thing is you get ahead. You know like now when you go to the grocery store and you get all those groceries, now you’re set for the week. And that is such a good feeling. It’s so motivating. You know and then you realize that the next day when you would normally be going to the grocery store, it’s like oh yeah look now I have an extra twenty minutes in my day. Now I can batch and get ahead on something else.

Gonzalez: Yeah and what’s actually helping me get through the drudgery of doing the batching itself is I tell myself I’m giving myself a gift for later.

Watson: I love that.

Gonzalez: And I know I’m going to be so grateful to myself later on. I’m going to say “Thanks Jenn. Thanks for doing all that grocery shopping. It’s done now.” So that kind of helps motivate me.

4. Look for Innovative Ways to Relax Any Standards that Create Unnecessary Work

Gonzalez: Okay so we’ve done eliminating unintentional breaks, figure out the main thing and do it first, work ahead by batching and avoid multitasking except for mindless stuff. Number four is Look for Innovative Ways to Relax Any Standards that Create Unnecessary Work. So talk about relaxing standards.

Watson: Right. So this is about, you know– Most teachers are just– you know, we want to do a good job. We know how important this work is. We don’t want to cut corners. We want things to be done with excellence and that’s a great trait. But often we create more work for ourselves by making tasks more complicated than they need to be. And we spend time and energy on things that aren’t necessary. If you can relax your standards for a task without anyone else realizing that you did it, then your standards are probably too high.

You know, so like take lesson planning for example. Maybe you’re spending hours online every single week looking for lesson ideas and then you’re spending more hours recreating and adapting every single thing you’ve found because none of them were exactly what you wanted. But the only thing that’s necessary is that you plan and document engaging lessons. And there’s thousands of ways to approach that task. Some of them are more time-intensive and some are less time-intensive. So the idea is to think outside of the box. Find a better way. What if you co-plan with a team of teachers and you divide up the work? Or what if you plan for science, someone else plans for social studies? Or what if you find ready-to-use activities on Teachers Pay Teachers and you buy the experience of someone else so you don’t have to create it from scratch? Or you can turn the ownership over to the students and say this is going to be a student-directed project. I’m not going to plan this. I’m going to give this ownership to kids and let them do it. So there’s all different ways to approach this task of lesson planning. And the end result is the same. You created an engaging lesson that moved kids towards learning goals. But you can relax that unnecessary standard, the standard that you’ve placed on yourself where I have to create everything from scratch. I have to make–I have to use this perfect font. I have to use this clipart. I have to make everything just so. And really boil it down to what’s essential.

Gonzalez: Right, right. I think teachers drive themselves crazy with this, especially with classroom set up at the beginning of the year. And I know that’s your big theme for August I believe, right, is just creating a space that’s not so overdone but it’s good enough and it’s beautiful and it’s going to work. But you’re not going to spend a year putting it together.

Watson: Exactly.

5. Use Scheduling to Create Boundaries Around Your Time

Gonzalez: Okay. So the last one. Use Scheduling to Create Boundaries Around Your Time.

Watson: Right, so like we touched on in the beginning, you know, teaching will expand to fill whatever amount of time you allow. So if you don’t have boundaries on your time, you’re just going to be working nonstop. You know, you can’t really work until it’s finished because it’s never really done. There’s always something more you should be doing. So when you plan in advance how long you’re going to work and when you’re going to work, it creates a sense of urgency and that makes it easier to stay focused and be productive.

And that’s something that I’ve been experimenting with, as you know, myself a lot. These last couple of weeks I’ve been saying okay instead of trying to tackle a task at home, you know I’ve got the t.v. on. I’m getting up to get snacks. I’m– You know all these different distractions and it ends up taking me four to five hours. Like okay I’m just going to go to a coffee shop. I’m going to sit down and I’m going to give myself two hours to get this done. I’m not going to check social media. I’m not going to get up and move around. I’m not– I’m not going to do anything. I’m just going to focus on this one thing because I’ve created this boundary around my time. It is amazing how much more I’m getting done. That’s because I’ve set the limits.

And so that’s what I’m advising teachers here to do is decide on a schedule. Say okay I’m going to go in two hours early Tuesday and Thursday. I’ll stay you know an hour late on Wednesday, Friday. And that’s it. That’s all I’m doing. And if you know you have that limit on yourself, you won’t be tempted to waste time and you won’t be tempted to do all these unnecessary things. And, you know, worry about the cutesy. You know you’re going to say I got to get this stuff done. I got this list. I have these priorities. I’m going to do my main thing and I’m just going to knock this stuff out and go home.

Gonzalez: Yeah, I’m seeing actually how this one works with all of the other ones. Because if you’ve decided on a one and half hour time period after school, you are not going to take the unintentional breaks as much.

Watson: That’s right.

Gonzalez: You’re going to get the main thing done. And so yeah, they really do work, work all together.

Watson: That’s right, and you know the number of hours and how you structure your time, it doesn’t matter. That’s going to vary for every teacher and really it’s going to vary from week to week. If you have parent conferences one week, you have to budget a bunch of extra time there. So it’s not really so much about the hours. It’s more about knowing how much time am I going to dedicate to this job. And then you can feel good when you’re done because you’re like okay I’ve gotten the main things done. I didn’t get everything done that I wanted to do, but I worked with focus. I worked with intention. The most important things done. I have scheduled in time to relax. I have scheduled in time for my family, for my health. And I’m going to stick to that.

Gonzalez: And I know that this is really just the tip of the iceberg for your– For the year-long program that– I’m sure that you all get into things like probably somebody listening is thinking “Yeah, but you don’t know my administrator.” And so I would assume– I would assume that that gets covered at some point whether it’s in the group, in the Facebook group or in the materials themselves. Dealing with unreasonable expectations from other people.

Watson: Yeah, I mean that’s one of the biggest problems in teaching, right, is that a lot of the time we don’t even get to decide on our priorities and we don’t get to decide the timing because you think something is going to be due next week and all of a sudden someone needs it by the end of the day. You know and those kinds of emergencies that crop up really can throw you off. So. And you’re right, that is where the Facebook group is really helpful because teachers can go in and say “I’m facing this unique challenge.” And you know when they do that they often realize that there are a lot of other teachers actually who have faced similar things and can offer help.

Gonzalez: So let’s talk a little bit about if somebody’s listening and– We’re recording this at this time because you are just about to open up enrollment again. And actually by the time people listen to this they’re going to be listening to this starting on the 26th of December and so when does enrollment open for this next round of membership?

Watson: That’s the day–December 26th–and it will be open for one week. So it will close on January 3rd and the purpose of that is because I really want to keep a sense of continuity and a sense of community in the Facebook group. And I also want– I want members to have the shared base of understanding. I want us all to be building on the same types of concepts. So there’s three times a year that you can join and this is the last one until the summer time.

Gonzalez: Okay, and so the three times a year. If somebody happened to come across this you know, in the summer of 2016, the three times of the year are when?

Watson: So the next time they can join– The end of December to start in January. The next time it will be open is the end of June to start in July and that will kind of help you gear up for the new school year. And then the final time is at the end of September to begin in October.

Gonzalez: Okay, which is the time when teachers all of a sudden realize “Oh my gosh, I’m having really big problems with my time.

Watson: Exactly.

Gonzalez: And yet no matter what time a year a person joins, they just jump in. Every month has a focus and they just jump in on that month and continue on for a full year of themes.

Watson: Exactly, so it doesn’t matter when you join. If you join any month– Any of those three times. In September we’ll be talking about classroom organization, classroom management, that sort of thing. So the information therefore is always timely and it’s always relevant to them.

Gonzalez: Okay and let’s talk a little bit about cost, too. What does it cost for somebody to actually be a member?

Watson: So you can pay for– It’s like we talked about earlier, it’s a one year program right? So this is not like a bill that you have for the rest of your life. You can pay the whole thing up front if you want. It’s $99 if you pay it up front. It’s a one time fee and then you’re going to get that content every single week for a year and you have access to the Facebook group indefinitely after that. So you will always have that community to rely on. Optionally, you can choose to pay in monthly installments of $9.99.

Gonzalez: Got it. Okay, and so anybody listening, if you want more information on this, this is what you do. Just go to cultofpedagogy.com. Click on the podcast link. Go to episode 33 and that’ll take you straight to the different links to take you straight to 40 Hour Workweek Club. So just go to episode 33 and you will find what you need. And also full disclosure, I am an affiliate of this program. This is the first time I’ve been an affiliate of a specific program, but I just believe so much in your results and so I just want to really support it and promote it to as many teachers as possible. So I hope a lot of people join in January and you get a nice, brand new, energetic cohort to start the year.

Watson: I’m so excited Jennifer, you have no idea. I can’t wait to get this new group in here and just, just start seeing them get results. So it’s so empowering for teachers.

Gonzalez: I’m just excited for you and the thing that’s nice about anyone who joins now is there’s going to be this batch of teachers who have already been doing it for three months and they’re probably going to be really excited to welcome this new group of people. So there will be people with experience ready to, to mentor them.

Watson: That’s right, we already have several hundred teachers in the group who are ready. They know this is coming up. They are inviting their friends and they are really excited to be welcoming more teachers into our fold.

Gonzalez: So if someone wants to follow you, because this is only a small, small part of everything you do. Where will– Where can they find you online?

Watson: The best place to go is my website which is thecornerstoneforteachers.com. And that’s where you can find all the social media links. You can find out about my podcast, which is Angela Watson’s Truth for Teachers, my blog, my books, all the information is there. So thecornerstoneforteachers.com.

Gonzalez: Okay, fantastic. And to learn more about the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club just go to cultofpedagogy.com/pod and go to episode 33 and you will find everything you need there. Thank you so much Angela for sharing these sort of freebies with us, these free tips and good luck. Good luck with the club.

Watson: Thank you so much for having me.

Gonzalez: Thanks.

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Gonzalez: Again, for more information on the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek, go to cultofpedagogy.com/pod and click on episode 33. That’ll take you to a page with everything you need to know. Thanks for listening and have a great day.

This podcast is a proud member of the Education Podcast Network, podcasts for educators, podcasts by educators. To learn more, visit edupodcastnetwork.com.