Monthly Meeting Prep - December
Hello there,
Welcome to another edition of Monthly Meeting Prep! It’s our little monthly message with ready-to-use resources on relevant topics for your professional development needs. They might serve as a “PD Moment” at the beginning of a faculty meeting, discussion material for a late start or early release time, or thought-provoking content for leadership meetings.
As a quick reminder, we always try to include the following:
An editable PowerPoint file with pre-loaded prompts or discussion questions
A video that offers a unique perspective and can always be applied in the classroom or improve professional practice
Links to resources to extend the session as needed
Don’t forget that all paid subscribers will receive the second installment of our Semesterly Professional Development on December 18th! Our module for the second semester is Classroom Management: Building Resilient Relationships - valued at $469. Paid subscribers get access with their subscription. We’ll send you a link for an immediate digital download in a couple of weeks!
On to this month’s content …
December Monthly Meeting Prep
Topic: Mind-Mapping for Stress Relief
Overview: This month’s MMP will be less directly related to professional practice in the classroom and more focused on teacher mental health. I hope that it’s something rather charming and fun before the break.
What is Mind Mapping?
Mind Mapping - also known as radial notetaking - is a way of documenting the thoughts that are taking up space in your brain and vying for your precious mental energy. While it can take many forms, it often involves connecting various thoughts to other musings, thus taking it a step beyond simple list-making.
Why I chose this topic:
Today, I use Mind Mapping as a way to organize my thoughts and declutter my brain. I’ve found it particularly helpful lately as we’re wrapping up a six-month home remodel, AND my wife is pregnant (with twins!). So, yeah, things are nuts. Add a quickly growing business to the mix, and there’s not a lot of margin in our life.
But despite the busyness, this is the most exciting season of life for our family. So many blessings and I don’t want to only focus on the stressors.
And that’s part of the importance of this exercise. Even in the best of times, we have these constant to-do lists in the back of our minds that seem to pull our attention away from those things we really do enjoy. Our joy is crowded out by the things we think matter but really aren’t as important as they may seem.
Now, you may ask yourself, “How is this relevant to teaching?”
Well, I could easily make a case for prioritizing teacher self-care, but I won’t rely on that oft-used catchphrase just to get you on board. Instead, consider this: We’re entering the “I need to buy holiday gifts for my staff of 85 with a budget of 36 dollars” time of the year.
While I’m not suggesting that you forgo whatever you had planned, I am asking you to consider offering them the opportunity to de-stress a bit and prioritize themselves over the break. This simple exercise can help you do both.
There are also some real, research-backed advantages to this exercise.
Researchers at Baylor University found that writing down a to-do list 5 minutes before falling asleep can significantly increase how quickly one nods off. The assumption being that dumping your worrying thoughts onto paper helps to offload the items that might keep you awake.
Similarly, itemizing the things that are stirring around in your brain can help you find extra time. Instead of spinning your wheels when you have a free moment, quickly completing the few tasks that you find stressful will help you to move on and relax when you have more downtime.
And that’s precisely how the Mind Map works. While it’s not just a to-do list, it does capture those thoughts that are time sensitive and bothersome because they remain unfinished. But while a to-do list stops there, a Mind Map goes deeper. It identifies the things that you simply find interesting and enjoyable and it allows you not only to identify them, but to prioritize them.
How to use this content:
Toward the bottom of this page is a short video on making maps from an artist named Austin Kleon. He’s written a few New York Times bestsellers like Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work, and Keep Going. Chances are, your fine arts teachers will be familiar with his work (and are likely big fans).
He walks through his process of making a Mind Map. Teachers can easily follow along in this straightforward video.
The video at the bottom of this page walks you through a step-by-step process of making a Mind Map, so I won’t cover the details here.
I just went through this exercise myself, and my own Mind Map is below.
Here’s where I go a step beyond the video.
Once I finish my map, I grab a few highlighters and color-code the items on my map into the following three categories:
Stressful (blue)
Exciting (orange)
Spend More Time (green)
These help me to categorize the items on my map into areas that are open loops that need to be closed (stressful), items that I’m looking forward to and need to prioritize (exciting), and items that I might want to focus on when I find myself with some extra time this break (spend more time).
Here’s how mine looked after color coding (sorry for the ink smudginess):