Why You Need to Plan Your Year with a 10,000 Foot View [Episode 142]

Lauren Tingle 0:00
Don’t underestimate how powerful your calendar will be for you and for all the people around you. I’ve talked about it in past episodes before, really about how your calendar can be an advocacy tool for you and a mouthpiece that shouts all the good things you’re doing.

Lauren Tingle 0:18
And we won’t get too much into that. You can go back and listen to episodes 44, and 78 which I talk about owning your time management using a calendar, collecting calendar data, and how those can be huge tools for you. So go back and listen to those. I’ll link those in the show notes.

Lauren Tingle 0:35
But in this episode, we are going to talk about why you need to plan your year with a 10,000 foot view like zoom out, get that aerial view, and we’re going to talk about your calendar for the year. Why is it necessary? Why do we want to chat about it today? Well, stick around and let’s find out.

Lauren Tingle 1:02
I think I have at least six reasons why I’m going to convince you that you need to plan your year with that 10,000 foot view in mind.

Lauren Tingle 1:40
So first and foremost, I think we all could agree on this. We want to plan our year so that we don’t miss anything important, like an important deadline or just some sort of project or event that we were hoping to do.

Lauren Tingle 1:54
So I know that can feel really detail oriented and close up, maybe in the day to day or week to week. But if it’s something big or something that only happens at a certain time of the year, like, say, third quarter, this is something that you want to do. At the beginning of the year, in August or September, October, we don’t want to forget that that is something that we put in the back of our mind that we want to do during third quarter.

Lauren Tingle 2:18
Maybe that is a career fair that you want to do for the first time, or some sort of scholarship opportunity that only rolls around once a year. I don’t know what that is for you, but if there is something important that comes up, you want to get it on that annual calendar.

Lauren Tingle 2:35
If it’s something that is reoccurring, that is going to happen every single year, or you know that it already does happen every year, that’s something we’re gonna put on our calendar too. There are too many things that you have to remember as a high school counselor, so let’s not count on our memory to do all that work for us. Let’s put it on that annual calendar so it rolls around year after year. If it’s something we can take off, then we can do that.

Lauren Tingle 2:58
But we don’t want to count on our memory. I know that in the beginning of my time as a high school counselor, I think I had a pretty good memory, and as every year went on, I would lose a little bit more and more. I’d be able to store a little less in my brain, especially as I was putting student names and processes and procedures in my mind, let alone all the dates that need to go in a calendar. So let’s not forget anything important, and we’re going to use our annual calendar just to do that, so that we don’t forget anything.

Lauren Tingle 3:30
Next, you’re probably thinking about some goals for the year that you’re setting out to accomplish. Now, whether this is something formal, like you’re sitting down with your team and you are listing out three SMART goals that you want to get done. Or maybe this is kind of like a New Year’s resolution type thing where you are tossing out into the universe some things that you would like to accomplish, and you’re not super specific on it.

Lauren Tingle 3:54
If you are currently a ramp school, or you’re re ramping or that’s something that you are wanting to do in the future, I know that setting those SMART goals is really important for you and for your program, so getting really specific about what you want those goals to be is important. And you know all the things that go into smart you’re gonna make sure they’re measurable and attainable and relevant and timely, and you’re going to write those down and talk about them with your team, and post them places that you know that you’re going to see them again and that you’re going to talk about them again.

Lauren Tingle 4:27
Those goals are only going to happen if you map out the steps it’s going to take to get there. So if you are hoping that your students increase their attendance at school or your promotion rate increases, there are going to be bullet points underneath there that you’re going to have to do in order to accomplish those.

Lauren Tingle 4:47
And when you sit down to do that planning around your goals, you will have that kind of checklist that’s going to push you in that direction to accomplish that. And a lot of those things are going to be actual events that need to take place, or classroom lessons that need to happen, or small groups that need to get started in your school in order to make the student behavior or the student outcomes change.

Lauren Tingle 5:12
So if you’re saying there are specific goals that you’re trying to achieve, and you’ve broken those down into smaller, miniature goals that need to happen in order to see those big shifts happen in your school counseling program, we got to get those on the calendar. Plan them out throughout the year. Look at them by quarter, by month, by week, by day.

Lauren Tingle 5:35
But when we’re looking at that aerial view, it’s really simple in the planning to go, Okay, I want this to happen first quarter. I need to check back in here third quarter. These are the kind of events we’re going to have. There’s a level of accountability that needs to get done and will get done when you are planning, looking at an entire year.

Lauren Tingle 5:56
You’re saying that those goals are important, the ones that you plan for yourself or with your team for your program. Those are important. Obviously you’re writing them down. Otherwise they wouldn’t be something that you’re moving towards or that you’re wanting to move towards. So if you say those are important, we have to take some action on them.

Lauren Tingle 6:13
Let’s zoom out. Let’s note the things that we want to get done, the things that have to get done in order to reach those goals. And we’re going to put them on that annual calendar.

Lauren Tingle 6:23
If you don’t determine where your time is spent, somebody else is going to do that for you. I have quoted this before. I wish I knew the attribution to where it came from, but in my department, we always said if you don’t have a seat at the table, then you are on the menu.

Lauren Tingle 6:41
And I feel the same with our hours and where our time is spent as school counselors. If you are not showing up and saying where your time is going and determining that for yourself, somebody else is determining that for you. You are automatically on the menu because you are not speaking up for yourself and determining where your time is spent.

Lauren Tingle 7:04
Now, you don’t want to look back on your year and say, Where did my time go? You want to take back that calendar for yourself. Even if it doesn’t seem like other people are planning your stuff for you, they are filling your time with things. Part of me is like, yeah, that would be nice if somebody else planned my stuff for me. We wouldn’t have to be talking about planning a calendar if somebody else would just do it all for me.

Lauren Tingle 7:27
But no, you don’t want someone to plan your stuff for you because they fill it in with things that are not relevant to you as a high school counselor. Since you are the nucleus of the school, people have access to you a little bit easier than, say, the teacher who is tied up teaching a class and can’t leave in the middle of class, or who cannot answer their phone in the middle of class. You may get pulled as an interpreter if you are a Spanish speaker, or you may get pulled to an off campus meeting that you weren’t planning on.

Lauren Tingle 7:56
Maybe you’re being called to put together the master schedule, which takes up a lot of time, if you know, you know. You might be pulled to co plan a school wide assembly on a topic that has nothing to do with you, and you cannot even imagine how it could pertain to school counselors. Maybe you get called to do lots of clerical stuff, like handing out textbooks, monitoring the cafeteria, watching the bus line, handing out student IDs, taking ID pictures. I don’t know.

Lauren Tingle 8:25
There are probably so many things that are not in your realm or should not be in your list of responsibilities as a school counselor at your school. But here’s what I’m saying, if you’re not determining what is worth your time, somebody else is going to put you in a spot to say, hey, their time needs to come over here into our department, or we need a body here to fulfill this role in our school. And if you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing, they certainly don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing. So they are going to assign you something to do.

Lauren Tingle 9:01
Now I want you to be able to energize yourself with the things that you do want to get done. I know you got into this role because you want to help students. If you are not putting things on your calendar that are directly correlating to student growth and student achievement, somebody else is probably going to give you things that have nothing to do with that, like I just said.

Lauren Tingle 10:10
So I want you to consider what gives you life and what sucks the life out of you as a school counselor. Now, we know as high school counselors, there is administrative work to be done. There are transcripts we have to look through. There is scheduling that has to get done. There are emails that have to get answered. Yes, I am not sitting here with rose colored glasses thinking that the admin work is done by someone else. I know there’s a lot to be done by the high school counselor.

Lauren Tingle 10:38
But admin work day in and day out. And I’m not talking admin like administrator behavioral stuff. I’m talking like administrative stuff where you’re stuck behind a computer screen, you’re answering phone calls, you’re typing in Excel spreadsheets and submitting district reports or reports to the state. That stuff is all consuming, if you let it be but some of it has to get done. We know that to be true.

Lauren Tingle 11:05
But if you let it take over your life. I mean, I’m just gonna say, from personal experience, that would not make me very happy in my job. I would not be satisfied in what I was doing. And so I want you to enjoy your job. I want you to be satisfied with what you’re doing. So sometimes that means hitting the pause button and saying, what gives me life and what absolutely sucks the life out of me?

Lauren Tingle 11:28
I really want you to evaluate your days and say, What do I want to fill my days with? And that’s why we’re going to be planning for the year with a 10,000 foot view. I want you to plan your year with intention and not on the fly. You will get the stuff done that you want to get done if you plan it ahead of time.

Lauren Tingle 11:47
So here are some things that came to my mind when I thought of this point. If I want to work out, and maybe this just a personal problem, I have to put it on my calendar. I have to decide at least the day before, where am I going to fit that in? Because if it’s something I’m not super excited about, especially I have to put on my calendar if I want to get it done, I have to think of every possible barrier that I might come up against and make it really easy for me to say yes and to get that done.

Lauren Tingle 12:15
I think at the end of every day, there is a healthy bit of planning that can happen when you say, what do I need to get done tomorrow? What’s on my to do list? But you’re going to expend a lot of mental energy every day if you’re making those little micro decisions and putting something on your calendar that has to get done every single day.

Lauren Tingle 12:34
I think you would save a lot of that mental energy. And I’m saying mental energy because I don’t have a lot of it. I don’t think you have a lot of it. We need to save it where we can and use it wisely where we can as well.

Lauren Tingle 12:47
So if we don’t have to think about something every day so deeply, we’re gonna have a lot left over to spend on our students. When we look at the aerial view and hit those high marks of the things we definitely want to get done for the year, and we do it in like a batch planning kind of way, where we only expend the energy one time or twice a year or even quarterly, when we take those zoomed out views that helps us save that mental energy for things that are more valuable.

Lauren Tingle 13:18
Imagine, when you’re looking at your calendar, you know you can do the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. How often are we clicking on that yearly view and seeing what does our whole school year look like? We might be able to balance things out a little bit better when we can see, oh, wow, the fall is so crazy. I scheduled all of our parent nights for October, but I don’t have anything the rest of the year.

Lauren Tingle 13:42
This might give you that visual that you need to spread some of that stuff out, to hit different grade levels, to hit up the parent meetings at different times of the year. Without even realizing it, you might be packing in different programming and stressing yourself out before you even get there. When you’re the one who has control over your calendar, you get to spread all of that out, and you get to preemptively make yourself not stressed out for the year.

Lauren Tingle 14:11
Now, if we’re not doing that with intention, it could just all happen to fall at the same time of the year, and I just don’t want that for you. So I want to invite you to troubleshoot this whole planning thing together. Like let’s hear what your challenges are. Let’s work through those together. Let’s work through them as a team.

Lauren Tingle 14:30
If you’re a solo school counselor, this could be really intimidating, or if you work with a team of counselors who just aren’t as excited about this as maybe you are after listening to last week’s episode and this week’s episode about planning for your year, then I want to invite you to the workshop that I’m doing.

Lauren Tingle 14:48
It’s a live planning party. I’m calling it the Power Hour Planning Party, because we are going to plan for your year in just one hour. We’re going to be doing this all together.We’ll take your roadblocks and we will talk through them. It’ll be live, but it’ll also be recorded, in case you have to miss it. But the value is in you showing up and getting all that planning done in just one hour.

Lauren Tingle 15:13
You probably have heard me talking about it, or you’ve heard it on this podcast already, but there are some really valuable things that you’re going to get as soon as you sign up. You’re going to get a sample editable needs assessment, where you can go gather some data from your program and from your students ahead of time, if you want to use that for your planning.

Lauren Tingle 15:32
And then you’re also going to get a curriculum map. You’re going to get a framework for how you’re going to build out your year. Now, you’ll get a blank one, and you’ll get a filled in one, and you can use whichever one you want. You can take your goals and your student needs, and you will create your own annual curriculum map so that your whole year is planned out in one hour. Can you imagine the freedom?

Lauren Tingle 15:55
I hope I get to see you at the Power Hour Planning Party where we are going to be planning out your year in just one hour. Go to counselorclique.com/planningparty. With your $37 ticket, my hope is that you’ll join us live and you will get to connect with other high school counselors while batch planning out your entire school year with your high school counseling curriculum. Sign up now for the event happening on September 8 at 8pm Eastern, Standard Time. I’ll see you then.