August is here, and the school season is upon us. Join us as we share valuable insights to help you navigate this school year with confidence and purpose. From education goals to relationships, we've got you covered.

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Transcript:

Setting your school year up for success

[00:00:00] Hello guys. Believe it or not, it's already August and people are going back to school. I couldn't believe it. My sister posted a picture of her kids' backpacks already packed and ready to go. And so I guess the school year for, um, the local schools has already. Up and running. And today we're going to talk about the top three things you need to do to set your school year up for success. So I'm actually going to start by talking about gardening for a moment and bear with me, but I think this is a really useful illustration of what to do and what not to do when we're planning our school year.

So. What do most people do when they want to start a garden? Well, the first thing they do is they usually look around their yard and they figure out. Where am I going to put the garden? You know, what is it going to look like? They start researching how to build garden beds or where to buy the seeds. Maybe they build a fence.

And they look up the details like, okay, how often do I need to water my plants? How often do [00:01:00] I need to fertilize them? Then they go out. They buy their supplies. They plant their seeds. And do you know what usually happens? Usually they end up with a ton of zucchini. This is like a really common first year Gardner problem is to have like 10 zucchini a week. And then they realized that only one person in the family actually likes zucchini. That's why there's so many recipes for things like zucchini breads, because we all have too much zucchini.

And we don't know where to put it. So we're like, oh, well, can I stuff it into, I'm just going to try and come up with things. We're gonna add it to soup. We're going to add it to muffins. Whatever we can think of. And this is so common. It's actually a joke that July is leave a zucchini on your neighbor's porch month.

So what happened? Well, The problem here is that most people start by looking at the actions they need to take, rather than planning out what they want the harvest to look like. So the way to start a garden, if you want to have a really, [00:02:00] you know, helpful gardens, something that makes an impact in your life.

Is to say. What do we actually want to eat this year? What do people like? How much of each thing do we need? Do we need, are we going to make sauce with tomatoes? Do we need to grow enough plants for that? Or are we just growing tomatoes? Because we want to have fresh tomatoes on our salads this summer.

And so looking at the long-term plan for the results that you want. And working backwards from there into the details of what you want to grow and how much of it. Then you can start researching, you know, all the details of where is the garden going to be, because then, you know, okay, I need to plant it where there's this much sun in the day because I'm growing tomatoes and they need, eight hours a day of.

Direct sunlight. So often when we're diving into a new school year, we're looking at the same kind of things. And we often make these same mistakes. We're deciding on all the commitments we want to take on and all the tasks we have to do. But if we want to have a [00:03:00] really impactful year, First we need a vision.

And efficient tells us where we are going and why it defines what success looks like. So why is this so important? Let's talk about what most people do. We start by planning the activities or the curriculum. And then we start thinking in terms of that, we start measuring our success against whether we got all the boxes checked each day for that curriculum.

Did we get through the to-do list or if you have kids in school, maybe it's, um, you know, did, did we get through all of their extracurriculars? We're just checking the box. Did they do their homework? Do they have their projects? Are we on track with the schedule? But then suppose something isn't working.

Maybe a life event happens. We have to move or a baby's born. The schedule just starts to fall behind. Suddenly we feel like we're failing and we start pushing harder to catch up and it becomes stressful for us in our kids. Or maybe it's just [00:04:00] not a good fit. You know, even if you have your kid in school, maybe the school environment, isn't a good fit for them and they're not learning and they're coming home like really.

, disheartened and hating school. And when we look at that, we can say, Okay. Is this actually working toward our vision? What is our vision with education? How do we want our children to be equipped for their mission in life? What is their relationship with learning need to look like?

 What about other parts of education that are. Bigger picture things like what virtues do we want them to cultivate? And is this plan that we've put in place, actually working to point toward that vision.

So there are hundreds of ways to get from New York to California. You know, we don't measure our progress based on the particular route we're taking when we're on a road trip. We measure it based on whether we're getting closer to our destination, this is why we don't really get, [00:05:00] I mean, yes, it's annoying when traffic comes up, but we know that we can still choose a different way to get there and get around the traffic or the accident, or if there's bad weather and setting a destination, instead of focusing on the route.

It gives us flexibility to mix up our plan if we need to. And it's the same with school. We want a longterm vision that tells us what our goal is, so that we can see if we're actually on the right track to meet it. We want to also a short term vision for the year. And this really helped tells us when we work backwards from that long-term vision.

What needs to happen each year to get there?

So for example, if the goal is to teach your child to read this year, That could mean using the book. How to teach your child in 100 easy lessons. This one's a really commonly used one and that's what we started out trying. And it was a disaster. It was boring. And my opinion and slow. And my kids don't really thrive on being taught that way.

I'm not saying it wouldn't work for everyone. And I know lots of families who've had [00:06:00] success with it. But for my kids. They just thrive on self-educating it's a personality thing or brain thing. We focus better when we're working on our own or there's just a lot of, um, agency. So I saw this wasn't working and we switched to a different program that, um, worked with visual cards.

To mix and match sounds and isolate sounds. And that just worked so much better. It had puzzles that the kids could do independently and then all they do is at the end of solving these card puzzles. They bring me a booklet and read it out loud. So I could check that they understood the lesson and that they had figured out.

So it was really lovely and self-paced. The point is. If I got caught up measuring success against the curriculum, we probably would still be in that book. And my kids probably wouldn't be reading. But. Because I was just focusing on teaching my kids to read.

I had the flexibility to choose a different method. When the first one [00:07:00] turned out to be a bad fit. So when we start by looking forward, And building our vision. We can think, what does education really mean to my family? How do I want it to serve my children so they can serve the Lord one day. Then I can work backward from that, just like in our garden example, work backward from that long-term vision down to the vision for the year. And from that down to the smaller actions.

What milestones do we need to hit? When do we need to hit that? And then we can also look, do the extracurriculars we've chosen. Do they fit into that goal or not? Is this something that is, you know, developing character in my kids? And if so, is it the best thing for it? Are they being surrounded by good examples.

 Are they learning skills that are useful to them? Is this building their confidence?

So we can measure all of these things against our long-term plan and looking forward and setting our goal is the first thing to do. The second thing we need to do is look backward because the best [00:08:00] predictor of the future is the past. We can say. Let's look at last year. What worked really well.

What was stuck. When we do this, we can problem solve ahead of time. We can double down on the things that work for our family and our kids learning style. When we saw that something was a really good fit and say, how can I replicate that in the new context of the new things we're learning. And when something was a bad fit, we can say, okay, is there a work around for this?

For example, what if we found ourselves wasting money on unhealthy fast food every night when we had an extracurricular. You know, I found this was a struggle. Sometimes when my daughter first started ballet, the temptation was to drive through fast food. Because it was right during dinner time. And what I had to do was look at that and say, okay, I need a different plan because I can't do my usual thing of cooking. Right before dinner time. I need to come up with something else that's going to help us have healthy food [00:09:00] and not waste money on fast food.

So you could say maybe we'll try slow cooker meals this year or packing picnics for those days. Most importantly, We can also remember that when we look back, we can see how much progress we actually made. Even though there were obstacles we can remember. The obstacles. Are not the measure of our success and that there are a normal thing to encounter. We're going to have problems this year.

Oftentimes, when we try to put a schedule on paper, we do it. And we think if I do this, it's just going to be absolutely perfect. And then we come up hard against real life. Right? The kids sleep schedule changes. Or someone is, not working well with their curriculum and we have to mix things up.

So when we look backward, we can just say, okay. We made it through. And obstacles are normal, and we're going to anticipate that, and we're going to have a plan for how we tackle that for how often we reassess, whether this is working.

All right. So third. We need to [00:10:00] make a plan for the quality of our year. So often we just focus on all our commitments and the things we need to get done. But I St. Therese reminds us. Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, or even at their difficulty. So much as the love with which we do then.

We need to make a plan first for how we plan to show up as our best selves. I just means really caring for ourselves, mind, body, and soul.

Second, we need a plan for how we're going to maintain our relationships with our kids. Often these things get added in only once we hit emergency mode when we're already burnt out and snapping at everybody. Or we're in a health crisis or our kids are at the point where they feel like all we do is make demands of them. And our relationship is in this big rut.

We spend all this time, planning out curriculum and chores and meals. But we don't stop and say. What do I need to do on a regular basis to make sure that I can be a mom that shows the fruits of the spirit to my [00:11:00] children each day. What do my kids need to know? They're loved. To balance out all those demands that school puts on them.

You know, there's this concept of a love bank. I find really helpful. The idea that asking our kids to do things is like making a withdrawal. And we also need to do things to keep the relationship healthy, to make sure we're not overdrafting really to fill up their love bank. That comes with consequences when we overdraft.

There's short-term and long-term consequences in their trust with us and their ability to learn from us. And every kid is different in terms of what fills their love tank. So being attuned to them and simply asking what they would like to do together can make such a difference. When really easy to overlook question two is what does my marriage need to keep our family foundation strong?

Because again, it ends up on the back burner. So often in the face of all the other things that need doing. But it really affects the health of our family, the environment of our home. And [00:12:00] it's the small, daily and weekly things that add up much more than those big things. You know, you don't want to let it go so long that you end up in crisis mode with that just a little bit of preventative maintenance can affect the whole school year.

And your lives. I really can. So. All right guys. If balancing all of this is something you would like help with. The true presence course is open for August and we can get your school year off to a great start. When you join this course, you'll get the tools to redesign your life and your daily routines and heal your relationship with time management.

We're designing our days on purpose, everything from the big picture of setting goals down to the nitty-gritty. Of our daily routines and meal planning systems, all those things. And here is what happens when you heal your relationship with your schedule. You get to be. Deeply and truly present and focused moment by moment because when we built an intentional plan with the [00:13:00] Lord,

We stopped being so distracted all the time by our worrying about the next thing on our to-do list. We stopped scrolling Pinterest and Instagram all the time, trying to figure out new things or. Uh, just fill our time because we're so overwhelmed. I want you to think about how often you find yourself scrolling.

Or how many days you hit five, o'clock feeling stressed out because you don't have a plan for dinner. These are markers. Of a bad relationship with time management. We can step into being present with our children and our husbands and juggle the mental load so much better when we have a good system.

And as a bonus for back to school, I'm offering some additional coaching support for the first four weeks to help you troubleshoot your routines. So we'll be working on these together. And you're getting a full month of done for you meal plans So if you want this to be your most peaceful, purposeful year ever head on over to true presence.life/course, [00:14:00] sign up for the course. And let's get this year off to a great start for you. The links in the show notes.