Once a month, my teaching partner and I sit down and formally plan out the upcoming month. We sit down together every day to talk over the day and eat second breakfast but this is our most formal of meetings.
As we sat to plan May, we realized how close the end of the year really is, so we decided to plan June as well, since it had only two weeks of school. There was so much we still wanted to do – and we couldn’t make it fit. Outdoor School (ODS) had been moved to June 4-7, taking out almost a week. We’d scheduled speeches for the week before ODS. We could wedge things in, but they’d start before and end, rather awkwardly, after ODS. we felt frustrated.
“What if we scrap it all?” I asked. “We could move the speeches to the last week of school and then plan backwards.” This was a radical concept for us. We always started on the first of a month and planned forward, knowing what we didn’t accomplish could spill into the next month. But there were no next months for us this time around. And so we boldly took the plunge.
And it worked. We are planned through June.
We always know our monthly plans are subject to change, but we have a roadmap in place and can face any detours because that’s how we roll.
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