Latest / Faith, Family, and Lesson Plans / The Sunday Reset
Transcript
- Mariel E4: Welcome back to Faith Family and Lesson Plan. This is episode four. I cannot believe we got it this far already. Episode four. A few weeks ago, this was a dream, an idea in my head, and I was praying about it. I was asking the Lord, said Lord, if this is what you want me to do, this is really what you want me to do because you place this in my head and my heart. Lord help me. You show me the way. How do I do this? I had never done this in my life. And then when I started looking, everybody said, Well, everybody can have a podcast. It's so easy. And then I started thinking, well, if it's so easy, why doesn't everyone have a podcast? And let me tell you, it's not that easy, but it is doable, it is very doable. And if I decided to do it for the glory of Jesus, hey, he's he if he's the one to put it in my heart and in my head, he better hold my hands and help me through this because I'm doing this for him because I want to share with you what he has done for me. The past 11 years in the classroom as a high school teacher and the past 14 years in my life as a mama. And that is the whole idea behind this podcast. I want to share with you what the Lord has done for me. And hopefully it would help you because I'll tell you something. I would have loved for someone to tell me everything that I know now 11 years ago. I would have loved that. So today, episode four is about the Sunday reset. How do we get ready for the week that is coming ahead? For the week that is coming that we know we have meetings, we know we have lessons to plan, we know we might have assessment because we have a unit test. we know that we had to do morning duty, cafeteria duty, things that we have to do at school. And of course, on top of all that, we have our house. We have things that we had to do for our kids. We might have doctor's appointments, we might have to do other stuff for our house that we have to do because there is only one of us, and we have to do it. Now to start, Sunday reset for me is Monday reset because I am very, very blessed. I do not work on Mondays. My school is a four-day school. We work from Tuesdays to Fridays. And I'll tell you something that Monday is a gigantic blessing. And I don't think I can ever work in a regular school after this because I want my Mondays off. And on Mondays, what we do is we schedule all our doctor's appointments for Mondays, all our dentist appointments are for Mondays. if my car needs to be serviced, that's for Mondays. That way the work week can just flow. I know you're probably jealous right now if you do work on Monday. I am sorry, but I'll tell you something. To me, it's an amazing blessing. But we're gonna keep the title of episode four a Sunday reset, because I know that is the case of most people. And today we're going to be on Proverbs 16:3, because remember, everything that we do in this podcast is for Jesus and it goes. it has to have that base of the word of God. Otherwise, what's the point? If I want to share with you what the Lord has done for me, I had to use his word to tell you that. Otherwise, it's just me yakking in here. So the Monday reset for me, for you, of course, is gonna be Sunday. So there you are at home sitting, probably watching TV on a Sunday, having some cookies, and then all of a sudden it just hits you. It's five o'clock. my gosh, I gotta go to work tomorrow. Had to go to work tomorrow. I gotta do my lesson plan. I gotta check this. I gotta check that. I gotta meal plan because you know, if we want to eat healthy, we had to do that. If you're just gonna eat out, that's a problem. I gotta check what clothes I'm gonna wear. I gotta go check the clothes that my kids are gonna wear because they also go to school. My house is a mess. I didn't fold the laundry. It's overwhelming. I know. I have been there. I promise I get it. I get it. I know. But for me, As I said before, see, right now it's Sunday. I went to church this morning. Saturday Sunday afternoons or Saturday afternoons are for me to spend some time in the Word of God and record my podcast because I have I have all my notes ready. So I just sit here for 30, 40 minutes, record everything, and then I'll edit it later on. It this that's not we don't do all that today. But for you, it might be I had to reset, I had to plan, I had to check all this. Now I reset. It's meant for us to make our week easier. It is not another chore. It's not it's not another to-do list. It's not something else that you have to do and then you don't get to do it and you feel again like, my gosh, I felt like that too. That is not the idea. The idea of the reset is that it can help us. And then in the morning, what's gonna make our mornings easier? I don't know about you, but I work, I live in one state and I work in a different state, and we have an hour difference. So I had to get up at 4 a.m. I get up at 4 a.m. I spend some time in the work, then I get ready and then I go. So for me, planning and having everything ready the nine before is not an option. I don't want to get up at four in the morning and be running because I can find stuff and go here and get there. No, I have pretty much everything set up. I got my outfit. now that my son is older, I let him pick his outfit. But mm for six years or seven years that he has been going to school, I'll always pick his outfit and leave it in his bedroom the night before. Right now he's picking them but we still check him, you know, sometimes it's like no that top does not go with that shorts. But I let him pick for now. So I pick my outfit. I have my lunch ready and packed and I put everything in my lunch bag and I stick it in the refrigerator. I got no problem. So you know what that means in the morning to just grab it and go. That's it. And if everything doesn't fit, because I have a giamongous water bottle that I take with me everywhere, just leave it right there in the counter. So it's ready to grab and let's go. Because we do not have time to waste in the morning. Do not let the morning rush steal your joy. Because if you're gonna start mourning on Monday or Tuesday in my case, and this is the first thing that you start for your work week, and you already start stressful, screaming at the kids probably, overwhelmed, it's not a good start. It's just not. Let's be honest. We want to start like, okay, I got this, I can do this, and go to school and try to do my best. Right, that's what we're trying to do here. So we're starting today. in Proverbs 13, 16, 3. And I got my Bible open right here, and it said, Commit your works to the Lord, and your thoughts will be established. And I'm gonna read that again because I want you to keep it in your head. Commit your works to the Lord, and your thoughts will be established. What we do, yes, it pays the bills. yes, he helped us help our husbands. And if you are the the the ones that they keep up with all the bills and stuff, it helps us do that too. But our works are for the Lord. And we're supposed to do it as we were doing it as a service for him every single day. I do believe with all my heart that as a teacher, my mission field is my classroom. I do believe that without my heart. Maybe the Lord didn't ask me to go on a mission trip to Africa, but my mission field is my classroom every single day. And believe me, sometimes it is really hard. It is really, really hard. planner. Before you even open your planner, before you even establish everything, there is a lot of teachers that function without a lesson plan, without a planner. My respects, because I cannot function like this. To me, a lesson plan is not an option. I have to have that structure that tells me what I'm gonna do here, what am I gonna do next. And I'm I might not get to do all of that because I do, I do over plan most of the time. But I love having that structure to knowing exactly what what we are supposed to do and what is coming next. And what is coming next. And I know, hey, we didn't get to do this. This is move to the next day. But I do need my lesson plan. I also do a notebook. I have a notebook on my desk and I write everything in there. For example, when I get into school, the first thing I do is I write a short prayer. It might be a paragraph. And I just write my short prayer and then I do my to-do list. And I start with Spanish one because that is my first class. And I put everything that Spanish one is going to do. Then I put everything that Spanish three is going to do. I had three classes, two are Spanish one, one is Spanish three. But I had to put everything in there. So I don't go back and forth. To my lesson plan that is on my computer. I have everything in there in bullet points, super easy. Let's go. come with like we say in Spanish, vamos. And I got everything there just to look at it. I know exactly what I'm doing. But yes, my lesson plan helps me so much because I have links to videos, I have links to assessments, I have linked to resources in there, and I just cannot do it without lesson plans. we are required to do lesson plans, but even if we weren't, I believe I will keep Doing them because they help me so so much. And listen, planning ahead is not that we don't trust the Lord. I'm gonna do my lesson plans and I'm gonna trust the Lord that I'll be able to accomplish all that. And if I don't, well, you know what? I'm gonna trust Him when the things that were unexpected because you know that the unexpected is coming. You know how things go. You plan your lesson beautifully, and it's so perfect. And you're gonna do this and you're gonna do this and you're gonna do this. And then a student asks. Miss Pog, I need you to the bathroom and don't feel good. All right, you go to the bathroom. And then a few minutes later, somebody else comes and tells you, your student is in the bathroom and is throwing up, it's not feeling good. And then you have to run to the phone and call the nurse, and you cannot find the nurse. So you need to call the front office. And your beautiful lesson, they were flowing so perfectly, it stopped. It stopped. And now the rest of the class is not paying attention. Because you're not teaching. You're trying to get somebody on the phone to come help the student that is in the bathroom. And you know what I'm talking about. If you have been long enough in the classroom, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It happens all the time. Unexpected things will happen. They are not under our control because guess what? We are not God. Now, this here is the really cool thing. None of that gets Jesus by surprise. He already knew. He already knew it was gonna happen. Now, what I'm what I need to do is pray for peace when the unexpected happens. So when it comes my way, I was like, Lord, I know you're gonna handle this for me. So I'm not gonna stress out over this. That will be when we get ready for our class. But what happened to my house? Because I'm also a mom and I'm a wife, and yes, I do have a house that I gotta take care of unless unless I want to live in a dirty place, which no, nobody likes to live in a dirty place. I do not mob my house every day. I don't have time for that. I leave my house at 5 a.m. I come back home 5 a.m. No, I'm not gonna come and mob my house. That's not happening. No, I do not do laundry every single day. Actually, I do laundry once a week. And it's a big pile of laundry, but I do it once a week. And there is nobody in this world that's gonna go convince me to do it more than that. I'm not doing it. Once a week, that's it. Everybody get clean clothes We're good. My child is not gonna run out of socks. Once a week, done. Now, the two things that are non-negotiable for me because they make me feel better is number one, I had to fix my bed before I go to work. I just have to. Because when I come home and I walk into my bedroom, that's the first thing I look, and if it's a mess, it just makes me feel like, ugh, you know, I just gotta fix it. Now, my husband travels a lot, so that's really easy for me to do. Because he's not in the bed when I get up. If he is at home, that's okay. I'm not gonna fix the bed because I'm not gonna kick him out of the bed at 5 a.m. to fix the bed. He might fix it later or not. But you know what? If I get home and my husband is home and the bed is a mess, that only means my husband is home. I'll take that too. I'll take that. Number two, my kitchen. My kitchen. Can we talk about kitchens? I do not like a messy sink. I do not like having stuff everywhere. I don't even want to cook anything. It's my kitchen is a mess. So it's my kitchen, especially my island, and my my sink. It's all clean and clear and my bed is fixed. Girl, I'm done. My house is clean. I got I done it. I don't need nothing else. I'm happy. I don't know how that works for you, but for me, my bed and my kitchen. My bathroom really needs some cleaning right now. But as I told you before, Mondays are my day off. Tomorrow I'm gonna clean out my bathrooms. And that's probably gonna go for a while because I don't clean it all the time either. But I need to do that too. All right. My son does help a lot because he's older. he does pack his bag. He's because he had like a lunch bag. He does he eats lunch at school, but he does pack back with snacks. I don't have to worry about stuff like that because he can do that. If you have kids that are old enough to do that, help them. ask them to help you better. Give them that small responsibility of pack their lunch here and there or their snacks here and there. It helps. I promise it does help, even if it's just a little bit, it does help a lot. as I said before, I have my own lunch ready because I do not buy lunch at school, because if I do that, I just overeat. And I don't eat the best stuff. And the problem is I love the ladies at the cafeteria at my school. And I believe they love me too. So they put extra food in there and it end up being this and it's delicious. So I ate the whole thing. And that is not a good idea. It's not a good idea to have a bunch like 20 onion rings. Just no. So I packed my lunch and I tried my best for it to be healthy and to have everything ready. Meal prep. Meal prep has helped me a lot through these years. I'll tell you something, not to overspend. I love online grocery shopping. You get only what you need, boom, it's in your door. For extra five dollars, it's in your door in an hour. And you get exactly what you need, you can plan for the whole week. I have done that before, like cook something really big and I take it for the whole week. But by Thursday, I'm tired of eating the same thing. So I don't do that anymore. So I might have two or three different things and just put it in smaller containers. and have that to the to through the week. Leftovers are the best. I love leftovers. I'm gonna take leftovers all day long. I got no problem. The only thing is when you eat it four days in a row, it gets kind of old. But leftovers are everything for me. on the days that I absolutely cannot plan, absolutely cannot do because maybe you got home and you got you just feel good and you just went to bed at 6 pm because why not? It happens sometimes. Well you know what I'll get a salad at school the next day. We have a wonderful salad bar at our school. Thank you, Jesus, for that. And I just eat a salad. But that is an exception. That is not an everyday thing because you know it adds up to and you end up spending money. One really cool thing about my son is sometimes on the way home, because we pass a bunch of fast food restaurants, you know, and I'll tell them, why don't we stop and buy blah blah blah? let's let's get something for dinner. And my son is 13, but he'll tell me, Mom, we have food at home. And I was like, my gosh, it's like he's not like my son. It's like my dad. That reminds me that no, I don't need to spend money because we already buy groceries and it's in the fridge. So we just come home and throw something in the air fryer and we can make a very quick dinner. Now on Wednesdays is the story is a little bit different because we get home four thirty. Almost five, rest for a little bit, and then we gotta go back to church by 6 30. But I love that. I really, really like that. We started a new lesson, a new class for ladies in there. I'll tell you about it in a different episode. get your outfits ready. Get your outfits ready. if you are black pants person, those are gonna save your life every day. Get two or three pairs of black pants. You can put you can wear them every day. You just change your top, you're good, girl. You're good to go. Most of the day that's what I do. I do have a bunch of shoes, but I probably had two or three that I use the most for work. The comfyest, the better. I remember 11 years ago when I started working as a teacher. I had I wanted the cutest shoes. I wanted the shoes that were like, those are so cute. No, they hurt your feet. All I care for now is that they are comfy. Is there not cute? well. It's not a fashion show. I'm gonna be on my feet all day. I need to be comfy. But the goal of planning or routine is for us to have breathing room. It's not for us to have one more thing to worry about and one more thing that we have to do. The whole idea of doing this Sunday evening or Monday evening or whatever you're doing it is that your morning is gonna be a little bit easier on you. And you don't have to be running so early and you don't need to be overwhelmed so early and you don't have to be going crazy in the morning because you forgot this and you forgot that and then where is this and where is that? When you have everything in place, you get up, you get ready, you go, grab your coffee, and you go. So that's the idea. for me, forgetting my water bottle is a big thing because I drink this three or four. times a day, I refill it three or four times a day. So if I don't have one because it had happened before we forgot to pack it. We didn't take it. And I had to buy water. I had to buy water because I'm constantly speaking in class and I need some water. the teacher reset. Let's go back to our classrooms. I've been teaching for 11 years. I do not need to reinvent the wheel. I have a bunch of lesson plans from years past. So I go, I check what I did last year. I might not like this. I tweak this around. I add this. I go back a few years behind. get that worksheet that were very well. And I add that in there and I have everything ready. Now, if you are a brand new teacher, the story is different because I've been there 11 years ago and you had to try to reinvent everything. but with the help of AI now. You got so many tools right there in front of you. We didn't have that 11 years ago. Now it's pretty much like, hey, create a story for blah blah blah blah blah and create 20 questions out of this story and the lesson is ready. The lesson is ready, like that, it's so easy now. Do not overstress about your lesson. If you know your standards, if you know exactly what you are supposed to be teaching, girl, if you have been teaching for a few years, you already have all that. You already have all that. Just gotta go and look and find it. This is a very important question. What do my students need to learn this week? And this is where your success criteria, and I know I sound like an administrator right now, but this is where your success criteria is so important. This is something that is non-negotiable that I have to accomplish this week. What are we learning this week? My kids this week are going to be able to do ABC. Once you have that framework, your your activities can be whatever. And you just figure it out from there what do we need to accomplish to get to this point Okay, our we do did we did we get our success criteria? Boom, done. The how it really doesn't matter. As long as you're covering your standards and doing all that. Make sure you make your copies, make sure you get your materials that you need ahead of time. So you are not running crazy. I remember when I first started working as a high school teacher, I went from teaching college. So so, so, so different. And I will have this worksheet. Just one worksheet for my kids. And in my head, they were gonna sit there and work on it for 30 minutes. Big. Mistake. Big mistake. Because yes, you will have that one students that will work on it for 30 minutes. Then you're gonna have two or three that finish in two because they are way ahead of everybody else and they are gifted and they don't care. Then you're gonna have some that are not even gonna look at the worksheet. Then you're gonna have some they're gonna start and then you're just gonna start drawing in there and not even finish. So no, I cannot Expect a a worksheet to be there for 30 minutes. That big mistake. But I was a new teacher. I know better now, I believe. I believe that I know better. So plan activities according to your kids, to the number of students you have. I love working in stations. Stations are very easy to set up, it keeps them busy, and you just rotate. Rotate 10 minutes to a station, go, 10 minutes the next station, go. I love working with a station. But station stations again is something that requires planning. Planning is not an option. We have to plan. We have to plan. We cannot just sit there and expect that everything is gonna go amazing if we don't plan. And planning is not that we don't trust the Lord. I'm gonna create my plans and I'm gonna trust the Lord that everything is gonna go according to planning. If it and if it doesn't happen the way I plan it, well, well, it's just what it is, right? Protect your evening peace. Protect your evening peace after you get off work. Please, please don't go home and be overwhelmed about what we're gonna do tomorrow and what gonna happen to this. And I didn't do this test, and I didn't grade this. And I did your evenings are for you to be present with your family, especially if you have kids. And I'm learning more and more to do that now. That I have a teenager that needs me even more. than when he was little. Because when he was little, when we are five or six, I think you're like your belly is full, you're watching Mickey Mouse and you're happy. When you're thirteen, like they want to have, you might want to talk. You might want to tell me things and some days don't wanna talk. Some days won't even look at me. But you had to be present right there for them. Do not sacrifice your family time. And this is something that really gets my attention about America because I am not I wasn't born in this country. You probably noticed my accent. In this country, and this is no criticism, I'm I am it's an observation. Some of the families that I know get out of school just to go to practice, and then from that practice to another practice, and from that practice to another practice, and then we're gonna grab something to eat on the way home and go home, and that is every single day through the week. What time do we have family time? What time do we have time to sit down and eat something at the table all together? There was no no family time because we jumped from ball field to ball field to rehearsal to this and that. To me, looking from the outside, it seems overwhelming. I don't know how y'all do it. My respects. But to me, it seems so, so, so much. And we worry so much about what we're gonna do next, and what we're gonna do next, and what we're gonna do next. And I want to remind you that Matthew 6 and 34 teaches us that we're not supposed to worry about tomorrow. We're not supposed to worry about tomorrow. So when you leave school, please remember your mom and go home and rest and spend some time with those kiddos. A good evening reset for me will be I get home, we eat something with my family, with my son, with my husband if he's in town this week. and then I will just relax and read a book. Right now we started reading a book and my Bible, my Bible class on Wednesdays at church, and it's called Kinda Judgy. And I am discovering that I'm very judgy. Very with a scripture, of course. but I just love Reading and listening. I love getting a book and reading and but also listening to the words. I I don't know if anybody else likes to do that. I love doing that. I had the audiobook and the physical book, and I just love reading and listening. So for this week, I'm gonna ask you to do the reset rule of three. Reset rule of three. That's all it I'm a teacher, so I'm gonna give you homework. The reset rule three is very simple, and this is what I wanted to ask you to do. You can do this every day, you can ask it once for the whole week. Number one. You need to do one thing for your faith. One thing for the faith, which is one thing for the Lord. It means spend a few minutes in prayers or spend as spend a set amount of time on a scripture. You have to. This is not negotiable. This is how I start my day, and I promise you it will help you so much through your day. So one thing for your faith, spend a few minutes in prayer or a set amount of times on scripture. Number two, one thing for your family. Prepare some kind of activity that you can share with your family. Maybe it's cooking something everybody likes. Maybe it's watching a movie that everybody enjoys. Maybe it's just playing a game. Playing a game. My my my my son loves to play chess and all I can do is watch because I don't know how to play. but maybe he'll tell me about chess. Or just play sorry. I can play sorry. Play something like that. So one thing for your faith, one thing for your family, and one thing for your classroom. One thing that you know that your students must do or must have this week. If you're gonna do a art project, make sure that they're gonna have whatever they're gonna need for the art the for the art project. one thing that we did, we just finished pinatas a few weeks ago and I spent weeks collecting cardboard because we needed the cardboard for the pinatas and then the people in the school knew that I was collecting boxes and they brought me a bunch of boxes. We end up having enough boxes for to complete classes. And we make really cool pinatas. Maybe one day I'll show you the pictures. But that's the idea. The idea is that the reset should serve you The reset on the evening on Sunday or Monday for me is the idea is that it serves us. It's not another thing to put on ourselves. It's something that we do to help us. To start our days in a more peaceful way, in a more structured way. We are humans, we like structure. We really do, even when we say that we don't. So the idea is reset, spend some time with the Lord, and start that week with Him, trusting in Him. And again, going back to Proverbs 16 3 committing your works to the Lord and your thoughts will be established. If I do everything I do for the Lord, He'll take care of me. He will take care of me even when the unexpected happened. So that was the message for today. But before I go today, before I finish this episode, I want to encourage you to please take a moment and like this video. Subscribe if you haven't yet. And share with another teacher or my mom that you know can use your encouragement. I know we can all use an encouragement. I would love to hear from you. If you would like to leave a comment in there and tell me what have the Lord been teaching you lately? I have been learning a lot from the Lord and this is the reason I'm doing this podcast because I want to share that with y'all. I want to share what the Lord has been teaching me. And remember, friend, we're not called to be perfect. We are called to be faithful. We're called to be obedient. And always, always remember that God's grace is more than enough. I cannot wait to hear what you think about this episode. I'll see you again in episode five of Faith, Family and Lesson Plan. I hope you have a blessed and fantastic week. Bye bye.