15: Scheduling and Planning Tips
We chat about how we schedule and plan for our sessions, at the beginning of the year and in general.
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episode 15: scheduling & planning tips
Transcript
Intro: Welcome to the TOD Podcast, or as we like to say, the “TOD POD.” We chat about all things Deaf Education while you drive around. I’m Kimmy from The Hard of Hearing Teacher and I’m Deanna from Listening Fun, and let’s get started!
[Music]
K: If you have a large caseload, are a new itinerant TOD, or just need a new way to organize your service schedule, then this episode is for you.
D: As part of our back to school mini series, we're going to talk about how we schedule, organize our caseloads, gather baseline data, and plan our sessions. We briefly talked about some scheduling tips in Episode 7: Practical Tips for Itinerant Teaching, so definitely check out the episode also. Today we're going to talk more in depth about how we do this.
K: If you've been listening to the podcast for a little while or have been following me on Instagram, then you know that I personally do all of my scheduling, planning, and organizing, digitally. I love having everything in one neat virtual space that I can access from my phone, iPad, or a computer. And that's why I created an itinerant caseload planner that does all of the things that I felt that I was lacking in a traditional teacher planner. Because being an itinerant teacher is so unique and we have different needs than classroom teachers. So it can be hard to find a planner that is as on the go as we are, and that is meant to keep track of individual students rather than a whole class.
D: Yeah I try out different systems every year, some paper some digital, it really depends on my caseload for that year. I use Google Calendar for my day to day scheduling. But I also have a paper planner for like my monthly overview, places to take data and notes, things like that.
K: I completely agree. While I prefer a digital planner, paper planners do work for some people. In college I was actually a paper only person like I refused to use any form of digital planning system even Google Calendar which I feel like is interesting for me to say because I've obviously changed [laughs]. Anyway, I do understand the appeal of a paper planner. That's why the caseload planner that I'm talking about today can also be used in printed form. It can be printed and put in a binder and it's still set up in a way that is tailored to itinerant teachers. However, I am very much a digital person now. So I will be talking about how I use this planner and system in a digital way.
D: I can't even imagine you with a paper planner like at this point. Um... Anyway, let's talk about how we actually schedule throughout the year. So Kimmy you can start, talk us through what your first week or so back to school would look like in terms of scheduling sessions.
K: So before I even start scheduling my students I take at least a day to get my student info sheets prepared. So basically my student info sheets have everything I need to know about my student on one page. It includes their grade, school, audiological info, IEP goals, other service providers, parent contact info, teacher contact info, and more. But for today's topic the most important pieces on the sheet for each student are their class schedule and their TOD service frequency. Once I have all of these filled out I can start planning and scheduling. And then if anything changes in my schedule throughout the year I know that I took the time in the beginning of the year to write down their schedule. So I can more easily shift things around if needed without panicking and having to contact eight different teachers to see if my new proposed times have any conflicts because I know when my students non-negotiables like lunch and recess and specialists etc. are because I wrote them down on their sheets.
D: Yeah I have a Google Drive folder for each student and a student info page in there with some of this info. I don't pre-fill it I just kind of add info as I get it. Sometimes I know very little about a student until I contact their case manager. So I just add what I have to their folder as I get it and as I've mentioned before, I add anything related to the district in my Google keep sticky note. Like case manager's name like non-negotiables like you mentioned I like to keep those in my Google keep I think that works well for me but I do like having it digitally on my phone for like an on the go situation.
K: Yeah, on the go is is key. Once I have everyone's schedules and I know how often I need to see them I work on creating a proposed schedule that I send out to teachers as quickly as possible so that I can make any changes I need to as soon as I can. Because let's be real, there's always changes that need to be made to the first draft. I had a very large caseload, so I'd be very systematic about how I schedule my students and how I kept track of all of it. So the order in which I scheduled my students was important. To start I tried to schedule all of my multiple times a week kids first then weekly kids, then my biweekly kids etc., going down the list from most frequent to least frequent in terms of service time. I also tried to put kids in the same school either back to back so that I see them all when I visit that school in that week or if that's not possible, like I had a couple of students who were in different grades in the same building. But their availability was almost identical so I couldn't see them back-to- back. I could see them, let's say 9 am on Monday and the other on Tuesday. But since they were both twice per month I put them on alternating weeks. So that my weekly routine was the same. My driving schedule was the same each week. And to me that just felt a little bit more manageable.
K: That brings me to that I plan in terms of four weeks in a month. I use the planning sheet that has 4 pages one for each week of the month and I built my base schedule on these sheets. These are included in my caseload planner along with an example of what my schedule could have looked like once I had all of my students scheduled. With a really large caseload I found it helped keep me organized if I assigned weeks to my services so that's why there's 4 sheets. This was really the key to staying organized and using the most of my time and staying in a routine. For example, if I see Deanna once a month, I might see her on the first Monday of each month at 9 am. So her session is only listed on page 1 of my base schedule on week one. But if I saw Deanna twice a month, I might see her on the first and third Mondays of each month at 9 am, then her sessions would be on pages 1 and 3 of my base schedule because it would be on weeks 1 and 3.
D: That makes sense. That's why I use that piece of paper with the whole month on it so that I can plan first and third week second and fourth week and then if there are five weeks in a month that's like my time to take a deep breath and probably do a makeup that I probably have to do. My schedule when it was mostly school kids was very like dynamic like every week looked a little bit different. So because of that I had to look at the whole month. I would schedule the kids were the same every week usually the younger kids and then I'd schedule the hardest to schedule kids which are usually the older kids with rotating schedules. And then my flexible kids. So there's always a couple of kids who are like really easier to schedule and I plan them last. And then I plan it out on the monthly paper calendar so I can see that I haven't missed anyone and then now that I have more early intervention students my weekly schedule is more similar week to week. And I try to keep in mind geographical areas, sometimes I can, sometimes I can't, kind of hit or miss there.
K: You can only do your best...
Both: [laugh]
K: In addition to my base schedule I also use a shared calendar for meetings. The organization I worked for required that our schedule be updated in an outlook calendar weekly and this was almost like a time sheet for us as the teachers. And at first I saw this as an extra task on my to-do list and it was something that like I dreaded and was doing on Fridays like after the afternoon and it was a dreaded task. But then I figured out how to include it in my planning system so that it actually saved me time and served me instead of costing me extra time. So once I had my base calendar at least mostly set up I would put everything that I could in my Outlook Calendar as individual meetings and you can set these to reoccur to make things go much faster. And part of the reoccurrence is that you can set it for the first Tuesday of the month, so like if I saw Deanna on the first Tuesday of the month at 9 am, I could set it for the first Tuesday of the month at 9 am every month from September to May. And that matches my four week planning system and I could put it in for the whole year and then it was done.
K: And I would invite my students teachers to the calendar meeting and I would schedule that out through winter break at first. And then when winter break came around I would schedule it out for the rest of the year. So if things changed by winter break it was okay I could just schedule out from there. I liked doing it that way and like breaking it up. If there is ever a one time change like I couldn't make a schedule because of an IEP meeting I would be able to change that on the calendar and it automatically alerted the people who needed to know, like the classroom teacher or the case manager or whoever. Also when scheduling for example, a student who has two direct sessions and two push in sessions a month I would schedule those separately and reoccurring the same week each month like I talked about because I need to know if any makeups are needed or schedule changes which helps the teachers too. So let's say the teacher knows a field day is happening I could do a push-in but not a direct session. So it just makes it easier for communication without so many emails and the teachers can easily communicate using the calendar invite to cancel our reschedule too. I have a copy of my overall schedule and then I have my calendar on my day-to-day. So I like using both of those views.
D: Yeah, all of my sessions are recurring events in my Google Calendar. I have never tried that tip where you add the teachers to the Google Calendar events but I might try it this year and see how it goes I feel like that could be helpful instead of emailing. When I get to the school I usually take a picture of the kids in-class schedule at the beginning of the year and I add it to my Google keep. I also touch base with the other service providers to make sure I don't overlap them. I find it helpful to have a monthly calendar printed out so I can pencil kids in and then move them around as I get new information. Scheduling is like such a puzzle a lot of times I identify a weekly time that I'd like to see them but then I also note down all other possible times that way if I have to change it last minute because like a meeting or something I already know the other times I can come. And my email to the teacher can be more of like a heads up as opposed to a question, like I, you don't have to reply I'm just telling you I'm coming this time instead of that time. Because we already established that this is an okay time also. This year a lot of my caseload is early intervention and then some school kids. So I try to keep some time slots that are meant for my twice a month or once a month like open and then I alternate weeks. So it doesn't always work out but I try really hard to schedule them opposite each other instead of putting them in a weekly spot and then having all these gaps because that's like the worst. So when you're scheduling opposite biweekly kids you actually want them to be in the same location because that way you're coming and going from the same spot. So even though it might make sense to see two kids in the same town on the same day. It also makes sense to schedule them opposite each other bi-weekly because then it's like you always go to this town at this time regardless of which kid you're seeing so it keeps your travel at least the same for before and after that time slot. If that makes sense I kind of learn that one the hard way. Um... [laugh]
K: Yeah.
D: ...like I would put like I have two biweekly I mean two bimonthly kids like I'll put them opposite each other first third second fourth weeks of the month but one of them is like all the way up north and one of them is all the way up south. It's not going to work for the kids I see before and after them. So like if the kids are in the same location like yeah if I can see them back to back. They'd be great. But if I can't it works to put them in the same time slot every other week I feel like that is confusing. Oh well.
Both: [laugh]
K: No no, that's little what I said earlier. Yeah yeah, if you can put them back to fact great and if you can't the like second best option is to have them in that alternating slot because then at least in your brain you know where you're going that week.
Both: [laugh]
K: Um before we move into session planning I wanted to quickly say that from our practical tips episode that I color code my whole schedule and I talked about it a little more in depth in that episode but I know Deanna does too so I wanted to give her a chance to talk about that.
D: I try to keep things as simple as possible. Everything is blue, canceled is red, meetings are green, and tentatively scheduled is yellow, and then it's blue once I confirm it. So like if I like have to move a kid because of a meeting I'll move it and I'll make it yellow and that means to me like I would like to go at this time. However I have to confirm that that is okay and then once I make it blue that means I have confirmed it with the other person who needs confirming sometimes no one needs confirming and I just keep it blue. But if I have to double check then I make it yellow until I check because I have made that mistake before where I I change something on a schedule. But I forget to tell the other person that I changed it and then they're like why are you here [laugh].
K: So that's why I like the inviting people because they have to confirm because it'll automatically send them a little email like hey confirm and also I will because I have to I have like a bunch of different districts and schools or whatever when I was you know working, um I would put TENT period before the whole name of whatever the meaning name was and then I would erase it once everyone confirmed like to me that was my tentative like once that was erased that meant OK we're all good.
D: Yeah I do I like at the beginning of the year I put people in tentative also in yellow when I'm scheduling and then that way as I like I make what I would love to be my ideal schedule in yellow and then as people confirm I make them blue so it's what I can see what I can still move and what I've already tried not to move so it's like... and yellow and blue are very different colors so like on a quick look it's easy to see.
K: That makes a lot of sense though, that's very organized I agree I like that very much. Okay, so now we're going to talk about session planning. I also use my caseload planner for this. In the planner each student has session planning sheets that if you're using the digital version are all linked to the student's pages so it's really easy to navigate. I like to use these session these sheets to plan out several sessions in advance for each student. On the student sheets I had the student goals right there for me to see and any other notes on the skills that they need to work on as well as their service frequency. So at a glance I had all the information I needed to plan for several sessions including their goal progress which is linked on the goal tracking page. So for some students planning ahead just looked like typing in review smart goal progress or introduce new preposition. It can be really simple like that. But for some students and I've mentioned before that I use digital data trackers like the auditory memory wh questions Google Doc and I can just link that Google Doc in my session planner. So I really like this because when we talked about like teaching versus testing I said that I plan in advance when I would focus on teaching or testing with my students and I use these sheets to do that. I would build out mini lesson plans for my teaching days for a student and I would build out mini lesson plans for my testing days for the student. This also made my note taking much easier because I could reference my plans to see what activities we did.
D: That makes sense. I have to combine my session planning and my session notes so that I'm not doubling up my work basically.
K: I would have loved to have done that but we had to take our notes in IEPWriter which was awful [laugh].
D: Yikes, no so I like my official documentation is just like in a Google Doc or Google sheet like it's very simple. So I don't double up like I plan and report at the same time like I plan and then I change it based on what happened and then that is my report so not my report but like my um evidence that I went to the session. You know what I mean like my session notes. So basically what I do is I have like a table and I have the date and then I in the the box where it's like what did you do during this session? I plan out the session. I just I do it like in like bullets like I don't do it narratively and that's fine. So I just kind of pre-write what I'm planning on doing and then I can adjust it after the fact, um, if what we did was different and I can add any data I took. But because it's a running document like a single document I don't have to do a lot of clicking around like I just go straight into that one document and plan out the information. I can do it on my phone which is important to me because I want to be able to like add data or change it basically while I'm walking to my car usually when I do it like after the session. And then for some kids I will plan on paper especially if I'm pushing in a lot and I want to take notes on paper and then I have to put it my Google Doc anyway. So I try if I can to plan in my Google Docs and then go back in and adjust later with any data but that like whatever your work requires of you, if possible, you should plan in that. Like you shouldn't try that you shouldn't double your work just because you prefer paper like it's not worth it it's so much faster just to this a plan in the same thing that you're gonna write your session notes in if you can.
K: Yeah, that makes sense unless as IEPWriter because IEPWriter is awful [laughs] in my opinion. Um, but the session like plan page that I was talking about is very much like what you were just saying so if I was able to submit that I absolutely would have because I would have been able to like make those little bullet points and then just like save it as a PDF and submit that it would have been beautiful.
D: Yeah, and yeah, and also if you have a choice Google Docs on your phone is a lot easier than Google Sheets on your phone for writing text. So like if it's up to you and you can do that I think having a running Google Doc for each student is the best way to do it with the least amount of clicks.
K: Good point. The last thing I wanted to touch on quickly is that I also use this digital caseload planner that I've been talking about to track data on my student's goals. So if we're sitting in a session together I can quickly type in their table 9 out of 10 correct trials on their data page and I know which goal I was planning on tracking that data on from my session plans and then I clicked the link to go back to my session plans after I take the data to see what our next activity is. And while we're talking if they ask a question about their hearing equipment or their teacher does when I pull them out I can just click on their student info page and answer the question because all of their info is right there. So it really made my life easy as an it and teacher like all of my scheduling is right there all of their info is right there and I just really like everything in one place and it's all linked together and I can just click between the pages.
D: Yeah, it's so nice to have all of that info at your fingertips. I do feel like having a more digital method is easier to stick with like as much as I enjoy my paper planner every year I feel like it contains less because anything I have to look at while I'm walking down a hallway like cannot be looked at in a planner. So I find that helpful. Um, another thing that I found helpful was getting in the habit of as soon as something is emailed to me like an audiogram or a past progress report I immediately load it into their folder in the Google Drive. Like I can do it from my phone. I can't wait till later I cannot [laugh] like I have to do it in the moment or I will forget and it'll live in my email forever and I won't be able to find it like when I need it. Especially if you're getting an audiogram from a hospital sometimes those emails expire and then you can't get them anymore. That's happened to me more than once that's embarrassing because then I can't find the audiogram that I should have saved to my Google Drive to begin with. So in general if you ever heard of like the two minute rule it's like a rule to help with procrastination. If it can be done in two minutes just do it now. Don't do it later. And like adding the things from the email to the right Google Drive folder like in the moment... Oh my God it's just so much easier I don't know why it took me so long to do that!
Both: [laugh]
D: Just learn from my mistakes!
K: Yes, that makes so much sense. Okay, well thank you for joining us today on the TODPOD. We hope that you found some helpful tidbits from our session planning and scheduling tips today. If you're looking for the caseload planner it'll be linked in the show notes. As always a full transcript and show notes will be found at listentotodpod.com If you'd like to connect with us on Instagram Deanna is @ListeningFun and I'm @TheHardOfHearingTeacher and we hope you have a wonderful week. That's all for today.
Both: Bye!