3 Apps I Use to Make Contract Teaching Easier
Man, I love contract teaching. But if you're not careful, you can end up working for free a lot. There are some systems that I've put in place and apps that I have started to really rely on that helped me to, you know, feed my family, if you're interested. I'll spill all the details for you, friend. Come on into that episode.
In this podcast episode:
A Little Update
Contract Teaching
Before anything else, set your boundaries
Toggl
Google
Bookkeeping Apps
Transcript of the Episode:
Hello, hello! For those of you guys who listen religiously every week, I have to say from the bottom of my heart, huge, huge, huge thank you, you are amazing. You're solid community. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you enough.
A Little Update
It's the beginning of September. And I've got to be 100% honest with you before we spill the secrets. The wheels totally fell off the bus. Last week, I thought we had another episode planned and turned out we had already run it while we were having a pre-sale for this symposium. And my head was turned that way helping our community in that manner. So we're back at it. But that leads me to think that given the fact that it's already happened, and I'm taking on a bunch of new students this year, I'm just so excited to get back to teaching. I love teaching so much that I've been carving out… craving out… carving out space for more teaching, because it just brings me so much joy. But that means that these episodes might become every other week, for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, I can get things back on track. And we can keep rolling into the weeklies, but I would not expect it. So from now on, we're gonna do every other week. And we'll do that consistently that I can promise you.
The other thing I can promise you is next week, we have an episode with the one and only Emily Coleman from TSBVI. She is the superintendent of TSBVI. And the really cool thing about it is, well she's so down to earth, oh my goodness. But she's also the first female superintendent of the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. And I find all of that absolutely fascinating. So I invited her on the podcast, and we recorded it this summer. Lovely, lovely, lovely person after this episode, go listen to that one, when it comes out, you will gain so much from what she shares.
Contract Teaching
For today, we're going to be talking about three apps that I use to make contract teaching easier. Look, I'm not gonna lie, my first year contract teaching, it was like I was swimming in the ocean. Like out in the middle of the ocean. Nobody around. My head was underwater most of the time. The teaching itself was pretty good. The rest of it was new, and a huge learning curve. And even though I had had, I didn't even have the foresight to… I just had the curiosity to take a presentation at a conference. I don't know how many years prior that told me a little bit about what I was going to need to know. It was still like as though I had read a book on swimming and then found myself in the middle of the ocean. Two completely separate different situations going on.
So I hope that this podcast episode, whenever it finds you, really helps you to see that wherever you are with contract teaching, a lot of us feel like we are out on a lonely island all by ourselves or swimming in the middle of the ocean without even an island to help us. You know, we are the people that go into these schools where the schools know that legally they need to have us but they don't really know what we do. It could be a really small charter school where the special ed director is the financial operator; is the, you know, assistant principal is the PE teacher, etc. There are a lot of different varying factors.
But one thing remains the same when you're a contract teacher is that usually you are the only one you don't have team members to talk to you don't have anybody else to reach out to there's no colleagues, there's oftentimes no Co Op or a here in Texas, we have a region, there's really nobody that you can lean on in your immediate daily vicinity. There are no team meetings or anything like that. And what's good about contract teaching is you have so much freedom, so much flexibility, and it pays really well per hour.
The thing is, you do much more work than you get paid for. Plus, it does not pay for travel, typically. So with that, if you think about all of the things that you do for your learner's and how much time that takes. Now think about how much money you get paid. So let's put this all into dollar amounts, it could be upwards of hundreds of dollars a month that you're giving away, just because you are not organised. Now, that's what I did. So, again, our measurement of success is make less mistakes than Kass made. That's all we have to do.
And today, I'm gonna teach you, I'm gonna share with you the apps that I use to make contract teaching easier. First and foremost, though, we have to get into my personal boundaries. Because here's what happened. My first year, I had no boundaries. And I also… because I had no boundaries and no container for my work. So work happened sporadically in five minute increments, a quick text here or there with a parent or a colleague. And at the very beginning, when nobody knew who I was, and oftentimes I wasn't given access to the IEP software. So I couldn't even figure out who the TVI for this learner was or the speech pathologist, or it was just, you really are out there. You're just like spending five minutes on this email a few minutes here. And then however long driving, it can all add up.
Before anything else, set your boundaries
So what I had to do first and foremost was set boundaries in place, I had to kind of contain my work in a way. And I contained my work in a few ways. Now that really works for me, one, our time constraints, and two, our physical constraints. This works really well for me. If you're a contract teacher, and you're saying, Kass, I love working from the couch, it is my favourite place to work while I'm watching TV, that is great and dandy. You do you for me. It means that I don't stop working, because a lot of it is from home unless you're teaching or travelling. And so that means that I would often work really late at night, or would work on Saturday, or be just, you know, oh, I just have this idea I'm gonna pop, I'm gonna like look into it.
Whereas if you had a W2, you're getting paid your salary, not just per the direct teaching minutes or indirect teaching minutes. So with that some of my boundaries are that I'll do all of my work as much as possible at a desk and the apps that I'm going to share with you. I like to use them at a desk with my computer sitting on the desk, and not just on my phone if I have to, you know be on the couch or somewhere else or if I'm out and about on my phone is totally fine. I like apps and softwares that I can use on my computer and on my phone for that reason. And also I set boundaries around my time so I have specific work hours that I work and unless it's a launch time for iOS which doesn't even really count with this conversation, or it is an IEP time, then I don't work past 6pm. That's dinner time for me and my family. And an I have specific… like I'm a single mom. So mine is a little bit different. Because I don't have a set thing that I do every single day and to be honest with you our schedule is beautiful and perfect for our family, but trying to explain it to anybody else or keep up with it, when I'm communicating with anybody else is not gonna happen.
So I just say 6pm. If I work after that, that's one thing. But I'm not communicating with other people typically, unless it's like, right before an IEP, or I don't have my kids. And I'm making an exception because I need to talk to a parent, and they don't get out of work until after 6pm. Also, one thing that I have to do every day… Not every day. Every week, is I have to take a day off. If you're not doing that, especially if you're contract, you need to at least take one full day off a week. I hope, hope hope hope hope hope that those ideas help, they will roll into what I'm about to share right now.
So some apps that I love, and we will put links to all of these in the show notes on the website.
Toggl
It's a timekeeping app. You can use any timekeeping app, our employees at Allied, like Toggl, so I started using Toggl. I haven't looked at any other ones. But what I like to do is set up a project per learner and then you can… each project you can have a different client to and then at the end of the week, you can just run a report for how much time you've worked with each learner. Now, the way that that works really, really, really well for me, as I just use it for indirect time, because direct time will go on the data sheet. But indirect time, I don't always have my data sheet open, you can easily use it for both, but you can't keep your data in it, if that makes sense. So for me, it's just really easy. I have it as a bookmark on my computer. And then I literally just click the buttons that tell me which learner it is. And I do not have names on any thing, because I don't know if it's secure, I only have initials on anything. And so I click the project, which has the learners initials, or you know, in my system for them, and then I click the button play, and then I can have a conversation with somebody and you know, it might just be like five minutes that I wouldn't necessarily put on a data sheet. Or it could be like 10 minutes.
Again, I wouldn't necessarily put that on the datasheet. Or I'm just like researching. And again, that's not something that I personally would think to put on a data sheet. Now, that's just one new app that I've really been using. And it helps a lot.
2. Google
The other thing that I use, you guys know, I love me some Google. Big Heart to Google. Especially if your contract, I would suggest getting Google Suite it's free. It's HIPAA and FERPA compliant, do your own research. I'm not your lawyer, yada, yada. But this is what I do. I have a Google Voice number that I give out to everybody. And it's on my like, teacher website thing that I have. If you're in clarity, you have the same. You have the same framework for that. I use Google Voice and Google Translate.
So what I will do is if I have to text with a parent, I will pull up Google Voice Google Translate, if they don't speak English, and Toggl, I'll click the buttons for Toggl. And then I can text with the parent. And then I can turn it on and off. And then it calculates like by the minute, it calculates by the second and it works really, really well. What I used to do is just like text the parent and then I would forget to write it down. And then at the end of the month, I was trying to figure it out. And our job is so subjective. Anyway, if we can make one thing more objective than subjective, we are good.
Along with that, I'm gonna add in a little bonus here, all things Google Forms. I like to use Google Forms for my data. You can also use it for your mileage. Basically, you just set up a Google form, and then it will spit out a spreadsheet. If you're in clarity, our lesson plan membership. This month, we are going to be doing a co-working experience where you and I will sit down and we'll set up all of our Google forms together and set us up for success for the school year. We can also do it with our mileage and everything else too.
My Google Forms, I like to have it per learner. I've tried it with multiple learners on the same one and it's really hard for me to invoice so I just… I just don't. I do it per learner. And then I like to have their goal right there, the day, the time that I saw them, the minutes that I saw them, and also the time, and then I split it up by sections, and I do direct, indirect or absent. And then I put all my data in that one area and you know, in Google Forms, you can easily set it up that, you know, this answer leads to this section, this answer leads to this section, this answer leads to this action.
So if I click indirect, it'll take me to the indirect options. And then I can just click meeting, parent contact, travel, if that learner gets travel endorsement, or something else. Direct, goes directly to their goal. And then I can input the criteria, the skill we worked on, it's literally right there. So that way later, if you listen to optimise your IEPs, I can literally copy and paste into my PFP. And my progress reports when needed.
Because if your contract staff do not think that you're getting the normal five days, remember, they don't, I mean, out of sight out of mind, you guys, if you are there for half an hour a week, they do not typically remember that you exist. So if they set a meeting, you might have a total of 24 hours to get all of your documents in. That has happened to me so many times, even if they know me, even if they have been around me for years, they just forget about you. And it's nothing wrong, nothing bad. It just happens. So you definitely want to have all of your data up to date.
And then of course, absent, I mark when the learner is absent, so that way, I do not have to guess, are they there that day or were they not there that day. And all of this coincides also with my Google Calendar, I just use it all as a Google Suite. It's good. It's good stuff. That's your bonus.
3. Bookkeeping Apps
Okay, the third one that I want to share real quick. I'm gonna share the why behind it first. And I understand a lot of times what happens with O and M specialists, because we're teachers, and teachers typically save every single penny, especially in this economy. Like, I get it, we're crazy inflation plus recession, lots going on. But you are a business. And when we scrimp and save every single penny. When we're a business, what ends up happening is we end up working harder, and it ends up not being as effective. But if we can invest in the right tools, then we can go further and faster.
Think about an Olympic runner. An Olympic runner is not running the Olympics, with Payless shoes. They are running the Olympics with high quality shoes, like Nike or whatever. They're not running the Olympics, after having gone to the Dollar General for their shoes. So why are we also, as professionals who also want to be on the top of our game, allowing ourselves to nickel and dime ourselves and then ending up spending much more time doing things that a software that costs $15 month will happily do for you. And if that's the case, if for real for real for real you cannot afford it, then what you need to do is bump up your prices a little bit. If you have 15 learners on your caseload, that's literally $1 per learner per month, it's 25 cents per hour. But I have seen a lot of people not use a bookkeeping software, because I want to save the money. I get that. I get that. But a) it's a tax deduction; b) you're shooting yourself in the foot.
So here are a couple that I like to use. And that I've played around with, I'll just tell you, all of them. QuickBooks, number one, first and foremost, it is the most comprehensive, you can get the business one if you are a contract and you're going to be having other people under you because then you can add payroll. You can use self employed if you’re contract and it's just you.
I also really like YNAB you need a budget because I can track how much money I spend on like contract teaching. And you know when your learner needs a bus pass, or when you're taking them out to go buy ice cream or something like that those are all deductible. Those are all expenses from your business. So if you've set up your business account, you can have that there. Also, YNAB it's just it's a zero based budgeting software. And it will help you to figure out where your money needs to go for the next month. So you can say, Oh, how much money can I spend on this learner? Now YNAB isn't the most comprehensive, and it does take a little bit of finagling, for me, at least to figure out how to use it. I learned about it in an investment course, that I'm in. And I really like it for both business and personal. But it doesn't do everything that QuickBooks does.
Now, the next one that you might want to look into is wave, W A V E, and you can look it up, Wave Apps. This one is also really promising. I'm having our bookkeeper look into it right now, to see if we want to use this moving forward. That one is free but there are some things that you pay for like payroll. I like the free aspect of it, but it doesn't do as much as QuickBooks.
So there you go. That's what I really like to use. I like to sit down at a desk as much as possible, turn on Toggl when I'm communicating with other people on my team, sending emails and all that jazz. Google Suite is HIPAA and FERPA compliant. Definitely grab yourself a $50 a year email address that is 100% worth it. And then also invest in a bookkeeping software. You can invoice from this bookkeeping software and keep track of your invoices much easier than, you know doing it yourself, especially if you're someone like me, who has a hard time invoicing. I don't know what it is. But that has been my downfall has been invoicing and it really helps to have a software that allows you to invoice from it and keep track of those invoices and keep track of your expenses as well.
I hope that you really liked this and then I hope that it also helps you to take a step forward in whatever direction you are moving in. I would love for you to leave a review on Apple podcasts for us. We are really small community and I love how tight knit we are. But if we can help other teachers get better at what they're doing and improve their mindset, inspiration. I'm 100% here for it.
Also, you are more than welcome to shoot me a DM on Instagram at Allied independence. I'm also on Facebook and LinkedIn you're more than welcome to hit me up at any one of those places as well. But I'm typically on Instagram on the daily sharing behind the scenes of my life or different thoughts that are going on. There's a lot of mindset stuff there as well because as you know, that's what really keeps us afloat. All right, friends. Hope you can use this to take a step forward and I'll see you in two weeks with the one and only Emily Coleman.