Summer is coming in hot and if you're teaching O&M outside, you're gonna need these few ideas to help keep you cool and comfortable. So that way you can be a better teacher. It's the 100th episode. So instead of doing the whole rigmarole with the whole podcast, intro and all that jazz. Instead, let's have a party, all by yourself, wherever you are, let's pretend you're on the circle and I had just dropped off a big box of goodies for the summer. Yes friend, we are going there. I don't know, I f you watch the circle, the entire premise is that people are all by themselves in apartments, but they party together online, even though they're by themselves. A) I don't know how they have the gall. I don't know how they have the personality to party like that all by themselves. And B) I still think we should try it.

Transcript of the Episode:

So let's pretend I dropped off a bunch of goodies for the summer for you. And we are about to have a party, but the party is we're going to be working. And we're going to be teaching O&M and we are going to be out on those streets in the hot sun. What kinds of things do you need to be comfortable? What kinds of things do you want to have on hand? And how can you manage that time and everything else that you have going on, so that way you can be an even better teacher! Well, that's exactly what we're gonna get into today and I am 100% here for it. You can tell I’m in such a fun, silly mood, it is our 100th episode. And I want to take one second. And thank you so much for being here with us. I know that podcasts are a great way to learn but it's also, you have to take time to listen to them and to get the information. And we have had such a journey on this podcast, we've had so many incredible guests, we've been working on the audio quality a lot, and also making sure that the topics are exactly what you would want to hear. So hopefully today's is exactly what you want to hear. After today's episode, I will be taking a break so that way we can batch record a bunch of podcast episodes for you and so that way we can come back stronger in the next season. And next season, we'll be starting off and having a lot of really great content for you and hopefully get better and better and be able to just continue to rock it. 

I cannot believe we made it to 100 episodes in just a few years! This community is the absolute best and I'm so excited for what we have right now, as well as looking into the next school year, all of the wonderful things that will be coming down the pipe, especially with Allied. We know that next year, we're going into a huge teacher shortage and I want to be able to support all of our O&M specialists as well as teachers of students with visual impairments. And so in order to do that we are actually expanding “Clarity”. Right now as I'm recording this, we're in the process of hiring on some clarity mentors, who are going to be sharing their lesson plans, and hopefully even teaching different webinars within clarity. So that way, we can give all of these done for you lesson plans to our clarity members who are working on all of the different areas in the ECC and I could not be more excited to support you. 

So that way you can continue to live your best life, a very balanced life still be able to go home from work on time, or pretty close to it. I'm never gonna say that we're not going to work late because sometimes we have to. But as a majority of the time, we need to be able to live a balanced lives and have good personal lives in order to be able to give back. Because we cannot continue to keep filling up our students with empty cups. It doesn't work that way. That's how we burn out. That's how we get on and that's how more people leave the field. We don't want that, we want you here and I want to be able to support you to consistently teach impactful lessons, even on the days that you're stressed out, you don't have time to plan and it starts raining you know, cats and dogs out of the blue or you get like a random cold front and your student isn't prepared for it and you're just like, Man, I need a video I need a lesson I need to be able to print some They out. And I don't have time to lesson plan, I don't have time to research all of this, I don't have time to like, look up the information that I need for this lesson plan to be accurate. And I don't want to waste my learners time, because we only have 1% of their waking lives with them. It needs to be impactful all of the time but we don't always have that time to plan and make it as impactful and amazing as we want it to be. So don't worry, friends, we are working our way to you and I think it is going to be amazing. 

But for now, we are about to step foot into SUMMER and if you are anything like me, and I know you are. You're looking forward to the break, the relaxation, however you like to celebrate, even if that break is only a few days, it's still going to be a break. Even if that break is like a weekend. I hope it is still a good break for you.When I was teaching full time. I worked every summer and I loved it but let's take into consideration that you're bringing a South Floridian into Texas, I was like oh heat, yes, I love heat, bring it 100 days of 100 degrees Fahrenheit or more. Yeah, I'm here for it.

I really like when the weather is hot, I can hang. But I also know that I have to be prepared at all times. During the summer, what my job primarily looked like was that I was the O&M specialist, the one O&M specialist for the entire camp that I worked. And as the O&M specialist, what I did was I planned and prepared a lot of the travel that was happening via walking or city bus or any other public transportation, I planned all of it for all of the teachers. And then I would go support as many as I could. 

There was one of me, many of them. So we had to be very picky and choosey about where I went and who I was with but typically I was with the classes that were taking the most difficult routes or had learners that needed a lot of support in that manner and so I was outside a lot. On top of that, I then was also helping with learners who needed to be familiarised with campus or needed help getting around, or they needed to go somewhere and they didn't know how to go there and providing whatever tools they needed. There was a lot of walking around, there was a lot of being outside. My goodness, I just adored working these summer programmes. They were absolutely amazing and during that time, I think one of my favourite things was really trying to figure out how not to be exhausted. Because sometimes, if I didn't take that seriously, I would be so tired by like 930 in the morning and it's kind of like why, why am I so tired? How do I not perform my job as well as I could be and what I noticed was that when I didn't take care of the things that I needed, then that's when I was tired, that's when I was exhausted.

These things don't take much time and they don't always take a lot of money. So grab your glass friend, because the tea is hotter than the weather, honey. And I also want to say a 

#somelikeithot. Again, I've been watching too much of the circle, we're just gonna hashtag all of the things in weird random ways.

Walking on the cement, concrete ground for six plus hours a day can feel really exhausting but with the right equipment, you'll be able to handle these hot days much more comfortably and be a better teacher. Now like I said, it doesn't take a lot of money. It doesn't take a lot of time. But it does take some planning for you to be able to figure out what you like and what works best for you. I'm going to share five different areas of things that I want you to start to think about and look into and then one is my super secret special sauce that I think makes summer so much easier and people really are not talking about this one. But I'm not gonna start there and that'll be the last one. It'll be the bonus, It's my favourite. 

Okay, but the first one is to start to think about, of course, the things that you will already have, you'll need sunglasses, you will need your hats as well, just overall sun protection along your face and your head. And number two, let's go the high quality sunscreen. Now, when I was 20 something and thinking that I was, you know, super broke, and this was before I had kids. So if you have kids and you're on a teacher's salary, you know that that's a different level of broke than, like not having kids on a teacher's salary. But back in the day, when my skin was like, all one, much younger than it actually is. Now, I didn't take into consideration how imperative a good quality sunscreen would be, especially for your face and if you break out a lot, you'll definitely want to get something like Supergoop, or a cure or something that's really high quality, like La Roche Posay. One really cool thing that I just learned is that sunscreens may be able to be deducted from your health savings account. So if you have a health savings account with your employer, you can look into it, but you might be able to send in your receipts and get that money back, which is a huge plus, I wish I had known about it before, I will say that the added expense of a high quality sunscreen that you know is not going to be cancerous and will actually work on your face. Over the years, it really makes a difference. So if you are in your first few years of teaching, please do not be like me, please listen, because you cannot go backwards. It doesn't necessarily work that way and if you can, it's very expensive. In order to get your face to look as good as it did back then things really do change friends.

So please listen up. If you are in your first few years of teaching, or very younger, you definitely need a high quality sunscreen. I would also say number three breathable shoes that have support, we have a lot of fans of “Merrells” we have a lot of fans of “Chocos” we have a lot of fans of, I love the “QN” or  “On” brand shoes. I really like their triathlete kind of shoes, I think it's called the “Cloud” because I don't have to lace them up every time and they're really good for support, I can walk long distances in them. I also like any of the tennis shoes that have Vibram soles, anything that has like really good arch support really good support for your body and your needs. You can go to a shoe store and get that figured out and it typically doesn't cost much more to buy your shoes from that shoe store than like anywhere online or another kind of shoe store. Yes, I have double checked. Because yes, I am that girl and what that will do is it will save your back. Again, what we're doing is we're being very preventative. So that way we don't end up with back problems later. And so that way we can keep doing this job for a really long time and enjoying it. 

If you take a look at what people wear around, you'll notice that the people who've been doing this for a really long time, don't skip as much on their footwear, they understand that they need to have a really good solid footwear and like for me, I needed to look cute, I want to be able to wear a skirt in the summer. Because the breathability I don't want jeans so much and I want it to look good. So maybe something like that or even if you get some converse, and you add some Dr Scholes in there or something, that would be a really cute look but we definitely want it to be breathable and have support. 

And then also number four, I would say look into SPF clothes and an umbrella. This will help keep the sun off of you. It will also allow you to have protection as you go about your life and as we are ageing. All of the things that we're trying to prevent in this moment are long term chronic things that could happen just little by little over time that you don't notice until it's too late but the biggest thing, the biggest thing that I'm going to stress on you right Right now is your comfort in the moment besides the shoes, the sunglasses and hats and stuff like that is electrolytes. You need some electrolytes in your life. If you are not friends with electrolytes, get some, here are a few options that I really like. Pedialyte sells these little packets that you can just bring with you and drop into your water bottle. Of course, a good quality water bottle that you enjoy drinking from and that like fits in whatever you bring with you throughout the day that is going to help but grab yourself some Pedialyte if you can, they're a little bit expensive but I have tried them recently and I really enjoy them. thing that I love the most. It's like my super secret summer weapon is this electrolyte lemonade that I love, love love to mix up and I don't have a very specific recipe. If you DM me on Instagram, I'll send you the amounts that I use. But this recipe has saved me so many times and I'm going to tell you not just the recipe but the shortcuts to making it like bomb.com experience for yourself. This electrolyte lemonade I've also had both times in the labour room, giving birth to my kids and it's quite lovely, I would highly recommend it for that as well. If you don't want the sugars of Gatorade or Powerade, which I don't want to put extra sugar into my body that's not unrefined sugar, as in, I don't like to put refined sugar into my body. I don't think that's a very good way to control your cortisol levels, especially when we're out and about and working. I think we need unrefined sugars. So here's the lemonade recipe because I know you've already gotten a piece of paper or you're like, Oh, I'm gonna timestamp this, I'm going to take a screenshot of it. So I know exactly what times damn to come back to. Okay, what you do is you get lemon concentrate, lemon juice concentrate, and then you're also going to get some coconut water. And you're going to freeze those into ice cubes. Now, if you want you can drop in some maple syrup into it or maybe some honey, I like maple syrup the best. Again, you can add sugar if you want to but I like the just having coconut water and maybe a little maple syrup if I'm feeling it. Then I put those into ice cubes and I freeze that. Now what you have is you have this concentrated Ice Cube lemonade that has electrolytes and then you can bring it with you store it in the freezer, or put it in your water bottle and then fill up your water bottle wherever you go. And then that way you have like a little bit of concentrate in it. So that way you don't have to carry around a huge thing of just like just lemonade. When you want the concentrated version. When you want the lemonade, you can have it and you don't need to go out, buy new water, you don't need to bring two water bottles, you can literally go to any water fountain and you already have the ice cube in there. Now, if you're looking for extra electrolytes also add a little pinch of salt to it as well. Because I know I've said this all in a little bit of a weird way like so we're having a conversation. Let's bring this all back we've got a little bit of lemon juice concentrate and this will all be to taste and then we've got some coconut water, I would get the like the good kind of coconut water. Not anything that has sugar in it not anything that syrup and not anything that has pulp in it. 

So make sure you get the good quality coconut water as well as maybe a little bit of maple syrup or honey or if you want to do coconut sugar you can. I stick to just maple syrup. I know that's a lot of maple syrup to buy for this one little project. Pinky promise maple syrup is bomb.com to if you want to go for that. And then if you want you can add like a little pinch of salt. Having this lemonade will give you more electrolytes than just typical water and it's sweet and it's pretty tasty. I really like it. But moreover, it keeps you hydrated because you're going to be sweating so much in the summer heat and especially as time and our lovely weather gets even better. Okay, I hope that you really liked those. You'll have to hop into my DMs and let me know what you think.

Let's roll over them real quick again. In order to set yourself up for a summer, my friend, we're gonna grab our glasses, sunglasses and our hats, wide brimmed hats, super lovely. We're also going to get a high quality sunscreen like a cure or Supergoop or La Roche Posay say you can find all of those on Instagram or your Sephora I get my a cure from the grocery store. They seem expensive at first but please trust me that it is absolutely needed. And then we're also going to get breathable shoes that have support, maybe Chocos maybe Merrells something with the Vibram on the bottom or maybe even if you really like the look of like flat shoes, then we can go for like converse with some doctor shoals inside as long as it's breathable, kind of support. I really like hiking shoes for working if you're gonna be wearing shorts, because they can get wet. It doesn't matter if you step in a puddle. They breathe, they're really good and supportive. Some people don't like to wear hiking shoes, they want to look a little fancier, that is a okay. And then grab your SPF clothes and your umbrella. So that way you can have even more coverage protect yourself from cancer. But the biggest thing that we're going to do is we are going to freeze some electrolyte lemonade, grab all of the things that you need, put them into ice cubes because this is a concentrated formula. And then you can put some water into it or you can even add some more coconut water however you like it. This is all to taste. It's super delicious. Just make it yummy for yourself and get your body some electrolytes that it needs because it needs more than water when you're sweating so much. 

If you have another idea, I would love to hear it. Shoot me a DM on the Instagrams @ Allied independence. I'm also on LinkedIn as well as Facebook @ Allied independence but I spend most of my free time on the socials on Instagram and I cannot wait to see you. With the next upcoming season we are going to be having so much fun all right friend. I can't wait to see how you take this information and use it all to take a step forward into the summertime.

You know that feeling when you've been rushing around all day. Your kids need food your students need to be scheduled. It's five minutes before your next lesson, and you have no plans. Teaching during a pandemic has had many challenges. Wouldn't you agree? One of which being it takes so much longer to plan for a remote O&M lesson, then he did to plan for a face to face lesson. But that's not a problem anymore because my friend we have got you covered. Your Allied Independence community stepped up. And we've bundled together eight remote O&M lesson plans that can be taught virtually or distance all created by your community and customisable to your individual students unique needs in five minutes or less. You want ‘em? I know you do. All you have to do is go to Allied Independence online.com forward slash remote R E M O T E and grab your copy. Eight free O&M lesson plans so you can start spending your time doing what you do best and that my friend is teaching.