Secondary Teacher Tips Work Better With a System

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Key Takeaways

• A tip usually answers one problem in one class. A system helps you make fewer decisions across all of them.
• Reusing something doesn’t always mean using the same material. Often it means using the same structure.
• Before you adopt a tip, ask what students are actually doing and whether that could work with different content.
• Your planning period needs a system too, because good routines don’t decide what deserves your attention.
• The 4S Framework (Set in Order, Schedule, Systemize, Sustain) gives you a way to decide what belongs in your day.

The Bell Ringer That Worked in One Class

In my engineering design class, I started using Kickstarter videos as a bell ringer. Someone designs a product, tries to get it funded, and explains what it does and why people might want it.

Those videos gave us plenty to talk about. Students could notice design features, wonder how the product worked, and question whether it solved the problem the creator claimed.

We used a Think-Write-Pair-Share routine with “I Notice, I Wonder.” Students thought about what they saw and wrote down observations and questions. Then they talked with a partner, and we brought some of those ideas into the larger conversation.

I finally had an opening routine, and it worked.

Why I Set Good Advice Aside

Around that time, I heard advice I now give myself: reuse bell ringers across your preps. If you’ve found something good, use it again.

But I ran into a problem. Some students were in more than one of my classes. Someone might have engineering design with me and robotics too, so I couldn’t show them the same video twice. Also, some of the videos that were great for engineering design didn’t connect to what we were doing in robotics.

So I set the advice aside. I had solved the start of one class and was still stuck on the rest.

Looking back, I can see what I missed. I thought reusing the bell ringer meant reusing the video. But the video wasn’t the part that needed to stay the same. The structure was.

I could have used a robotics video in robotics. I could have used a photo of a mechanism or an article about a new technology. Students could still notice and wonder. They could still think, write, pair, and share.

There was nothing wrong with the advice. I just needed a way to figure out what was actually reusable.

A Tip Can Help Without Becoming a System

If you’re a CTE or elective teacher, you probably have a solid collection by now. Maybe it’s saved posts from a Facebook group, screenshots on your phone, downloaded resources, or something you heard at a conference and meant to try.

Some of those ideas are really good. I’m not telling you to stop looking for them. I still learn from other teachers all the time.

However, a tip usually arrives as the answer to one specific problem:

• Try this bell ringer.
• Use this activity when students finish early.
• Here’s how I organize absent work.
• Here’s a faster way to give feedback.

When you hear a tip, you’re thinking about the class right in front of you. That’s what I did with the Kickstarter videos. But the next time I sat down to plan robotics, I was back at the beginning, asking what I was going to do for the bell ringer.

When you’re a multiple prep teacher, that adds up fast. You can have a lot of good ideas and still make the same kinds of decisions for every single class.

What a system gives you

A system gives you something to return to. It helps you see which parts of a strategy can stay consistent, which parts need to change, and when you really do need a new approach.

So instead of asking, “What new bell ringer should I find for robotics?” I could have asked two other questions:

• What do I already do to get students observing and thinking?
• What would that look like with robotics content?

That’s a different planning decision. Once you learn to ask it, you can ask it in every prep.

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Find the Structure Underneath the Activity

This is why I talk so much about repeatable structures. When we think about reusing something, we often picture the exact same material. Same slide deck, same worksheet, same activity.

Sometimes you can do that. With multiple preps, though, the content isn’t always interchangeable. Your welding students need different content than your manufacturing students. Your intro course and your capstone course aren’t working toward the same thing. And if students sit in more than one of your classes, you have to think about what they’ve already seen.

So reusing the exact same resource isn’t always the answer. But the way students interact with that resource might be.

In my bell ringer, the content was the Kickstarter video. The structure was this: look at something, notice what stands out, ask questions, write down your thinking, and talk it through with someone else.

That structure could work with a completely different input. It could also become familiar to students, so I wouldn’t need to explain a brand-new process every time. I’d still have to choose something relevant for each course, because that part doesn’t disappear. But I’d have fewer decisions to make.

Questions to ask about any new tip

When someone shares an idea, don’t stop at “Could I use this activity?” Ask yourself:

• What’s the structure underneath it?
• What are students actually doing?
• Could they do that with different content?
• Would that structure serve another class I teach?

You may find you already have more in your toolbox than you thought. You just haven’t been looking at those tools as things that can move between preps.

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Your Planning Period Needs a System Too

I don’t want to make it sound like finding three or four repeatable structures solves your whole workload. It doesn’t.

Even with good routines, you still have to decide what deserves your attention during your planning period. You still have grading, emails, and meetings. You have equipment to set up, materials to find, students who need support, and lessons that need to be ready for tomorrow. When you teach three, four, or five preps, those demands come at you from several directions at once.

So the bigger questions become:

• How do you decide what to work on?
• When are you going to work on it?
• Which things can become repeatable?
• How do you keep those systems working when the school year gets hard?

The 4S Framework: A Way to Decide What Belongs in Your Day

That’s where this series is headed. I use a framework called the 4S Framework, adapted from my background in Lean Manufacturing. It has four parts, and each one addresses a different layer of what makes teaching sustainable across a full school year with multiple preps.

• Set in Order: This isn’t about organizing your desk or color-coding your folders. It’s about getting honest about what you want your teaching day to look like and what’s standing between you and that.
• Schedule: This gives the work that matters a real place in the time you actually have. That means the real time, not the ideal time.
• Systemize: This means creating repeatable processes so you stop rebuilding everything from scratch every year.
• Sustain: This means checking what’s working and making small adjustments, so your systems don’t quietly fall apart by November.

We’ll take these one at a time over the next several episodes. I don’t think you need another list of tips to try all at once. I want you to have a way to decide what belongs in your day, and what doesn’t.

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Your Next Step This Week

Think about something you already do that works. Maybe it’s how you start class. Maybe it’s a discussion routine, how students turn in work, or how you give feedback.

Don’t change it. Just look at it and ask: what’s the part that makes this work? Is it the specific resource, or is there a structure underneath it that could work somewhere else?

I wish I’d asked that question about my engineering design bell ringers. I might have realized much sooner that I didn’t need a different opening routine for every class. I needed relevant content inside a structure I already knew how to use.

That’s the shift. Tips solve today’s problem, and a system helps you stop solving it again in every prep.

Start With the Planning Period Reset Toolkit

If you want somewhere to start before the next post, grab the free Planning Period Reset Toolkit. It helps you look at the work competing for your planning period, sort through it, and pick the next thing that needs your attention.

Sometimes you sit down with forty-five minutes and about three hours’ worth of things you could do. Then you lose the first ten minutes just deciding where to start. The toolkit gives you a process for that moment.

It won’t create more minutes in your day. I wish I had that resource. But it can help you make a more intentional choice about the minutes you do have.

Resources to Help You Work Smarter

• How AI Can Revolutionize Your Teaching: A Guide for Overwhelmed Secondary Educators
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