I left the classroom for a year after moving from overseas. I felt overwhelmed at rejoining US public schools so I decided on my year off I would join this club. I loved the price of the club. I felt it was enough that I would take it seriously, but not so much that it was out of reach like most teacher trainings.
The main downsides to the club:
-If you are a relatively organized Type A person, most of this will be common sense or things you already know.
-It’s a lot of information and things to go through, especially during the school year.
The benefits of the club:
-There are so many resources!
-Even for us organized people, there are lots of ideas to try.
-The online community is positive and uplifting. No one trashing others, just people helping you adapt the curriculum to your context.
-The materials within the club are very organized.
-You have access to the materials forever, no need to save them and then try to go through them again. It’s all still on the site.
-The audio recordings of the PDFs were amazing because I could do household chores at the same time.
I personally suggest that you go through the club materials and implement one or two things and then go through the club the next year and implement more things. It’s way too much to be done in one year unless you are very motivated. I found it great to try to implement certain things around my house this year so that next year I am able to implement when I return to the classroom.

I hemmed and hawed about spending the money to sign up for this club, but am so glad I did. The organizational suggestions alone were worth it. I am a 20-year veteran teacher but found I was working harder not smarter. The tips and tricks I learned here have helped me prioritize, clear my plate, and build the boundaries I needed to re-establish a job and my life. As someone who was uncertain if this would be worth the cost to join…I can assure you, for me, it was worth every penny!

The Club is worth it. The tools you receive access to are well thought out and help you think through things to help make you more efficient in your time, preparation, or how to handle a circumstance well. Some material is clearly geared toward elementary teachers, but there is plenty for secondary folks to use and/or adapt for their classrooms. Overall, there were always nuggets of gold to harvest in the monthly materials that saved time, provided a framework to start from, or got you thinking about in becoming a better teacher. I recommend the Club and found it worth it!

I bought access to a program that touts its ability to help you reduce the number of hours I am pouring into my job…and ironically, it required me to find time to do that (essentially, adding one more thing to my already quite-filled plate). Initially, I carved out time to listen to the lectures and access the resources. That lasted for maybe two months. I made the mistake of joining right at the beginning of the school year…and it didn’t take long for my 4 preps and hundreds of papers to grade to conume all of my time again. I ended up having a family crisis occur in October – and that was an ongoing issue for the remainder of the school year. I had to start cutting corners – and the first thing to get dropped was trying to log in and learn something new each month. I just couldn’t find the time (or justify the investment in time) to dedicate to doing that instead of being able to cross something else off my to-do list. I am hopeful that I will access the resources (I should theoretically have lifetime access?) and dig into them this summer, once I have sufficiently recuperated from the trauma that was this school year. I will say, out of the handful of resources that I did access, I did find useful. In the end, was it worth the money? I’m not sure. Especially as a floating high school science teacher, I wasn’t able to utilize a lot of the organizational strategies “right off the shelf”. I had to be creative and adapt the strategies so that they might work for me. In the end, nothing is a magic bullet…there is no easy answer, and even after 21 years of teaching, I still equate my job to having the same effect as Azkaban’s dementors – it literally sucks my life force right out of me. 🙁

As a teacher living and teaching in Germany I could not implement or use all of the given material due to our completely different syllabus and school system. Still the ideas, information and materials offered were a highly valued input. I also loved the possibilities and the calmness and Optimismus with which they were conveyed. I will most certainly browse the 40htw website again and again…

Awesome information. Nice to have continued access. My brain does not think this way so I think I had to take it a bit slower. By the end of the year I found that I tried one thing but dropped off to try the next thing. Ultimately I learned from others at my school in the club to try what I could and encouraged me that I still have access to the resources so I can basically review sections as needed.

Although I personally did not manage to keep up with reading and digesting the monthly materials, I know the Club can be super helpful for teachers who are struggling with organization and efficiency and other teaching issues. But to benefit, it is very important to schedule the time to go over the monthly materials and apply the things you are learning. In my case, I will have to catch up on over the summer and start applying it next school year.
I think the pitfall is to think there is a lot to learn each month and that might make a teacher give up altogether. I thing Angela’s advice is good -just take one thing and apply it each month.
Reward yourself in some way for having done it each month 🙂

I am a very spontaneous, random, sometimes absent-minded person. However, I enjoy lots of structure and routine in my classrooms. That being said, I sometimes need help knowing which ideas to follow through with (prioritize!) and this club has given me many tools to do so successfully, so I can spend more time doing what I love, teaching and enjoying music with my students. It also helped me look past the job tasks and set them aside for family time after school, without feeling stressed about forgetting something important.

There are so many things I used from this club and I didn’t even get through all the material! I love that you can return to do anything that you didn’t get to and you always have access. One thing that definitely was a game-changer for me was The To Do List. They got me really prioritizing my tasks and actually was the biggest thing that helped me not take work home and helped me put healthy boundaries around my commitments as a teacher. The only reason I gave it four stars is I haven’t had time to go through all of the material yet. But once I do, I’ll be happy to come back and get that fifth star as I’m sure it’s all brilliant!!!

The material and online group have been very helpful to me. Especially helpful has been the idea that good enough is enough. I haven’t yet had time to dive deeply into all the material but what I have done has been useful . I appreciate that the materials are not complicated and the writing is jargon less and to the point. I wish I had found this my first years of teaching. A membership would be a good gift for a new teacher.