I came upon this club my first year back in the classroom and it was my saving grace. I left teaching to start a family, 12 years later the face of education had changed and I needed help catching up to the times. Angela’s 40htw helped me with time management, class expectations, report cards and so much more! I am so grateful for this group and professional development!

The club supported me in growing into the best teacher version of myself. The advice was targeted, timely, appropriate, and best of all manageable. My colleagues and I saw a change in my practice within the first month of me joining. They noticed I wasn’t taking work home and I had more energy and desire to innovate in my classroom.

The additional resources alone made the membership worthwhile. However, that is not all! I recently moved from twenty years at the PreK level due to district budget cuts and was a push in EL teacher then placed back into the classroom (where I wanted to be) again. Looking at the 40HTW and knowing that after 26 years of teaching, I was still putting in 3 or 4 hours after work and going to college (though online) now that something HAD TO CHANGE. So, there are monthly themes and four weeks of ideas and methods for making working smarter easier. I have tapped into less than half after a year in. I have listened to the podcasts – about half of them now.
For the $140 (?) membership fee with lifetime access, a community support piece on Facebook, and the sharing of files and ideas WAS TOTALLY WORTH EVERY SINGLE PENNY, and I’d do it again! This is my second year in first grade, and through sharing of materials and ideas, my teacher workday, ability to reach my students, my filing system (I’m an everything out gal), group projects, creative groupings of students, etc. have been helped exponentially. I taught 5th grade for a handful of years in the 1990’s pre-internet, so I had much to learn to incorporate this into my lessons. There is so much out there now to choose from then I could imagine. I was in overwhelm for sure. Angela’s program has helped me know to do what I need to do, not what I want or think I need to do. I am in the process of getting organized and cannot go in over the weekends- locked- to work. My teaching and grading are becoming streamlined. I am eating dinner with my husband for the first time in a LONG time and am working on losing this weight from working too much. The point is- without re-reading this- If you want a wee bit of help, can afford to spend money out front to make up time and save money through the year- THIS program is for you! I have NO regrets and am still accessing past materials as I need them or have time. The weekly podcasts were and are wonderful and easy to understand. It’s like Angela is a dear colleague that I work with yet never have time to hang out with since she works on the other wing of the school. Not really, but she could!!!! I never got out of my room to see anyone before this program! I wish you the best of luck! Use what works for you as by no means are you expected to use everything- it is a program that is there to support what you need when you need it. This was a ‘cry for help’ for me and the BEST first reach out for help teaching I’ve made. TOTALLY WORTH IT. It’s the present to myself that will continue to make my life better.

I love the resources this club provides and I especially love how flexible it is. I started in the middle of my first year of teaching and it made a huge difference just applying a few of the strategies. Setting up my classroom this year was also much easier with the suggestions Angela provides. The money and time saved is incalculable.

I’m not a big spender, especially on school-related things if I won’t get reimbursed for them. But this program was absolutely worth every penny. My husband actually had to convince me to pay for it, and it was worth it from the very start, both in the resources included and in the way it allowed me to start thinking differently. Don’t read the reviews and think it’s akin to a miracle weight loss program, because it’s not. But it did work for me, and I think it would work for other people too. I recommend it to all my teacher friends!

Do this! If you have any need to find a better work/life balance, take this course. Angela Watson offers ways to improve time management, organizational systems, and thinking habits. Do a shallow dive to find something immediately useful or do a deeper dive for greater impact. I have previously had my own classroom, more recently taught from a cart, and am currently traveling between schools, working in multiple classrooms. Aspects of this course provide benefit for any of these scenarios. While sections of the course about classroom organization and grading do not apply to my current position, I still have learned ways to reduce the amount of time I spend working. I highly recommend taking this course.

Someone I knew noticed this on their facebook and I decided to give it a try. It started out with giving you hope you could makes some changes to help you manage your teaching life. I was at a point where I was always feeling overwhelmed, things dropping on my plate and feeling guilty if I wasn’t using my free moments for some sort of teaching related task. It began with the most appropriate thing, reflecting on how you keep track of what needs to get done. It went beyond just giving you some general ideas, the program gave you some ways to think about it and also tools to use. Knowing how to prioritise, record, shift, and let go of some tasks is probably the most important step. As you dig into the weekly materials, which are organised into monthly themes, you step by step reconsider ways you manage your job and how you teach. Ultimately you start to manage it better but also become a better teacher too. I love how it all came from a place of encouragement and always in a way that discouraged harsh self-criticism, which a lot of us are already good at. What set this apart from other sorts of professional development was that the practical was emphasised and reality is taken into account, as opposed to an overly philosophical approach that leaves one without some practical tools to use. Practical advice and concrete examples are there each week. You are encouraged to use what you can and revisit other things later. You also get access to her materials and also ones from other teachers, which is a great kind of “virtual collaboration” to have. If you don’t use it all, you can always go back. This also allows you to find what works in your context. Yes, the available resources can be a bit overwhelming, but they are in one spot and you’re not stuck googling everything yourself. If you fall behind, you just pick where it makes sense or go back when you have a bit more time, there is no super strict structure or timeline to follow – and honestly, despite my best intentions, I found myself having to skip something, revisit a topic or committing to look at it again later in the year. Even though I didn’t always get to everything, I implemented many things that helped me in many facets of my practice and also helped me change my philosophies about certain ways I did things. One of the important overarching things I got out of the club was hope, which you need when you begin to feel stressed and overwhelmed. I needed that as much as any of the information and tools in the program. I also stopped being so hard on myself all the time, connecting to the experiences in terms what I saw they got concerned about and problems they also had to resolve. This would perhaps be enhanced by joining the Facebook group of members. I never did, as I haven’t wanted a Facebook account (that said some members make one just for the club). The club really came at the right time for me in my teaching life. I wholly recommend it to anyone. Thanks Angela!!

The club is what you choose to make of it. Sometimes there was a lot of information and life is busy, but you always have access to the materials. Angela does an amazing job give thoughtful ideas and creative solutions to problems I didn’t know I even had! I will definitely be returning to the material again and again.

I joined this club with the intention of streamlining my teaching as well as planning. I feel over this past year I have learned to do this more effectively and without this course I wouldn’t have been able to do it on my own. There are great monthly resources that are available. One thing I will caution, is that when purchasing resources from teachers pay teachers to make sure that a resource that you’re interested in isn’t already included in your 40HTW package. I’m looking forward to going back into the monthly resources and looking for small things to continue tweaking in my teaching practice!

The club works. A lot of resources are available. I learned a lot.