Flipping the calendar from July to August feels like staring down a freight train while standing on the track. September is coming and it’s not slowing down. That’s about the time I decided to make the commitment (not just the effort) to stop working unpaid overtime. But I am determined to do it successfully, not cynically. I want to prove that I can serve my students well without overworking myself, not just throw up my hands and say, "See! It can’t be done in a 37-hour work week!"
For this, I'll need to be strategic. As it happens, an offer showed up in my inbox almost immediately: Speech Therapy Notebooks Club. For $17 a month, I would have access to a continually updated trove of ready-made materials. Any other year, I would have passed; that’s more money than I really want to pay and besides, I can make my own materials… Oh, wait. Making my own materials takes A LOT OF TIME!! What really clinched it for me was this pitch:
"Imagine what it would be like to just pull out your therapy materials and 'get to work'.
Instead of browsing Pinterest for therapy ideas at night, you choose to spend time searching for great new recipes to cook, trying a new workout routine or getting lost in your favorite hobby.
You are finally taking care of YOU in YOUR time.
The result?
You feel on top of the world and have so much more of yourself to give in work and to your students."
I thought, this lady totally gets what I’m trying to do! She’s built a whole business around it! I felt compelled to give her my support, as a kindred spirit and fellow fighter for free time. And since I'm a zero-overtime novice, I figured spending money to save time might be worth it in the beginning.
I joined up and started perusing the merchandise. I could feel my nose wrinkling. I would have designed that differently... I’ll have to reword that parent letter… Then I stopped myself. Are these materials really in need of modifying? No. They will work just fine as is. I suddenly realized how much time I was about to spend just to make them mine—so they would reflect my personal preferences—when the gap between as-is and perfect-in-my-mind is negligible to anyone but me.
Is my therapy going to stand or fall on the layout of a picture stimulus or the exact wording of a parent letter? Of course not. It’s going to stand or fall on the real-time interactions I have with my students and the relationships I build with them. That’s where I need to focus. That’s where I want to aim for perfection. Everything else can be perfectly adequate.