Episode 155: Are Paper Planners the Secret to Child Care Success? With Vickie Maertz

In this episode of "Child Care Conversations with Kate and Carrie," the hosts sit down with Vickie to chat about all things planners. They swap stories about juggling paper vs. electronic calendars, and Vickie shares why she’s a big fan of good old-fashioned paper planners, especially for emergencies, legal documentation, and keeping track of quirky holidays with kids. 

The conversation is full of practical tips, laughs, and reminders that sometimes, having things written down really does save the day. If you’re looking to get organized in child care, this episode is packed with wisdom and friendly advice! 

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Transcript

Automatically Transcribed With Podsqueeze

Marie 00:00:01  Welcome to Child Care conversations with Kate and Kerry.

Kate 00:00:05  Welcome back to conversations with Kate and Kerry. And we are so excited for tonight's guest. Vicki is going to join us because, well, sometimes you just need to write things down. So, Kerry, you and I have talked a lot about planners. We commiserate over our, our, our love of a written planner, but we also know that we have a lot of directors who kind of look at us funny. And you have you've embraced electronic calendars better than I have, but not necessarily all the way. So share a little bit about why you've done that. And then Vicki's going to tell us why we need to like just stay with our paper.

Carrie 00:00:50  So I have I think it actually makes my life more complicated that I have both an electronic calendar and a paper calendar. but because of doing the coaching. I need to have a way for people to book their coaching sessions online. So that is one of the major reasons why I have, you know, a Google calendar.

Carrie 00:01:14  The other reason is because my husband and my two kids are addicted to their Google calendars. And so if I want to know if my husband is in town or if he is in a play or something like that, on any given day, I have to have a Google calendar because he refuses to write it down on paper because he's like, it's in the calendar and you're synced to it. So. So it was.

Kate 00:01:42  Curious. So you had a little peer pressure, little peer pressure happening. Yeah. All right.

Carrie 00:01:46  Same reason I got rid of my BlackBerry, which has ended up being a good thing.

Kate 00:01:52  So, Vicky, when you hear people tell stories like Carrie and I and we talk about, I either we've had Franklin planners or some sort of paper planner since we were 19. Or they are being forced to change to an electronic calendar. What immediately pops into your head?

Vicki 00:02:11  Well, one of the things is I am. I know I need to be organized in in order for me to be organized, I need to be able to see it.

Vicki 00:02:18  Even when I do go to a lecture, I have to write the information down in order to retain it because I can visually like picture it back in my head later. Oh yeah, I did write that down. And and some people are electronic and I do have a planner that's electronic based. That's an app ish. But I have to say no, it needs to be in my hand for me to see it. And I will tell people I will put things in my planner, and then I will put them in my phone and kind of double book myself on the same thing. But it's just if I need to see it without my planner, I have it on my phone, but not much, not much. It mostly is in one of these and that's what keeps me focused. I need to know what I need to do. And there's many days I get up and I have a to do list I've written in there for that day, and so tomorrow I have a long to do list, because I'm going to be going out of town, and I need to make sure some things are in order before I can leave.

Vicki 00:03:18  You know, just I just have to. And then when I have it written, I this is not the one I use because the one I use is different because of different reasons. But I check it off for a comment in writing next to it, especially if I have five things to do in one day. I'll comment. Did I do it? Did I send that email? Am I? I had done a thing and it was like only partially done so that I could go back and remember which one of those things was only partially done, because I'm pretty good at getting through part of it, going, oh, now I have to get that other paper that goes to it, or I'm just not 100% organized and I wish I was, but that's life. But so when I did the director planner, I have it in two different versions printed versions. One is from January to December and some people say, no, I don't. I want to have it from August, start at the end of July and go through the school year.

Vicki 00:04:12  And so this one is a school year planner and it's just the dates are different. That's it. Just a start and end date is different. Totally different. But some people like the school year one because that's the year. Yep. That is their academic year. And they don't have to go pull between two planners. So one of the things I've done is I and I know we've talked about this, I have a section that's for staff information and their special days okay.

Kate 00:04:37  So hang on. Hang on to that thought okay.

Vicki 00:04:39  Go ahead.

Kate 00:04:40  All right. So I think it was just last week's episode, Carrie and I talked a little bit about emergency preparedness. And so one of the things that we've talked about is the what happens if. So, Carrie in Texas, it's still we still get hurricanes. We still get floods, we still get freezes. Which and you know, it is summer here. So we also get times where our power goes down just because of the grid component.

Carrie 00:05:07  Yeah, and and tornadoes.

Carrie 00:05:08  You forgot about the twisters?

Vicki 00:05:10  Yes.

Carrie 00:05:11  Wildfires.

Kate 00:05:12  We got we got.

Carrie 00:05:13  All kinds of stuff. But the thing that I that kind of makes my eye twitch a little bit is when people are like, oh, all my records are on the computer. So I have all of my records digitized and I'm like, great. So if your building is on fire, how are you going to access that? Well, it's in the cloud. Great. Right. I ask you again, how are you going to access it in the parking lot with 127 children? How are you going to be accessing it?

Vicki 00:05:42  Or if you're stuck in traffic and you're literally dead, stop because there's an accident two miles ahead of you. You can't just pull out your computer. I mean, it's easier to have something on paper and go. Let me make this calls to the people who need to be called, because there's no way I'm going to make it to the center today because I'm going to be sitting in traffic.

Kate 00:06:04  Okay.

Kate 00:06:05  So, Vicki. Emergency preparedness. Talk to us about all of the different pieces that we should have and why they maybe should all be in one place. And that's the advantage of your planner, is that it's all right there. So what are some things that we need?

Vicki 00:06:20  I have a section that's for staff only information. And I have a section that's for family information, which I'm very big on. Family. privacy period. So you may have a key word for that family versus the whole name. And same for the staff. But this comes with the name, the the phone number and the emergency contact. Because if we're on a field trip and something happens to a staff member and you have to call their family member, you can pull up your planner and call it much faster than calling the office and giving someone the code to get into the computer system, to get into the program, to find that information. Right. You have it on you at all times. Yeah. And then we can trying to sync our family information.

Carrie 00:07:06  Yeah, we were talking at a local affiliate for one of the, education support, I don't know, a professional organization. And people were talking about the advantages and disadvantages of different software that they were using at their schools. And people were like, yeah, I can only do these things on the tablet. I can't do these things on the tablet. I have to do that on the desktop. And in my head I'm running through the. Yeah. And so what do you do if you need that information and you're 20 miles away or, you know, you don't have access to that desktop computer like, oh well.

Vicki 00:07:47  And the other thing that I do a lot about is if we've had a conversation and I know I need to document that conversation, I will document it. On the day that we talked in my planner or the day that I emailed it to you in my planner, because then I'm not searching back all my emails on my computer to find the proof I can go, oh. I did submit to her on August 5th.

Vicki 00:08:13  Then I just got to go through my emails to August 5th, and then I can pull it up and say, no, ma'am, we've had this conversation and I can't tell you how many times I look for an email. And if you don't put the correct exact information in, I don't find it. Although when I can go back and find a date, I can then pull up the email, which is crazy how it works.

Kate 00:08:33  It's so documented.

Carrie 00:08:36  And then document that you documented it.

Vicki 00:08:39  I do because that's the only way I'll remember.

Kate 00:08:42  Absolutely. So let's talk about what else is in your planner. So there's there's, you know, emergency contact lists. we've talked about the advantage of year round versus school year.

Vicki 00:08:54  I am a big advocate for all the craziest holidays. So like July since July is coming up. July 5th is Graham Cracker Day. July 20th is Space Exploration Day. How about because of the two of you? July 24th is Cousins Day, so y'all need to remember that and celebrate Cousins Day on the 24th.

Vicki 00:09:17  And the 29th is Lasagna Day. I mean, these are fun holidays that you can bring into your center. Oh you know and you have it there at the beginning of the month of planet. So another thing that I have in here is so like in, in the June I'm already telling you, you know, start posting about your closures. How many people say, I've told you five times that we're going to be closed on the 4th of July, and these are the dates. We're going to be gone, and they still show up with kids. Yeah, right. If you're close on the fifth, because the fourth or the close on the third or the, you know, however, the holiday runs and they still show up thinking that you're going to be there the next day or the day before. It happens all the time. I'm just amazed. I'm amazed. I do have a one day, you know, write a note to thank someone who's important to you when you were young. And that's something I did one year as my New Year's resolution is, I wrote to an old teacher and an old Girl Scout leader and just said, hey, I just want to tell you, you were really important to my life.

Vicki 00:10:18  And I still think of you today, and that just means so much to them, because I always want to be thought of from some kid that I was meaningful to them. So it's just stuff in there to pay it forward. It's got some social media post ideas. It's one day I have asked for feedback from your staff to know how you're doing, so it's just different. one says include families, native language and communication tools. So it says things we don't think about that we sometimes need to be reminded to do. Does that make sense?

Kate 00:10:51  Yeah, absolutely. Carrie, what are other documentation reasons why we might want something like this?

Carrie 00:10:59  unemployment. so that whole document it, and then document that you documented it. So if you have a verbal, communication with someone that they've done something that's not acceptable, and then you've done a written one and you know, you've gone through the steps of progressive discipline with a staff member. And then they filed for unemployment. It's really easy to go. Nope.

Carrie 00:11:23  Here's the dates that we had, the verbal conversations. Here's the date that I did the write up. Here's when they were on suspension. Whatever. It's in one location. so that's a reason. Insurance is another one. you can have all the information about when the power went out.

Vicki 00:11:44  You know.

Carrie 00:11:45  You can write those big things that happen. And you'll also probably have in the planner the day that you had the Valentine's Day party, because Valentine's Day was on the weekend. So did you do it the Friday before or did you do it on the Monday? You're not going to remember six months down the road when you had the Valentine's Day party, but if you've got something where somebody got hurt, you can go back and look. Very easily in the planner. I'm sure there's about 50 other things, but part.

Vicki 00:12:16  Of my most important one was when an attorney asked for my planner because I was doing therapy with a kid. Because by trade, I'm an occupational therapist. But I had a parent, one parent primarily bringing their kid to sessions, and I wrote down which parent brought the kid each time.

Vicki 00:12:36  So when it was a custody battle, it got brought into court from my planner. Who brought what day? Yep. Who made the payments? Who didn't make. You know. So it helped the parents in in a litigation?

Carrie 00:12:50  Yeah. And and I definitely recommend that anytime you've got a client with, you know, custody craziness.

Kate 00:12:57  So I have one other reminder for our directors and especially for our owners. there's this other, you know, federal agency that's got three letters that most of the time we hate. but if you've got that written documentation right then and there, it really will save you a lot of money. So I have been audited by the IRS. I do not necessarily go. Yay! This was a wonderful experience. however, because I had a planner and I use the planner that I use has a spot for mileage, and I track all my mileage and I track all my meetings. And so I didn't have a traditional mileage log, but I did have my planner, and I was able to say, oh, these are the dates.

Kate 00:13:43  I even took my car in to get the oil changed so they were able to back up and double check, you know, was my mileage the same? Now I learned things. So I now when I sell a car or whatever, I do, put in at least around that first week of the year, an oil change so that I have documentation by a third party of this is what my mileage was on this day, so that should I ever get audited again because of my mileage. I have proof. but I love having things written because it just makes it so much easier. And your planner is such a great size to just either put other eight and a half by 11 pieces of paper in there with, you know, clips or staples or whatever, but it also fits nicely in boxes. So yes. Yeah. So. Oh, that's that's my receipt. So yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Vicki 00:14:40  Oh, and beyond the the director planner, I actually had a teacher request one. And the teacher was pretty basic.

Vicki 00:14:47  And it has the attendance. It's an undated one, but it also has all those fun holidays and it actually has per the teachers request. It actually has a part for documentation and parent contact on a monthly basis, so that she could document any communications for herself personally with parents because sometimes as directors, things don't make it to their office. Yeah, right. And so this teacher specifically said, hey, I want a planner, but I want it to be for my classroom and when I talk to parents. And so I was really excited for for a teacher to want to have some involvement in it.

Kate 00:15:26  Absolutely. And I can see how that would be, again, the same thing. Right. Like sometimes we realize that there are apps and there's electronic communication tools, and we get that and we know that that has a real place in a child care center. But there's always that being prepared. And here's a teacher that's being prepared that if they can't, because the system's down and they can't send their updates because I don't know, the software had an update, their phone had a glitch.

Kate 00:15:52  Whatever it is, they at least can still make notes about the child that day. They can still make notes that they talk to the parent that day. and they still have a place to do it. And I think that's great. It's so much better than we won't even talk about the stacks of post-it notes I have floating around my office. Oh, yeah. look, I got them everywhere. and some of that is because on purpose. And then I've got, you know, the journals and the calendars and all of those things. So, it's just such a great tool for teachers, directors, to use. And if you aren't comfortable or you've never been really good at using a planner, you know, get back. Let Carrie and I know. Well, connect you to Vicki. we're talking about having Vicki possibly do some training at different conferences about actually using her planner. you can always find Vicki at different early childhood association conferences around the state of Texas. even a lot of national conferences.

Kate 00:16:51  So if you're not really sure, we think you really need one. and if you're not really sure what to do with them, let us know. You can always find us. Kate or Carrie at Texas director. Org. You can reach out to us in the show notes, because we know in the show notes there's going to be how to buy Vicki's planner. Kerry's got more to say. Nope.

Carrie 00:17:11  That's what I was going to say, is it's going to be in the dooby doo, which is a phrase I stole from somebody years ago. About what? What the show notes or the things underneath the YouTube thing. I just call it all the dooby doo. so there'll be a link to Vicki's website on the doodly doo. and she will definitely be at the Texas Licensed Childcare Association conference with us in the fall. She's at t e c conference. what other conferences are you going to be at this fall?

Vicki 00:17:44  There's a lot of, workforce conferences coming up, so I know August, there'll be one in, College Station, and I'll be at that one, and there's one coming up in Dallas that I'll be at.

Vicki 00:17:57  I hate to say I get around because I don't sound good, but I do get around.

Kate 00:18:03  And we can always get Vicki to your place. So if you if you're thinking, oh, this would be great for all of my teachers. Features? Absolutely. We can come in and do a staff training on time management, incorporate some some why and how to use a planner with parent communication. So all that professionalism training, she's got some other great things that we're going to talk about. So make sure that you listen and look for Vicky. She's going to join us two other times this year and we're so excited to have her.

Vicki 00:18:32  Thanks for having me, ladies.

Kate 00:18:33  All right Carrie. Close us out.

Carrie 00:18:36  Okay, so if you enjoyed this show, please rate and review it on your favorite podcasting app. And if you have questions or topics you want covered in future episodes, please email Kate Kate at Texas Director. Org.

Marie 00:18:54  Thank you for listening to Child Care Conversations with Kate and Carrie. Want to learn more? Check out our website at Texas Director and if you've learned anything today, leave us a comment below and share the show.