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Are you letting daily emergencies steal time from what really matters in your role as a math leader?

From a soaked teenager’s phone to the all-too-common chaos of K–12 math leadership, this episode draws a sharp parallel between personal emergency funds and the way we manage our time. For many district leads, coaches, and administrators, every day feels like putting out fires — reacting instead of leading. But without intentionally budgeting time for priorities, real change in student learning and instructional quality gets pushed aside. If your calendar feels like it’s been hijacked by last-minute requests, this conversation will hit home.

You’ll walk away with:

• A mindset shift: Why your “time emergency fund” might be working against you — and what to build instead.
• A simple but powerful “rocks in the jar” approach to reclaim your calendar and drive meaningful progress.
• A practical framework (“If-Then-How”) for setting priorities that lead to measurable, year-end results.

Press play now to start protecting your time for what moves the needle — not just what screams the loudest.

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

I want to start this week’s show or episode off with a story on personal finance and specifically emergency funds. My daughter, Lucie, a months ago.

got her phone wet and it stopped working. The screen stopped working. We didn’t know what the problem was. We’re like, put that thing in a bag of rice and see what happens and yeah, no luck. It wasn’t shifting. And so, you know, a teenager who doesn’t have a phone is a very powerful driving, you know, force to not reckon with. You know, you’ve gotta stay clear.

you gotta say, what’s happening here? And it caused a lot of anxiety in the household for her, for her family, when we can’t reach our friends. And it sparked, because what was happening is that she really wanted a new phone. It was like, okay, I need a new phone. Can I borrow the money for a new phone? How do I get a new phone? I have somewhat of a summer job, but it’s not gonna be fast enough.

You know, if I work a few shifts this week and a few more shifts next week, and by a month I’ll have enough to buy the new phone that I need. And she wanted to have it faster than that. And so where this story actually went is that we talked about emergency funds. This is why people have, in personal finance, a reservoir, emergency funds, a dipping in.

that for emergencies that we can rely on, if we have really important things that we have to meet and have, then we wanna plan for the future for when emergencies happen. And so we talked about that and she agreed that that was a really important thing. Now it didn’t solve the immediate problem of having a phone now, but the part that she…

she ended up kind of doing some research on was she realized she had enough after one more shift to fix the phone and not buy a new phone. But then the dad win here or the family win here was that she started an emergency fund. now had a plan to put some money away. And why this has come to mind, because this was a few months ago, is that just yesterday the phone fell in water again, fell in a pool.

And now she’s like, I now have an emergency fund to utilize because she’s built that emergency fund up to go and get it fixed again. Now we’ll see if that gets fixed and I’ll report back later on whether it got fixed or whether she needed to plan for the emergency fund to be a little bit larger for next time. But why I wanted to talk about emergency funds is of course, emergency funds are essential in personal finance because what they do is they create flexibility, they create stability, they create.

peace of mind when you have an emergency fund. And when I think about us in terms of math leadership, math programming leadership, whether I’m an administrator at a school or in a district or maybe I’m a math coach or I’m a K-12 math coordinator, a lot of times when we hear about emergencies, it dictates or it dominates the work that you’re currently doing. And so what I was thinking about emergency funds, was thinking like a lot of

a lot of us in these roles, it’s like everything’s an emergency. Every day I’m solving emergency type problems and therefore my fund is not finance, it’s not monetary, my fund is my time, my priorities. And the fund that I’m pulling from to cover the emergencies is the amount of hours I have in a day. And in a way, this is saying us K to 12 math coordinators and coaches feels like

our entire fund is for emergency. Like we don’t have a fund for other things, important things. And that part is one of the, you know, a big problem for us if we’re trying to spark change, if we’re trying to generate improvement and shifting of instruction and achievement for our students and change mathematical dispositions for our students in our classrooms. when everything becomes an emergency,

then it’s hard to decide what the real priorities are. And so instead of saying like, let’s create an emergency fund, let’s actually create a priority fund. Like, everything’s an emergency, then we need to make sure that we’re budgeting time for the real important things. Like, are we setting up the priorities? Are we dedicating time on our calendars? Because if the fund is our time, how do we block off important pieces of our calendar or our timing or our schedules?

to work on the really important things. And have we defined what those are? Are we just letting the emergencies take over? know, where there’s a lot of firefighting that’s happening because of the emergencies, but we are actually maybe taking this time to set the priorities, set the schedules for getting the things done that are really important to us, and just letting firefighting take over. Because we won’t have a priority fund, we’ll just have emergency funds.

This is your annual call. We’ve talked about this before here on the podcast. We talk about it a lot with our district partners in the early stages and part way through. There was reminders to say, we working on the right things? Are we just letting our calendars fill up because of emergencies? Because a principal called us to come do PD or all of a sudden this justification has to be created because there’s a report that needs to go out. There’s a lot of emergencies that feel like they’re top priorities.

but we have to make sure we block off that time. So this is your annual call to think about the rocks in the jar. That analogy that we’ve shared here, and I know that you’ve heard it, it’s definitely not a new analogy. It’s not an analogy that we’ve created. The rocks in the jar is like, if you take a jar and all the sand, the pebbles, the water, the rocks, all have to go in the jar, and the jar is your time.

And all the pieces are the different things they have to do, the tasks, the priorities. If you typically, if we’re putting out fires, we’re putting all the sand in first, and then we go put the little pebbles in after that because we found some time to work on those, and then we have the rocks, the real priorities, the focus on fluency strategies for educators, the things that really move the needle don’t fit. We get to the end of the year and we say, we didn’t have time for that.

and we want more time. The analogy says put the rocks in first, which means block off your calendars, block off your schedules. What are the non-negotiables? Let’s protect time for what matters the most. If we are saying that we wanna see fluency in our classrooms and we think about what that really means in terms of the commitments that we have to make across our schools, across our districts, across our teachers, in supporting them, we have to dedicate those rocks in the jar first. We have to say what is a…

What is the right amount of support that will get us there? You we’ve heard us talk about the 49 professional development hours that a teacher needs to make appropriate shifts. We talked about the four-stage adoption model that says we need to have these four things that all teachers need before shifts start to happen in classrooms. You know, these are some of the things we have to consider when we go to put a rock in the jar, is like how much time are we actually gonna dedicate to making that shift? What does that look like in terms of our calendars ourselves?

What does it look like in terms of helping our principals do that at the school level or coaches do that at the school level? Put those rocks in the jar. This is your call at this time of the year to say, if I haven’t done that, what’s gonna happen is my emergency fund is gonna be, again, my entire calendar. If I need to put those rocks in the jar so that they’re in first, they’re protected, and then we can have the pebbles fill in after that and then the sand comes in after that. The priority level and prioritizing.

is essential and oftentimes in our fields we don’t do that. We’re always at the beck and call of the next person to monopolize our time and we’ll get to the end of the year when we do that and say like we did stuff but we don’t know exactly what it is that we did that moved the needle or how we moved the needle or what we actually achieved. And to me and to us here at Make Math Moments, that is.

In a way unacceptable. can’t get to the end of the year and go, we’re not sure exactly what shifts we made this year or changes or improvement we made. we had a lot of stuff, but we don’t know exactly what it was, that moved those needles. And, and that’s what we want to avoid. We want to be able to say, let’s the rocks in the jar and know what that is. So we use an if, then how framework at frac in a fractal way. We use it at districts to say, like, if you do these things, if you focus on these objectives,

then you’re gonna see this result, that’s your rationale. But then you could say, like, how am gonna know? Like the if, then, how. If I do this, then I will see this, how will I know? The how will I know is also part of the goal setting approach. Like it’s the most important. Because you can say anything you like. You can say, if I do that, then I will get this result. But the how you’ll know is the evidence that when you get to the end of the year, you’ll say, like, here’s exactly how I’ll know, and here’s exactly what we accomplished. That’s the rock that needs to go in the jar.

the how, the how you’ll know part. Like you can do the how to get the stuff done later, but you need to define the how you’ll know. And that part is important. It’s fractal. You do it at the district level. You’re gonna help schools do it the school level. Like if we do these things at the school level, if you use these structures, then I’m gonna get this rationale, and here’s exactly how I’ll know. Here’s the evidence we’re gonna collect that defines this. We’re not gonna use student data, student achievement data on standardized tests because that’s not what our goal was.

was about, we were looking at say maybe this, and we’re gonna measure or we’re gonna create a measurement tool that tracks progress there. Maybe it’s a continuum of progress that we’re gonna be looking for. Last episode we talked about that continuum. We need that continuum to be able monitor what B plus looks like or A plus or C. So that’s the rock in the jar. We do that at the school level. We do that with everything that we are setting. We can’t set goals unless we answer if, then, and how.

That’s the framework. There’s a template if you say head to the show notes page for this episode. We’ll have a link to our template for if then how. can download our template to use any fractal way at the district level, at the coaching level, at the school level. could be also fractally in a way like if I’m gonna run this PD event then I’ll get this result and how I’ll know. Like you can do it for every action item that is on your plate right now and then that can help, especially at this time of the year you can help.

define what rock goes in that jar because you wanna get to the end of the year and go, these are the things that I did and here’s the results we got and here’s where it moved the needle on our big goals or objectives or the zones of improvement this year. We don’t wanna get to the end of the year and not know those things. So when we think about emergency funds, how in a way in our roles, how can I limit the emergencies time that I dedicate? I actually have too much of emergency fund. need to actually dedicate.

parts of my funding to working on the most important things and not making sure that they’re accounted for. They become a non-negotiable. So that, know, when you think about Lucy and making sure she gets the most important thing right now, which is her phone, she can do it when she wants to do it. And that’s what it is. It’s about, it’s still about creating flexibility. It’s still about creating, you know, stability. It’s still about creating sustainability for you.

It’s just reversed in a way between personal finance and our times on the most important things. Hopefully that nugget is sparking you to make sure you sit down and go, have I mapped those out? I encourage you to do that. And if you’d like, we can help do that with you. That’s some of those first calls, or those only calls we have with teams initially is help you map out what’s the most important thing. You can book a call with us over at makemathmoments.com for slash district.

and our team will sit down with you, talk about the most important things and what you could be doing so that when you get to next year, you know that this had the impact it had. Makemathbombs.com forward slash district.

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