of Turkey. Serena was selected as a U.S. ambassador by the Fulbright Distinguished Teaching Program. Fulbright gave her an opportunity to coach eleventh- and twelfth-grade teachers in a rural village in Botswana on engagement strategies, smart technology use, and best practices in the classroom. Serena is the bestselling author of Real Talk About Classroom Management: 50 Best Practices That Work and Show You Believe in Your Students, published by Corwin in February 2018. It has also been made into a self-paced online video course, Skillbuilders, for both new and experienced teachers. Serena relocated to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to be closer to her family. Twitter: @SerenaPariser Facebook: www.facebook.com/serenapariser Blog: www.serenapariser.com E-mail: [email protected]
Edward F. DeRoche, MA, MS, PhD, has been an elementary and middle school teacher and principal, a public school board member, a member of two private high school boards, a professor, a program evaluator, a student adviser, a teacher trainer, and the University of San Diego’s School of Education dean. Ed was a past president of the California Association of Teacher Educators and a member of the National Commission on Character Education. Currently he is the director of the Character Education Resource Center in the School of Leadership and Education Sciences at the University of San Diego. With Professor Mary M. Williams, he co-authored one of Corwin’s first books on character education, titled Educating Hearts and Minds: A Comprehensive Character Education Framework, which is a concise and practical guide for practitioners. Quality character education doesn’t happen without quality leadership at the top. Ed filled a gap in the character education literature by writing Character Education: A Guide for School Administrators. No field can flourish without methods of assessing effectiveness. Ed filled another gap with his book Evaluating Character Development: 51 Tools for Measuring Success. Ed’s eight books and more than fifty journal articles constitute an impressive record of scholarship, and he is also the author of the Character Education Resource Center’s monthly newsletter, New You Can Use, as well as a monthly blog. He is a consultant, evaluator, author, teacher trainer, and a recipient of several awards, including the Sanford N. McDonald Award for Lifetime Achievement in Character Education from Character.org, the University of San Diego’s School of Education’s Outstanding Administrator of the Year Award, and the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Educator of the Year Award. Under Ed’s leadership, the School of Education offered educators the opportunity to earn a master’s degree in character education, one of the first advanced degrees in the field. In addition, the Character Education Resource Center pioneered online teacher training in character education for both graduate and professional credit. Now in its twenty-fourth year, the center continues to offer its popular summer conference Character Matters. Ed is honored to be the co-author of this time management book with Serena and appreciates her advice and counsel as a member of the Character Education Resource Center’s Advisory Committee. Ed can be reached at [email protected]. Feel free to reach out to sign up for his monthly News You Can Use blog or just to e-mail.
[Ed] This book is dedicated to the many teachers in my life (they know who they are) who took the time to advise me, counsel me, guide me, befriend me, warn me, tolerate me, and contribute to my love of teaching and administering.
[Serena] This book is dedicated to my grandpop, who kept his life simple so he could always get everything done. May we all be so lucky.
Introduction
Roughly 61 percent of educators said their work was “always” or “often” stressful, compared with American workers, in general, citing their work was stressful 30 percent of the time, according to a new survey released by the American Federation of Teachers.
—Joel Stice, writing for Education World
Yet it’s also reported that over 96 percent of teachers love their jobs. Let’s face it, we love what we do, we just want to be able to feel less stressed each day doing it.
If we could give you more minutes in the day, how would you use your extra time? Did you know that there are 1,440 minutes in a day? It rarely ever feels that way, especially in our classrooms. Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard a teacher say that they’re stressed or overwhelmed—or if you’ve ever said the same thing. If your hand is not up, you are either the luckiest teacher in the world or . . . well . . . *cough* lying.
To be honest, stress isn’t all entirely negative. Actually, a little bit of stress can be helpful in motivating us to perform. We don’t need time management skills when we are on a Caribbean vacation, but we do need them in the classroom. Why? Time management is important when you have a series of tasks to do. That’s teaching. Our success in time management—before class, during instruction, after class, and even in our personal life—can have a real effect on our teaching, for better or worse. It all comes back to the classroom. Time management doesn’t mean that you’ll never feel stressed again, but hopefully the tools in this book will help you mitigate stress on a daily basis.
As stated in the quote above, just under half of us feel stressed daily (46 percent). Ed and I have found ways to keep ourselves with the 54 percent of educators who have found positive means to handle stressful situations. We’d like to share with you what has worked for us.
[Serena] When Ed offered to join me for this book I quickly agreed. Why? Ask anybody who knows him and they will tell you he is one of the best time managers you will ever meet. I mean that. I have yet to meet anybody who can manage time like Ed. He makes it seem so easy, always has a smile on his face, and gets things done quickly and thoroughly. He’s accomplished more in his lifetime than most and still always seems to have time for friends and family and to lend a helping hand. Also, Ed gives the time management perspective from his many years in not only teaching but also in administrating both an elementary and a middle school, and I bring in the perspective of a teacher. You’ll find both perspectives to be equally valuable.
Like Ed, I’m exceptionally skilled at time management. Together we will share what works. Some of these best practices we’ve discovered on our own, and some we have borrowed from others over the years. We’re going to tell it to you like it really is: Time management directly relates to classroom management, your personal sanity, and your overall quality of life inside and outside of the classroom. It’s all about how we manage our workload, manage our time, and have a healthy mindset about our responsibilities. We have two personal stories to share.
[Serena] I’ve been there. It was December, right before winter break to be exact, during my first year as a classroom teacher. I was a sixth-grade teacher at a charter school in West Philadelphia. A few months in, I had made up my mind: I was done. I would put in my resignation midyear. I felt stuck. The tasks had piled up too high, I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere with my twenty-nine rambunctious sixth graders, and I had too many angry parents. The only way out was to quit. I would cut my losses and walk.
In an effort to try to get some moral support, I knocked on the door of my neighboring teacher, Mr. Davis. He had been my lifeline so far that year. As I described my feelings of failure and being completely overwhelmed, he simply said, “You can’t leave your first year teaching. You’ll get through it.” I scraped my pride off of the floor and took his advice. I stayed and completed the first year of what later turned out to be the profession of my dreams.
What changed?
For starters, I stopped working in my classroom late hours every evening. I learned to take breaks and balance myself, even if the work wasn’t done. I asked for help when I knew there was an easier way to do something in the classroom. Neighboring teachers started sharing organizational
