I realized that having strong time management skills was the most important factor in being able to manage stress on the job. It directly affected my ability to connect with students, actually smile while teaching, and have an enormous amount of job satisfaction. I gained control of my classroom, and I wasn’t going home mentally exhausted anymore. More importantly, I didn’t feel like a hamster on a wheel. I knew where to put my energy, how to work efficiently, how to produce the same if not better results in my classroom, how to have more energy to connect with students, and how to have fun while teaching. Many of the strategies I learned that year are covered in the chapters in this book.
Also, I brought Ed on board to add another perspective. Ed and I met at a conference at the University of San Diego, and he invited me to do a workshop with teachers after my eighth-grade classroom participated in his writing contest. I immediately noticed his remarkably strong time management skills, his dedication to keeping his work–life balance, and the amount he has accomplished with this mindset. He’s also here to share his experience.
[Ed] Probably like you, time management is and has been a constant factor in my personal and professional life. One example from my years as a principal comes to mind.
Many of the new teachers I supervised (as well as a few veterans) had similar time management problems as Eileen, a first-year teacher for our sixth-grade students. We liked Eileen; we were influenced by her talents, attitude, and enthusiasm. However, Eileen “overplanned” everything and anything. Her supervising teacher and I had talked to her about this when she was a student teacher, noting that it was not healthy and could increase the stress level of being a teacher. Eileen would spend hours developing unit and lesson plans, often after school was over. Leaving at 5 p.m. was not unusual for her, and I frequently found myself saying, “Eileen, you cannot stay later than the principal—it’s time to go home!” This behavior occurred at home as well. She was only one month into her full-time teaching position and I found her volunteering for any activity that was going on at the school. In her classroom, every minute of every day had been mapped out, in writing, noting what she and her students would be doing that day and that week.
In early October, Eileen came into my office showing “end of the day” exhaustion, near tears and frustrated. We began our discussion. After an hour, during which she did most of the talking, we set up another meeting. She shared her belief that if her students were not busy (working), they were not learning. According to her, “If I don’t keep them busy, I’m going to have discipline problems,” and “What we can’t get done in class we will get done at home (homework).”
What Eileen didn’t know was that her student teacher supervisor had already alerted me to this situation. Eileen also didn’t know that a couple of parents had inquired about the amount of homework their kids had to do. I asked Eileen if she wanted help, and she said yes. So, along with her student teacher supervisor and a few others, I worked with her throughout the year. Many of the strategies, techniques, and tips that you will find in this book were part of our work with Eileen. Note that by her fourth year at our school, Eileen had become one of the more popular student teacher supervisors.
We surveyed twenty-five of our K–12 teacher colleagues, asking what they considered to be the major time management problems or issues for teachers. While this certainly wasn’t a scientific study, the results rang true with what we’ve seen in the research and in our own experience. In summary, here is what they told us, in no particular order:
◗ Grading student work
◗ Carving out co-planning time
◗ Planning units and lessons; finding resources
◗ Organizing classroom materials, displays, and/or supplies
◗ Scheduling and attending meetings; co-curricular activities and similar responsibilities
◗ Paperwork—staying on top of e-mails from teachers, administrators, and parents
◗ Developing and monitoring groupwork
◗ Balancing long-term goals of curriculum and assignments with the social, emotional, and academic goals of children
◗ Organizing the day—prioritizing the work that has to be done or the curriculum that has to be presented
◗ Finding time to meet with individual students
◗ Allowing for differentiation (e.g., extra time, modifications of a task, providing enrichment)
◗ Technology—much preparation and planning time is spent on e-mailing with parents, posting notices, etc.
◗ Finding time for enough writing instruction, practice, reflection, and sharing
◗ Practicing empathy—forcing yourself to consider the needs of others and your organization when deciding how to use any discretionary time
◗ Stop seeking balance and find the usage of time that makes you the best version of yourself; that means taking time to “recharge”
The teachers we interviewed also expressed frustration as they reported to us the following:
◗ “I have no time. When I arrive at school, I am trapped between the two covers of our textbook and the four walls of the classroom.”
◗ “I’m trying to handle twelve- to fifteen-hour days. I have almost no time to do some of the things I should be doing—things that need to get done for the benefit of my students.”
◗ “You really want to know how I see it—I am overworked, I have to attend unproductive meetings, and I am drowning in testing and paperwork.”
We hear you. We’ve been there. We can help.
We address these topics as best practices in this book in a real and practical way. We’ll show you strategies that you can start using on day one. We also include strategies that have worked for us time and time again. These practices helped us manage our time as we changed roles, moved classrooms, and so on. Learning these strategies took us both years of practice and lots of wasted time and frustration. We’re here to save you a bit of both.
To add to our fun, we went back and asked the same twenty-five educators one other question: “If we could give you more minutes in the day, how would you spend your time?” One teacher said she wouldn’t spend her time answering survey questions, and another replied, “How can you ask me this question when I’m trying to get my classroom ready for school?” The others were too inundated with preparing for a new school year to answer. We get it: You’re busy. You’re really, really busy.
Here’s the bottom line: Teachers that are good time managers have students that are engaged and actively listening.
We all want that.
About This Book
As you read and implement these strategies, we encourage you to be a risk-taker and a problem-solver. Take our advice, tweak it, modify it, and make it work for you.
We spent some time finding the cutting-edge research on time management strategies (that you might not have time to find yourself) and paired this research with our own experiences to provide suggestions for you and your classroom. Our
