Better Living Through Time Management: An Update

For January, I dedicated myself to working on time management. At the beginning of the month, this is where things were.

Right now, I often take work home with me – grading, entering merits and demerits, and calling parents are the tasks that I’m frequently doing at home. I sometimes stay late after school as well. In December, I experimented with coming to school an hour early to prepare everything for the day, which helped, but I ended up spending eleven hours at school every day, which is unsustainable for me.

I have been spending fewer than eleven hours at school every day, which is good. I’m calling and texting parents from home, but I’ve reduced the amount of time I spend grading at home. A major improvement is having a student enter my merits and demerits. I’ve taught three students in my homeroom how to enter them. Now, I have students handle this during AM homeroom and PM homeroom. I’ve also been trying to stress less about entering every single merit and demerit – I’ve come to realize that merits and demerits are not the number one factor in student success, so that’s fallen lower on my list of priorities.

At the beginning of the month, I set two priorities for myself in improving my time management.

First, I will plan out my lessons further in advance. In the first half of the year, we had numerous curriculum changes, and we were often planning the night before we were teaching a lesson. This is ineffective as both an instructional planning strategy and in a time management strategy. This semester, I will plan out the following week of lessons before I leave school on Friday, which will give me more time to make my teacher copies and have more effective planning for each lesson.

This has been challenging. I haven’t known what I’m expected to teach two weeks out, which has made it harder to plan in advance. I’ve at least had an idea of what we’ll be teaching a week in advance though, so it’s getting better. Planning is still not where I would like it to be, but at least I’m not planning the day before I’m teaching something.

Second, I will prioritize working on grading exit tickets and creating my teacher copy for the next day during my planning period. It’s reasonable for me to complete my first class of exit tickets during my first planning period, while still having time to get a cup of coffee and eat my lunch. In my second planning period, I should have time to complete my second class of exit tickets, then create my teacher copy for the next day. If I’m done with both of those tasks, I will enter merits and demerits. I will enter my merits and demerits, and call parents right after I get off dismissal duty, and I’m setting a goal: Leaving work by 4:45 every day. If I need to call some parents from home, that’s okay, but that should be the only thing that I’m taking home with me.

This is a work in progress. I’ve been leaving school earlier, and I’ve been making good use of my planning periods – pushing to get things done rather than treating them as a time to decompress.

An additional piece is going to the gym in the mornings, before school. I was not thinking of this at the beginning of the month, but I’ve been working on it for the past two weeks. I’m running a half marathon in -gulp- ten days and I needed to get some more mileage in. I was trying to run after school, but it gets dark early, and I also have to deal with a lot of other things after school. I figure that if I can make it to the gym and get a few miles in before school, I’m starting out my day with a win and I’m making time to take care of myself, before I tackle work. The most challenging part of this is going to bed early enough. Ideally, I would go to bed at 9:00, then wake up at 5:00 and go to the gym. It’s hard to get into bed at 9:00 every night, though. It is still very much a work in progress.