What They Don't Teach You During Teacher Training: Part 1 - Time Management

• Part 1: Time Management

• Part 2: Parents

• Part 3: Helping Vulnerable Children 

• Part 4: Bullying

• Part 5: Colleagues 

• Part 6: Motivation

This series of blog posts will cover areas that I feel are often missing from the PGCE year and teacher training in general. That's not a criticism - there simply isn't time to cover everything but I have been using my extra pandemic time with the university library and the World Wide Web at my finger tips to search for answers to questions that have been perplexing me for some time. It turns out that many people have thought about these things a lot more than me so I'm excited to be sharing the insights that resonated the most.

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So without further ado let's talk about time management. In addition to teaching the curriculum and preparing for standardised tests, teachers also have to write reports and mark work, plan lessons and look for resources, make displays, keep track of events and the timetable, attend meetings (so many meetings in Italy!), organise shows, assemblies and extra curricular activities, communicate with parents, do break duty, establish ground rules and follow up on discipline and welfare issues (Beginning Primary Teaching by A. Jacklin et al). That's a lot of things to keep track of! 

Up until now I have mostly found work-life balance by working part-time at two separate schools (this makes it much easier to say no to things, because you have your commitments at your other job as an excuse, ha!) but all that is about to change as next year I will be working full time again. Clearly I will have to find more orthodox ways of managing my time! The first place I started was with this video that was recommended to me by my husband, who isn't a teacher, but is very busy.

15 Secrets Successful People Know about Time Management by MotivationHub

This isn't directed at teachers but the principles can surely be applied to most things. I would summarise it like this: 

1. Know your priorities because everything starts from there. If you can, work on your Most Important Task in the morning when you are at your mental peak. 

2. Use a notebook to jot down ideas and To Do lists but work from your calendar/diary. This makes sense especially for teachers because people are always giving you new things to keep track of (e.g. today we go into the lunch hall from the left door only because there are exams) but ultimately we work to a very tightly scheduled timetable that we have no control over. To Do Lists are useful but there is always too much work that will never be done so it is better not to allow your To Do list to dictate how you spend your time. When you schedule 'communications time' into your day you will automatically batch tasks like responding to parents' emails which will make you more efficient.

3. Help your future self. This can mean getting your photocopies done the day before, or eating, exercising and getting enough sleep.

4. They say "Use a timer. Set it at 25 minutes. Take a break every 5." I say, ensure you take a toilet break and eat a snack at morning break, then try to get 5 minutes of fresh air at lunch on your own somewhere, ideally. But definitely use that timer when writing reports.

5. Schedule your week into Focus days, Buffer Days and Rest Days, or for teachers, focus days with a buffer evening or two and AT LEAST ONE rest day. And crucially STOP when you said you would stop. The work will never be done. You cannot get ahead of yourself by working late tonight. See point 3. 

Ms Mae from One Fab Teacher shares her own cautionary tale about trying to get to the end of the work load and gives some great tips.

6. Minutes are valuable (I need to remember this when the temptation strikes to go and hang out in another teacher's classroom after school!). Think about ways you can make common tasks quicker. For example, if you are slow at typing reports - try 10fastfingers.com to improve your typing speed or using a phrase bank. A friend, who I admire for being able to teach, socialise and have time for numerous hobbies, told me that he cut his marking time dramatically by using codes and then gets the students to use the codes to write out their own objectives. Like Miss Mae he also said he never takes marking home "to do in front of the TV." 

Teachers with good work life balance, like my friend, often follow the philosophy found in The Lazy Teacher's Handbook by Jim Smith. Sometimes we do too much for our students when we could be giving them agency. If you are interested in helping your students while getting them to take some of your workload then this is the book for you.

Finally I paraphrase the wise words of Jacklin et al, from Beginning Primary Teaching.

Cut corners whenever you can if it will not reduce the quality of your teaching. 

So there you are. It was in a book. You have official permission.