Time management

 

Time management – practical ways to make your teaching life easier

Teaching is not an easy job and all of us find ourselves managing huge responsibilities and countless tasks, big and small, on a daily basis.

It is not surprising that by the end of the week, we feel exhausted, yet still have a mountain of students’ work to mark by Monday. According to research from the Education Policy Unit, most full-time teachers work an average of 48.2 hours per week with many working as many as 60 hours per week. Does this sound like you?

The BIG question is – can there really be a way to make sustainable changes that allow us to have more time for ourselves without sacrificing our students’ progress or feeling guilty, and maybe even helping our students be more motivated and more successful in the long run?

It seems ironic that with students not attending school around the world during the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many teachers have reported that they are even more stressed and working even longer hours in order to help their students as much as possible.

It has been an incredibly difficult time for teachers and students alike. This situation is also set to continue for some of us or we may see a generalised long-term shift to blended learning, with some lessons taught face to face in classrooms and others online. Despite the challenges and the stress of having to teach online, I believe there are some very helpful lessons to take away from this experience that will not only allow teachers to better manage their time in their future, but also benefit students.

Here are some practical ideas to help you manage your time:

• Make use of online resources.For many teachers the use of online materials previously may have not seemed necessary, as students already have so much material linked to their coursebooks and there isn’t enough time to use online resources too. But with lockdown, these may have become a useful back-up for students working at home. These materials are designed to support different students’ needs and, most importantly, cut out the need for teachers to monitor and mark work as ‘done’.
• Encourage learners to work independently. Students’ independent study can be more focused on their needs and interests as well as be level appropriate. We all know that any class of students are never all at the same level with the same strengths and weaknesses. Where class activities cannot meet all their needs at the same time, personalised individual learning online can. It is important for teachers to realise that letting go of control over what is taught is not necessarily a bad thing and that students will actually benefit from accepting more responsibility for their own learning.
• Focus classroom time on communication and collaboration. Some tasks do belong in the classroom and it’s important to exploit them fully. Tasks that require and develop communication skills and collaboration should be at the heart of the classroom experience and these are the tasks where most of the work done is by students not teachers.

Now is the time to make changes in how we teach so that students and teachers can both benefit in the future