How to Manage Your Time as a Teacher

Managing your time as a teacher is not easy. But if you know what to do, it can be done!

Teaching is an important job that requires lots of energy and focus. It also takes a lot of planning and preparation. Here are some tips for managing your time as a teacher.

Set Goals.
Setting goals is one of the first things you should do when starting out with teaching. You need to set goals so that you know where you want to go. If you don’t set goals, then you won’t know how to reach them.

Plan Ahead.
It’s also important to plan. This means planning lessons, assignments, and projects before you start teaching. Planning ahead will help you stay organized and keep track of everything you need to do.

Prioritize.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the number of things you need to do each day, prioritize them. Start with the most important tasks first. Then, organize your schedule so that you can complete those tasks efficiently. Finally, make sure you have enough time to accomplish everything you need to do each week.

Create a Schedule.
You should also set aside some time every day to work on your lesson plans. This will help you stay organized and focused throughout the school year. It will also give you an opportunity to review your lessons before class starts.

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Transcript

Patti Firth: 0:00

As a part-time teacher, meaning that I work 50% of the week in my classroom and 50% for my business, madly learning. But as a part-time teacher, one of the things that I have had to learn and get really good at is. To set boundaries and manage my time because what I can't afford is to work full-time, teaching hours for part-time pay. So a few years ago when I dropped down part-time so I could still stay in the classroom while also getting to work with teachers like you and produce great content and create quality resources. I still wanted to be in the classroom, but I knew in order to do both plus be a mom of three and have my kids involved in things and actually have a life outside of teaching, I needed to quickly set boundaries and find balance in my own life so that I wasn't staying up till two o'clock in the morning every single night trying to get all of the teaching stuff done, that I was still only doing part. Now, there's a few things that I do that help me to establish some of these boundaries so that I'm not working more than my part-time hours. So whether you're working part-time or full-time, these same strategies can work because if they work to keep me working my part-time hours, they'll work to keep you working your full-time hours too. So I have to say over the last couple of years, one thing that I have become very good at is being able to set boundaries on what I can do in my classroom and when I need to just leave and let it go. One of the first things I did to start was, and I had some help from my husband, was at the end of my time at school. I set an appointment that I had to go to, or I had a phone call I had to make, so he would begin calling me on his lunch hour. I would leave around 1150 or 12 o'. Knowing I had this accountability that sort of forced me to leave the school was going to be important. Sure. There were times where I. Stay a little bit extra. We all do, but that really helped as being the one thing that allowed me to leave. When you have something to do at the end of the day when you set an appointment or a schedule, or you make sure you have to be by at the house to pick up the kids off the bus. Having somewhere to be at the end of your day forces you to figure things out, forces you to put yourself in the situation where you have to leave the school. When the bell rings, you have to leave the school. At the end of the day. You can't spend 30 minutes talking to all your colleagues. You can't be running around sort of wasting some time after school thinking that you're getting things done when really you aren't. I often found myself at the end of the school day. I wasn't really using my time efficiently and although socially I really liked that time, I needed to start setting those boundaries that I needed to get home and be really efficient with my time. Once you get into the habit of there's something you need to do, you'll just become used to just leaving at the end of your contract. So that's number one. Set parameters on your time when you have to be there and when you have to leave because you have something else that's more important that you need to go do at the end of the day so that you can't stay. And that will help you to establish those boundaries at the beginning. Now another thing I do is plan a week at a time. When I focus in on what's happening minute to minute. Then I'm planning minute to minute, and it takes me a lot more time. I'm thinking too much in the details. So I find that when I back up a lot, like 30,000 foot view and just survey what my week is going to look. I just focus on what are the big ideas that I want to cover for the week. I'm not planning each and every lesson in minute detail. I'm not looking at each minute or each chunk of minutes, but I'm looking at what the week looks like now. I pull resources from both my ignited literacy, my math, my social studies, and my science units that I use from my madly. Store. I use those because the lessons are already created, the activities are already there. They're not just simple read and respond worksheets, but they're a little bit more interactive. They're gonna take a little bit longer. They're often open-ended and differentiated. So I'm not planning necessarily those lessons. But I am looking at that 30,000 foot view and deciding what am I doing this week? What activities, what are the overarching big ideas for the week that we're gonna cover? This does one of two things. Number one, if I'm planning a lesson and I only get through half of it, it just moves on to the next day, and I'm planning things as a week. So we're gonna get this done by the end of the. Instead of, we're gonna get this done by the day. So gives me a lot more flexibility within my week to help me plan the activities that I wanna do. Things that don't always go by plan. You know, we have a surprise fire drill because it can pulled the fire alarm accidentally, or we get an email last minute that Access asks us to do. Some task for a club or for, you know, some initiative that's happening in the school. We have the ability to pivot and be more flexible without having to completely redo or rewrite the plans because I'm thinking at a bigger, big idea level. So I have a lot more flexibility day to day or minute to minute. Now with that, because I have my idea, generally, I know what copies I need for the whole week. I know where we're going, what we're trying to get through. I have that planned out for the whole week so we can pull, I have all of that ready to go. Whatever doesn't get done that week can be moved into the next week. That's just less planning to do, but, or we can revise, but it means that I can be a bit more flexible for what my students need. And it also means that I can be a little bit more flexible with myself, and I think of tasks and learning goals that can be completed through over a couple of days instead of necessarily, what am I gonna do, this chunk of 20 minutes, and then this chunk of 20 minutes, and then this chunk of 20 minutes. Thinking more holistically instead of detail oriented has definitely helped to see the big picture. And it also means I'm spending less time. Hyper focused on all of those details and then realizing that I'm probably not gonna get all of those things done all at once. Now, I also don't use a lot of worksheets because, and this has sort of come because of tech issues or because of lots of different things. I'm on a second floor and our photocopier is on a completely different floor. Half the time, the photocopier doesn't like my computer, and if I don't print from a certain file from a certain, in a certain program, it won't always print. Sometimes I need to reset it. I've wasted lots of time needing to go down to the. and because I'm running up and downstairs in order to do that, I don't always have that kind of time. So if I can rely less on photocopies than I will now granted, I realize that many of the resources that I myself create for madly learning have printable pages. We do that often so that teachers can use them, but we also regularly encourage teachers to use that as the framework, but not actually use the page or use the page the first time. But don't become overreliant on, say, the graphic organizer that's provided, recreate anchor charts on chart papers instead of photocopying it for all students. There's lots of things that you can do to look at what a worksheet looks. Think about what it's being, what it's asking you, and not copying it. Can you take a student worksheet and do you actually need a copy? Are there other ways that students can give you the information that you want from that page that you want there without necessarily needing to photocopy? My favorite is a tee chart. A T-chart solves most problems, and a tee chart can be done with two lines and a. and this is why it is my absolute favorite. I don't need to have a pretty organizer. I don't need to necessarily teach students how to plan out a story on these elaborate, beautiful graphic organizers. I need a T for them to plan the character setting the problem and solution. If they can draw an organizer in 30 seconds and get the same type. Quality, the same type of thinking, the same work, the same level, and ability. Then why am I going to waste my time running up and down the stairs to the photocopier if I don't need to? Any of the responses where you have a question, you have a reading, and you have a bunch of questions that are being asked at the end, do we. to print out the worksheet with the lines that students can answer, or can I write the questions on a chart paper and students can answer them in their notebook? A lot of these things are. Things that have done that teachers way back in the past did because they didn't have the same access to the photocopier that we do now. They didn't have access to technology that we do now, but sometimes I think we become overreliant on the worksheet. But there are often simpler ways to do things that don't require a worksheet. We can. So when we don't rely as much on the worksheet, when I reduce the amount of times that I use the worksheet, when I just put the information on a chart paper, when I display it on my smart board, when I can share the reading to them on Google Classroom or on OneNote and they can read the text online, then I'm not photocopying, I'm not running up and down those stairs. Students aren't losing them. They're in. They're in our digital classroom. They're up on the screen, and then they can answer any of the questions that happen to be. On the chart paper. So if there is a way that you can reduce the amount of unnecessary photocopies, it will ultimately save you time because you're not running back and forth to the photocopier, and therefore your lessons are not necessarily dependent on the materials you have. They're really dependent on you and the resources you have in your classroom that are just always there. Your chalkboard, your smart board, your digital classroom, and your chart. Another way that I try to save time is looking at where I say yes and really guarding my time very closely and carefully and realizing that me putting boundaries and limits is okay and it's healthy, and I'm allowed to do that. As a teacher, I'm allowed to say no. I'm allowed to set boundaries. I'm allowed to ask for help. I'm allowed to share the workload, especially as a part-time teacher. I need to share the workload with my teaching partner and not in a way where I'm doing all of the mental load, or I'm taking on all of the responsibility for the things, and I'm managing my teaching partner by assigning them tasks to do. But I am sharing that workload. Now, if you are a classroom teacher, you don't necessarily have somebody to share that workload with, but sometimes that's a little bit easier because you can just get some stuff done. But it also means that if you can't get things done as quickly as maybe you did before you had kids or. Then that's okay. If you don't get a test marked and returned for two weeks, then you don't get a test marked and returned for two weeks, and that's okay. There is nothing that says you have to have that test marked in 24 hours or over a weekend. You don't have to take things home. You can say no and protect your time and your boundaries and not necessarily. That you're doing a bad job. It is okay to say, here's your test, you'll have it back in two weeks. Here's your test. You'll have it back in a week. What is reasonable for you to do? Um, you can stagger who's marking you see, one of the things I really like to do with my marking, especially for writing, which is often the bulk of the time consuming marking that I do, is I like to do one of two things. I like to bulk mark. Batch mark, or I like to stagger my marking, so when I'm batch marking, I collect everyone all at once. I don't do any marking for like two weeks for writing. I mark nothing for two weeks. I block apart some time on, say a Saturday. If I know I'm gonna have some time coming up where nothing's happening, I can block a set of time. Or if I know I've got a double prep or something where I've got a set of time. I can put all of the marking together. I open up all of the books to the page I need and I just mark one at a time. And I just do it as fast as and most efficiently as possible. Sometimes I like to batch mark. Other times I simply like to pick two or three kids in a week, or four or five kids in a week, their work that I wanna see. And I will collect their work and have a look at it and see what we are, how they're doing, and provide feedback. So if I stagger my marking, so I'm not collecting every student's piece of writing every week, but I'm collecting five. Work a week, so one student a day. I can mark one notebook a day. If I do one notebook a day and I try to do it between the bell ringing and the time I have to leave, then I can get that one piece of notebook a day. It also can mean that you are. Understanding that some students may not need as much feedback as others. There will be some kids that you need to mark. They need the constant feedback. They need a lot more assessment. And other students, which they're doing so well, they don't need to check in with you as much. You don't necessarily need to mark every student. The exact same way, especially when your observations and conversations of some students are just stronger. I know based on conversations I've had with some students in my social studies lessons that they get it and they understand what's going cuz their hand is up, they're having a conversation, they're adding ideas. All of that is assessment. I don't necessarily need to check in with them three times a week to make sure that they're understanding the content, cuz they've already shown me that they understand the content, so I may need to only check their stuff once a month. Some other students who are not participating are not sharing their ideas. I may wanna check in with them to make sure that they're getting it more frequently because my observations and conversations of them aren't telling me any information. So I can triage my assessment, meaning that I don't have to mark every single student exactly the same way every single day. And it saves me time because it means that I'm only marking what I need to give me the picture I need. So try to form a picture and an understanding of what students need to know, what I need to know, what they need to understand. I try to form that picture in my head of their understanding, and I fill in those gaps with collecting and assessing in variety of different ways for those students. Another way that I say no is I set limits on parent communication if you happen to have parents that are overly communicative. Um, one of the ways that I have done that, and this often changes school to school, but one of the ways that I've managed that is to put very strict time limits on my availability for parents. Now, I often will do this through office hours. I set aside times each week that I deem myself available for parent contact. these are the times that parents can arrange to meet with me or when I will respond and have a phone call. If I find, if it's a quick email, I may be able to respond to an email, but I often will respond during these office hours too if it requires a more in depth response. I will prompt parents that if they're ones that are writing me qui of responses and emails, I will often prompt them to come in and have a discussion during my office hours, during the time that I have available. and I try to make it very clear that I have availability, but it's not unlimited. It's not an unlimited availability. I'm not available all of the time. Now, that takes a little bit of training of parents to remind them that you are not available 24 7 to answer their questions that their child is not the only child in the room. There's obviously some. To this in the sense that you'll have some parents that obviously need more contact than others, but for those parents that want all of the contact and they want an update every single day, yet their kids are doing fine. You don't need the update. Set the boundary with those parents. Put a time limit on your time, what you want to be able to do, what is reasonable, what you have time for, and when you're willing to communicate and then stick to it. Tell parents what your availability is. You can even set. Google calendar, um, appointment slots if you would like, so that parents can book with you. You have a booking appointment schedule, so it's not just parent teacher interviews, but you can also do that week to week so that parents have time that they can, they know you're available, but also what you're communicating with that is there are times you are available, but there's also times you're not available. And it's okay to tell parents that you are not available 24 7 and put limits on your. I also recommend when it comes to time limits, to think strategically about where your desk is in the classroom. I have found that if my desk is in eyesight of my classroom door, meaning somebody walking up and down the hallway can see me working at my desk, they're more likely to come in and wanna talk. But that's my prep, and I need to protect my prep. I need to protect my prep because that's when I need to get a lot of my work done. If I don't wanna take it home, and I need to use my time in my classroom during nutrition break because that is the time that I have. So when I move my desk so that it is not visible by the door, my favorite is if you put your desk along the same wall that your door is. So if your door is here, and your desk goes on the same wall as your door. Then when people are walking up and down the hallway, They're not seeing you because they see across your classroom. They don't see you at your desk, which means they have to come all the way in your classroom in order to see that you are there. And if they don't see that you're there, they often won't come in and talk to you unless they absolutely need you. It's not just a casual conversation that they're gonna pop in your classroom. So I would be cautious of that. And think strategically about your time and where your desk is and that impact of how much of your preps are being used. By talking. Now, sometimes those conversations are super valuable and they're very handy and helpful. So I'm not saying to avoid them completely, but I have a table that's at the front of my room that I teach from where all of my stuff goes and I'm teaching. So if I'm okay with being interrupted, I will sit there. But if I wanna work, I will sit back in the back of my classroom in my hidden desk spot, and I will often put headphones in so that I can focus, so I'm not distracted by the noise around me, and it very clearly sends a symbol that I am working and getting my stuff done, and now is not the time to speak to me. The last thing that I do is I really think about the students doing some of the heavy lifting when it comes to work. Now, this is often differentiation. I like to use open-ended projects and tasks that my students can complete because I feel as though students can get this stuff done. They can come up with the ideas. If I can give them the big idea, they can come up with the questions that they wanna be able to answer. They can use some of the resources and find some resources that allow them to answer those questions, and then they can come up with a way to present that information, whether it's a PowerPoint presentation, a report, a written paragraph, they can come up with a method in which they're going to share their. I often think when I'm assessing, I want to assess their knowledge and skills, but the task that they use to share their knowledge and skills with me does not need to be my idea. That can be their idea. They can come up with the method in which they're going to share their ideas with. I mark skills and knowledge. I don't mark task completion. Now, this is a different because it allows me this open-ended idea that I can collect their skills and knowledge assessment in a variety of different ways. It doesn't tie me to marking one single thing. It doesn't tie me to doing something so narrowly focused. It allows more of an open. path forward for students to complete. It means that when my students that have IEPs, they can do a simplified version because their knowledge and skills are at a simplified level. I don't need as much depth from their work, but everybody's doing the same sort of their designing their own method, that they're going to share their information with me. They're really good. Students are very good at working within their capacity. So if I just say, I want you to share your knowledge and skills with me and how you share your knowledge and skills with me is up to you. We talk about some of the different ways they can record a video. They can write something in a report, they can share a, a. Pictorial collage with with some texts. They can just have a discussion with me and share with me what they've learned and what they know. We can have a conversation. There's lots of ways that I can assess their knowledge and skills. If I design a very narrowly focused task, then I have to differentiate it for kids that can't do that. Because I've designed it, but if the kids are designing the task and I'm just outlining what knowledge and skills need, that task needs to demonstrate, I find that is a lot easier. Kids are more engaged because they get to present it in a way that makes sense to them, and it allows less planning and marking. For me, because I'm not planning and marking it, I'm not planning it. They're planning it. We've come up with it together in the moment in class time, and I'm helping and supporting and teaching them the content they need, but how they show it to me, how they explain their thinking, that's on them. And I do that through math journals. I do that through open-ended writing tasks. I do that through mini science and social studies projects, and I do that through choice boards and reading responses. And I do that in grammar and spelling as. There's a lot of opportunity for students to pick and have a voice and a choice in the things that they're doing, and the more voice and choice I give them day to day, the less I'm doing as a teacher, the less heavy lifting. I'm still doing all the lesson planning. I'm still planning what we're doing. I'm still coming up with those big ideas. But when I involve my students in what the product and task that they're going to show their knowledge and skills, when I involve them in that pro, that process, it means I'm not sitting at home on my couch till two o'clock and then, Morning planning all of the pieces because I do that with my students and I ask them to help me do it, and all of those things end up saving me some time so that I can successfully stay and work within my contract hours. Still be a rockstar teacher, and it helps me to make good teaching easy.