As teachers, we all need to focus on keeping our standards high whilst ensuring that we aren’t working ourselves into the ground. In this article, I want to list the top 5 ways I use to save time and energy during the school week. All teaching time-savers are essential!
Top 4 Teaching Time-savers
Sharing responsibilities
Most teachers will currently be in multi-form schools, meaning that it is not their sole responsibility to plan in their year group. The focus here should be to ensure that planning is split evenly between the teachers in each year group. Remember that different subjects have different weightings in planning; for example, planning a maths unit is not the same as planning an RE unit.
Think about how you can keep it fair for your whole team. Remembering planning done efficiently can be a huge time-saver. I always ensure that I look at the overview with my partner teacher at the start of a term, and we divvy out the planning evenly. It might be that your partner teacher prefers to plan certain subjects, or they like planning specific issues more.
That can be a good thing; allowing people to plan subjects they feel comfortable planning will keep everyone happy.
Rely on experienced teachers.
Every school will have teachers who have been on the job longer than you have. They have years of experience, and with that comes years of finding time-savers to help take the pressure off them. Being experienced also means that they have been where you are now.
They were once a young teacher looking for help, so hopefully, they will have some empathy and be willing to share. It is not always this easy, and some teachers do struggle to find the time to pass on their knowledge, but if you are a new teacher wanting to get some gems from long-serving staff, take the time to get to know them.
Don’t just approach them with problems that you expect them to fix; respect their years of service and watch what they do. Watching an experienced teacher plan, teach and assess can save you hours each week.
It is knowing when good is good enough.
As teachers, we can often be perfectionists. However, this can be to our detriment as we work tirelessly on a single lesson to make sure that it is the best it can be. We need to know when whatever we are working on is good enough. Remember that often; we go off plan during lessons anyway! These teaching time-savers can save you hours!
We want to ensure that we are doing a great job in all areas, but balancing that out with looking after our well-being is essential. If you feel stressed or anxious, take a step back and ensure that you have finished as much as you need to get the lessons taught, then go home. One of my former heads used the image of a shelf to help us visualise our well-being.
When your shelf becomes too crowded, it can become stressful. If you keep adding things to yourself, eventually it will break and fall down. You need to help your shelf by putting in strong supports. These supports could be the other teachers around you, SLT, people at home etc. Every person is different, so will need to be supported differently. Don’t waste time; use timer-savers!
Prioritise
Make yourself a list and work out what is most important. Then work your way through the list. It sounds simple, but sometimes as teachers, we get bogged down with too many jobs and too little time to do them.
As a teacher, you have a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. Not only do you have to teach your students, but you also have to manage your workload. With so much to do, it can be easy to get overwhelmed. However, there are some simple steps you can take to help you manage your workload more effectively. One of the most important things you can do is to prioritize your work.
Start by identifying the most critical tasks that need to be done. These may be tasks that are due soon or particularly complex or time-consuming. Once you’ve identified the most critical tasks, complete them first. This will help you stay on top of your work and avoid getting overwhelmed.
Spend your time wisely.
Of all the things that teachers have to do in a day, planning is one of the most important. After all, without a well-thought-out lesson plan, teaching can quickly become chaos. However, planning also takes up a lot of time, and it’s not always easy to find the balance between spending too much time on planning and not enough.
One of my favourite teaching time-savers to ensure that you’re using your time wisely is to set aside a specific time for planning each day. That way, you can focus solely on the task at hand and not get distracted by other things that come up throughout the day. Additionally, it’s also important to be mindful of how you spend your time during breaks and after school.
While it’s tempting to chat with colleagues or catch up on personal errands, this time can be better spent getting ahead on grading or preparing for upcoming lessons. By being mindful of how you use your time, you can help ensure that each day is productive and efficient.
Teaching is a hard job. Many people do not understand how difficult it is to be a teacher. You have to be patient, caring, and organized. You also have to be able to control a classroom of kids. It is not an easy job by any means. That is why it is important to look to experienced teachers for support. They can offer you advice and guidance.
They can also help you when you are struggling with something. So, if you are thinking about becoming a teacher, or you are already a teacher, make sure to seek out experienced teachers for support and make sure you use teaching time-savers. It will make your job a lot easier.
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