TM4T Background 0.2.2 - The Tick Tock Teacher

Time Management for Teachers (TM4T) involves planning what we are going to do - and when, and where - and then disciplining ourselves to mentally monitor and rigorously control how long we spend on each task.

The sentence above, unfortunately, sometimes prompts a negative reaction from teachers. Several of the words sound unfamiliar, unteacherly or just plain stressful: plan, discipline, monitor, rigour and control' - they all seem a bit Big Brother, don't they?

This little page is just to say 'don't worry'. Many teachers may feel that too much structure in their lives is restrictive. They might think that freedom from stress lies in a more flexible environment, a less rigorous regime. They may worry that establishing a routine will result in their lives becoming enmeshed in a web of time. Fear not, dear reader. Many have passed the path you tread, and there is no need for concern. This is, in fact, the path to freedom.

The simple fact is that most teachers spend w-a-a-y too much time and effort working things out as-they-go, deciding right-there-and-then what to do each hour of each individual day of their teaching lives. They react to what the day throws at them, rather than responding in a prepared, proportionate way. They allow others - students, parents, management, peers - to dictate their lives, and these teachers react to events and actions instead of responding. This distinction is important. A reaction is a reflex triggered by a stimulus - it is, in a real sense, determined by others; it implies no freedom of action, no control over your life. A response, on the other hand, is owned by YOU. It is planned by you as an act of self-determination.

Let's take an example: a phone call from an anxious parent. The parent phones the school at lunch-time (smart parents know when school lunch is) and the switchboard passes the call through to your department's office. Decision: should you take the call and use up five minutes of your lunch-break? Or should you say that you're busy and arrange a time to call back? Either option is OK - but what is NOT OK is feeling anxious about the decision during your precious free time. This is not an unusual scenario, so why not decide in advance how you will deal with it? The TM4T answer is that you only take the call if it will take less than a minute, and that you should already have a pre-planned slot in your schedule for dealing with tasks like this if you can't handle the call right way; however, regardless of whether you follow this advice or not, you should make the decision in advance, and stop worrying.

The key point here is that making the decision in advance grants you freedom. You know what you are going to do - you have calmly chosen your course of action. You do not have to will-i-won't-i when the phone rings: if you have decided to deal with phone calls straight away, you do so; if you have decided that you will only deal with emergencies in your lunch break, then that's what happens. You decide. You choose. You respond. You don't react.

So... planning in advance how to spend your time might seem to some teachers to represent the opposite to freedom of action, but in fact it represents the most effective way to gain that freedom, to gain control, and improve the quality of your work while you do so. If it seems strange, if you instinctively kick against the regimentation of your self-imposed schedule, you need to remind yourself that choice equals freedom.

And - to reassure you further - we don't intend to live the whole of our working lives this way. The goal is that we use these time management techniques solely to increase our productivity and efficiency in our work outside the classroom, in our non-teaching tasks. By doing this, by spending less time on the bread-and-butter non-contact work, we gain time to concentrate on the important stuff - hopefully, the stuff we actually enjoy doing … and, of course, by gaining more control of our lives - we can actually reduce the likelihood of stress.

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