Most people's working lives are structured into a series of repetitive cycles: the lesson cycle, the weekly cycle, the termly cycle, the annual cycle, and so on. Our working life is itself, or course, a single iteration of a repeated cycle, which is shared by thousands of others.
This is good news of course: 'cycles' and 'repetition' encourage us to develop good habits through routine. We know what to expect, and we learn how to respond.
The bad news is that for teachers, the cycles of life are pretty complicated. They each have many rituals and variations, and of course, they are all happening simultaneously. Each day, at any given moment we are performing tasks from each of the different cycles - some tasks are repeated every lesson, some are repeated every day, others happen only once a term or once an academic year.
The important thing here is awareness - awareness of what the cycles involve, and being prepared for them. In teaching, the two most important cycles are:
- The Yearly cycle (which is repeated each Academic Year and is comprised of three terms, each slightly different)
- The Weekly cycle (which is repeated each seven days and is comprised of several different day cycles).
We could, of course, logically discuss daily cycles, or termly cycles, but for the purposes of TM4T yearly and weekly will satisfy most of our needs. It is worth emphasizing that this is a decision we make - there is no universally agreed pattern of which cycles are important. In TM4T, however, we will emphasize Yearly and Weekly, and let the others spin unhindered.
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