Here are the Top Tips for Your Weekly Plan
1. Remember plans are useless unless you use them.
'Using them' means looking at them regularly and changing them if they aren't working. You should keep in mind why we are doing this planning: we want to get everything done in good time, but we also want to smooth our workload and avoid too many frantic peaks. When you are making your Weekly Plan, you should be mindful (if you're not sure what this means, click here. If you don't have time to read this, just give the planning your full attention) and realistic about what is really happening, and keep checking that you have got the life-work balance right. Teachers are sometimes prone to 'one way thinking' in this respect: if they are unusually busy at school, they will 'borrow' some family time to catch up, but will not always repay this time when things are unusually quiet at work.
2. Routines are great but...
Daily routines are important, but it is also important to vary those routines over time - otherwise life may get very boring. The variety does not have to be radical - change your walking route to school, try a new brand of tea, or talk to someone new in the staffroom. Don't get stuck in a rut, and don't focus so much on your targets and deadlines that you forget to get any enjoyment out of teaching.
3. To 'me' or not to 'me'
Human beings can be both social and solitary animals. You need to reflect both of these traits in your weekly routine, and you need to get the balance right. At home, I sometimes say things like 'I’m going to me the morning'. This means that I'd like to spend the morning alone with me (perhaps writing this website) and I'd prefer no other company. This type of negotiated privacy is often more relaxing than complete isolation. The intention is to be on your own, but not entirely on your own.
At other times, of course, I love the company and enjoy the conversation of my family, my friends, my colleagues.
When you are deciding how to spend your non-teaching time, you should bear in mind that there are psychological benefits to both aspects. Quiet time alone offers a valuable opportunity for reflection and creativity, but social conversation is equally important in building relationships, encouraging a collegial spirit, and - heck - just being nice. Most research shows that technological alternatives - text messages, e-mails, twitter, whatever - have less value than face-to-face communication.
4. Smooth the Peaks and Troughs
There is an important reason for using your Yearly Plan to prepare your Weekly Plan. Teacher's years are odd, and problematic if not managed well. Long idle summers, frenetic autumns and manic ends of term leading to blissful relaxation as summer comes again. You should seek to enjoy and engage with this variety, but actively plan to minimise the peaks in workload which are involved. This means that you should be constantly looking ahead, using your Yearly Plan to anticipate sticky times ahead, and to shuffle your work around to smooth the daily load.
This can difficult if you are training or newly qualified, but still achievable. You should have found time to interview a mentor or a reliable, experienced practitioner (ask a regular lifesize human, not one of those miraculous characters who sail serenely through life and don't know why everyone gets so flustered). Find out when the really manic times are and get prepared. You might expect that the workload peaks are the same in every school, but this is not the case. Some events, for example Inspections, cause agitation and flurries of additional work in every school, but other events may be entirely unremarkable in School A yet a source of disruption and frenzied endeavour in School B.