So: we have our Ticklist filled with a day's worth of things to do... and now the end of the day arrives (whoopee). What happens now? Well, you look at your weekly plan of course. There, hopefully you will see a task called Ticks and Twos.
The Importance of Ticks and Twos
We have mentioned before how important it is to tackle your Ticklist with the right (EA) mindset (To remind yourself about EAs, click here).
Ticks and Twos represent the Goldilocks principle in action (Reminder here). You will recall that a teacher's life can be modelled using a fishbone diagram and that you can interpret this in different ways. You could interpret it in a passive way: a teacher buffeted by waves of conflicting pressures. In practice, you need to interpret it in an active way: a teacher making decisions about which opportunities to take when... And this is when you do it – in doing your Ticks-and-Twos. You will decide when and where you are going to work on what, making quick and confident decisions. Then, you will simply follow your plan.
This 'Ticks and Twos' task should ideally take less than ten minutes - certainly no more than 20 - and it is important that you do it quickly and energetically. If you are tired and dull after a hard day teaching, then take a moment to mentally perk yourself up - jump up and down or splash your face with cold water. Take it seriously: make sure that you are in the right mood and make sure you are in the right place (you will have chosen this in your high-level planning) and attack your tick list.
Look at each item on the list and decide what needs to be done - the specific next action that is needed - and decide roughly how long it will take:
1) 0-2 Minutes: if the answer is two minutes or less, then do it now, and tick it off. If there are further actions resulting from what you have done, add them to your Plans.
You might think: "if it takes less than two minutes, why didn't we do it straight away instead of writing it down?". To read why, click here.
If you're not sure what 'add them to your Plans' means, click here.
2) 2-15 Minutes: write the letter T next to it if you think it can be done in less than fifteen minutes. T stands for Ten - this does not mean that you should expect all these tasks to take ten minutes each, but you should expect to have tasks which average about that.
There are slots in your Full Timetable, and therefore in your Weekly Plans, where these will be tackled.
3) More than 15 Minutes: schedule a time to tackle bigger tasks. If there is no free time available in our free time timetable, this is likely to involve the X-time we put in our calendar at the start of the year. And that's it. Simple, isn't it?
Of course, anyone with experience of teaching will tell you "No, it isn't simple at all". This last step - magically deciding that all the big tasks will be done in X-time - is NOT easy, it is not straightforward, and - unless you really prepare well and work in a disciplined way, it won't even work. It is very easy for teachers to get into the habit of using X-time every week, to do a bit of extra marking or to plan more interesting lessons. This is OK of course, as long as they retain the energy and the self-control to deal with unexpected tasks in a stress-free way when they inevitably arise.
If teachers can muddle through anyway, then why have we gone to all this trouble? The answer is that by tackling our tasks in this way, we have achieved a great deal:
a) we have avoided stress by tackling the public-pressure tasks first, before they become hot news (these were added to your Yearly Plan at the start of the year)
b) we have looked for better results by prioritising the important educational tasks before we consider anything else. (these were added to your Yearly Plan when the Schemes of Work were produced/reviewed)
c) we have aimed at getting as much out of the way as early and as efficiently as we can by tackling the small stuff first.
What we are left with is the genuinely unexpected - often disruptive tasks. Work that we did not know about at the beginning of term, which is not really a part of the big-picture plan. Tasks like this do arise, but they should not be prioritised above your classroom teaching, or the public commitments of the school. If they are genuinely urgent and important, you should really seek guidance from your department and school management before you allow any of your other commitments to be impacted.
As always, it is not enough to simply do the tasks, in order to be efficient you have to do them in the right way. To understand how, click here.