Knowing how much time to spend on things is critical in time management. Of course, we have already discussed the most important concept involved: that of opportunity cost. Whenever we decide to do anything, we implicitly decide not to do a range of other things. The key, therefore, is balance - making sure that every aspect of our work gets a fair share of our busy teacher's week, and that nothing significant gets missed entirely. This is sometimes called the Goldilocks Strategy: not too little, not too much; just the right amount.
To remind yourself of these key TM4T principles, click here.
You need to strive to spend time on the important things. TM4T is not about educational theory or pedagogy, so it offers no value judgements about the relative importance of the work that teachers do. You, on the other hand, absolutely must make those judgements. Every day and all the time. This is what time management is about. You must decide whether helping Natasha-Mae to find her lost exercise book is more important than marking Year 9's project work. You must assess whether reading the minutes of the governors' meeting is more important than planning an A Level Lesson...
... and, of course, there is no right answer to questions like these; the textbooks may tell us that Assessment-for-Learning is critical in determining educational outcomes, but helping Natasha-Mae could be critical in building a relationship with a difficult child; careful planning leads to excellent lessons, but the Governors' meeting may have made important decisions that you need to know about. Depending on context and your personal circumstances you must routinely make these decisions and you must accept that you cannot do everything perfectly and that occasionally you will get it wrong. There are, though, some mistakes you will wish to avoid:
- do not undervalue the bread-and-butter of teaching
- do not confuse the unusual with important or urgent
- do not ignore the value of relationship building
The key to efficient teaching is, therefore, not to stop doing any of the big things you already do - it involves spending only an appropriate amount of time on them. We particularly need to spend an appropriate amount of time on the bread and butter operations of teaching: this means not just classroom contact, but preparing sound lessons, and responsible assessment. Many teachers forget just how much time is involved in these activities. To remind yourself, click here .
In doing our non-contact work, we need to sail our ships between two opposing rocks, either of which could wreck our journey - these rocks are called obsession and distraction. 'Obsession' in this context means focussing on one task to the exclusion of other demands; 'distraction' means skipping between tasks without achieving much.
In Business, a considerable amount of time is spent debating topics like corporate goals and mission statements - what the primary activity of the company is. In Teaching, fortunately, there is very little to debate. We are all pretty clear on what our goals and mission are: the goal is learning; the mission is to improve the life choices of those we teach. These represent our 'primary activity' and in order to be effective teachers we need to focus on that primary activity.
To read more about achieving our objectives, click here.
To continue - to look at a list of what a teacher should and shouldn't be doing in their non-contact time, click here....