How Teachers Can Actually Have a Life — Transcript

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1. 0:01Many teachers have a poor work-life balance.
2. 0:03I know, because I've had years of experience as a teacher in the classroom.
3. 0:06I'm here to teach you how to handle your workload and restore that work-life balance.
4. 0:10If you follow my time management methods, long days should be a thing of the past.
5. 0:14You'll be able to go home on time, worry-free, knowing that you've done everything you need to do.
6. 0:19Let's begin.
7. 0:20One of the biggest challenges you face as a teacher is your uncooperative coworkers, your students.
8. 0:25Sometimes they try and do as little work as is possible and it can be tempting to let them get away with it.
9. 0:30After all, if some of them don't do their homework, that's less homework for you to mark.
10. 0:33Small problems like this, such as letting an individual student get away
11. 0:36with not doing a homework or a project can quickly grow into big problems,
12. 0:40like the entire class not doing their homework.
13. 0:42Ultimately, if the students aren't doing the work you're assigning them, they're going to do less well on the tests
14. 0:46and they're learning less.
15. 0:48You'll also have to spend more and more time in your day dealing with classroom management issues
16. 0:51like trying to get them to do their work.
17. 0:53The students don't learn just what you teach them directly. They're also learning about you as a person.
18. 0:57If you are the kind of teacher who lets homework slide, they're going to be less and less likely to do work for you
19. 1:01and to respect you.
20. 1:03You have to make sure that you're keeping track of everything that's going on in your classroom.
21. 1:06But this is quite a challenge because often times, teachers have 500 or more students
22. 1:09that they need to be looking after.
23. 1:11How do you make sure that you're keeping track of what everybody owes you and what needs to be done?
24. 1:15The tool that I recommend that can change your life is just a small, sturdy clipboard.
25. 1:19If you go out and you get one for yourself today, I guarantee you, it will change your life as a teacher.
26. 1:24There are three kinds of things that you should keep on your clipboard:
27. 1:27Their tracking sheets, their daily must-do lists, and there's a general to-do list.
28. 1:31I want to talk about the tracking sheet first.
29. 1:34The tracking sheet starts out its life as just a plain piece of blank paper.
30. 1:37But as the days go by, if any student misses something for you, a homework or a project,
31. 1:42you put their name on this list, make a note of what the thing is they're missing,
32. 1:45and the date that this happened on.
33. 1:48You should go through this list at least once a week and cross off anybody who's gotten work back to you.
34. 1:52Or send messages to those who haven't.
35. 1:54If a student continues not to give something to you, you need to look into your own school's sanctions policies.
36. 2:00As long as you never cross off anybody's name before they've given you what they owe you,
37. 2:03you'll always be making sure that you get every piece of work from every student.
38. 2:07When collecting in the homework from students, you should go around to the students' desk individually,
39. 2:11collect each piece of homework and then write down the names of those who don't have it.
40. 2:15If you do this regularly, the students will quickly learn that you're the kind of teacher
41. 2:18who doesn't let things slide.
42. 2:19And they'll put you on the top of their own to-do lists.
43. 2:23The second thing to talk about are the daily must-do lists.
44. 2:26On your computer, you should make a Word document that has a blank page for each workday.
45. 2:31On those pages, you're going to put down the things that must happen by the end of that day,
46. 2:34in order to be fully prepared for the next day.
47. 2:38So as an example, every Monday, you need to list all of the classes that you need to plan for on Tuesday.
48. 2:43If there's anything else that needs to be done before Tuesday, also put that on that list.
49. 2:47The thing that really makes this work is that it is a must-do list. This is not a daily to-do list.
50. 2:52You're not putting down things that you would like to get done by the end of the day,
51. 2:55but that are ultimately optional.
52. 2:57You need to put down things that have to get done.
53. 3:00I like to think of this as my "I must do this before I can go home list".
54. 3:04If you limit your list to only the things that absolutely have to get done,
55. 3:07it's much more motivating to knock those things off, so you know you can go home at the end of the day
56. 3:11and not have to be worrying all night about what you need to do first thing in the morning
57. 3:14to be ready for the day.
58. 3:17The last thing to keep on the clipboard is a general to-do list. This is a list for everything that doesn't fit
59. 3:21on your must-do list.
60. 3:24Anything that is less time sensitive goes on here. Any general project that you need to do at some point,
61. 3:29but not by a specific day will all be kept track of on here.
62. 3:32After you've crossed off your must-do list, then you would turn over to your general to-do list
63. 3:36and start working through those items, if you have time.
64. 3:40The next thing I want to talk about is paperwork.
65. 3:42Teachers deal with a lot of paper and you have to have a system for keeping it all together.
66. 3:46This is what I recommend. You should have one folder for each class that you teach.
67. 3:51Within that folder, you're going to keep all of the papers that you currently need to teach that class.
68. 3:56So, any worksheets that you're going to give out, any tests you're going to give out,
69. 4:00homework that you've gotten back and need to mark, all of those kinds of things go into this folder.
70. 4:05Any reference materials that you wouldn't need on a particular day to teach that class,
71. 4:09such as workbooks that you use to photocopy the worksheets from,
72. 4:12those you can keep in a separate filing cabinet.
73. 4:16Here's an example of the kind of thing to keep inside one of the folders. This is a collection of papers
74. 4:20that's for a Year 10 test.
75. 4:23There's three parts to this little packet, so let's take a look at them.
76. 4:25First, there's the papers themselves.
77. 4:28Secondly, there's a title sheet that clearly describes what they are. In this example, Year 10 Tests.
78. 4:33And lastly, there's a cover slip which keeps all of these things together.
79. 4:37If you leave a lot of blank space on your cover sheet, you can add additional information later on,
80. 4:41such as when you've given the test to the students and received them back, you can add To Mark
81. 4:45on the front of that sheet, so that you know you need to take care of this.
82. 4:48And once you've marked them, you can then cross that out.
83. 4:50Again, to quickly review, keep one folder for each of your classes, and keep all of the things that you need to teach
84. 4:56that class in that folder.
85. 4:58Once you set up this system, you know that you just need that single folder to be adequately prepared
86. 5:01for the class.
87. 5:02This is also convenient, in case there's a room change. You can just grab that folder and go.
88. 5:06If you're able to organize your files in the ways that I've just recommended,
89. 5:09and you're able to consistently work with your daily must-do list, the advantage is that when you walk into
90. 5:14school on any day, you know that you're completely ready for whatever's going to happen.
91. 5:18You don't have to spend any of your day frantically planning for that afternoon lesson,
92. 5:22and if anything comes up unexpectedly, you don't have to worry about it, because you're all set
93. 5:26for every one of your lessons for that day.
94. 5:29Once you start getting used to this ready position, you'll find that you have more time in the day than you actually
95. 5:33originally thought. One of the places that time has been hiding from you is in these little five minute intervals
96. 5:38between lessons.
97. 5:40After the last class leaves and before the next class comes in, you can use this time in a productive way
98. 5:44if you're prepared adequately.
99. 5:46I recommend that you keep a list of things that you can do in these little five minute times.
100. 5:51For example, you can do some quick filing or, if you have an easy to mark quiz, you can mark a couple of those
101. 5:55pages in that quiz.
102. 5:58After a full day of teaching, you can sometimes find that you've marked a complete class set of quizzes
103. 6:02without ever feeling like you had to sit down and mark the whole thing at once.
104. 6:06I want you to realize as a teacher that your job is a lot less clear than other jobs.
105. 6:11If you think of a factory worker, they have a clearly defined shift, which is nine to five
106. 6:15and they're producing a tangible product, such as a car.
107. 6:18You know when the car is done because all of the pieces have been fit together.
108. 6:21Being a teacher is not like this. If you're working on something like making presentations
109. 6:25or making a test for a class or a worksheet, this kind of work can really go on forever.
110. 6:31You can always make a presentation a little bit snappier or you can always make a worksheet a little bit clearer.
111. 6:36When you're making something like a worksheet, at some point, the worksheet is going to be serviceable.
112. 6:41It's going to be completely adequate for the educational aim that you're trying to achieve.
113. 6:45If you're going to continue working, you really need to stop and think for a moment.
114. 6:48Would I better spend my time making this worksheet absolutely perfect?
115. 6:54Or would my time be better spent moving on to something else?
116. 6:57Most of the time, the answer is the latter. You're better off having two satisfactory worksheets
117. 7:02for two different classes than one perfect worksheet for one class, but no worksheet for the other one.
118. 7:08Now let's talk about sick days. Teachers have one of the lowest absentee rates of any profession.
119. 7:12And I don't think that's because teachers are more healthy than most people.
120. 7:15It's because, as a teacher, sometimes missing a day of work is more of a hassle than just going in,
121. 7:20no matter how poorly you may be feeling.
122. 7:22Because of this, teachers don't often take days off work until they're feeling really poor.
123. 7:27Do yourself a favor as a teacher. Spend some time creating lessons to be used in your absence
124. 7:31ahead of time.
125. 7:33If you make them before you need them, when you actually are sick, you can just call in the school
126. 7:37and tell them, "There's a file in my filing cabinet. It's called cover work. Everything you need is in there."
127. 7:42Then you can hang up the phone, crawl back into bed and spend your day getting better,
128. 7:45as opposed to spending your day worrying about what your students are actually going to do.
129. 7:49The last thing I want to talk about is how big projects get done.
130. 7:53Something like a cathedral doesn't just pop into existence. It gets built very slowly over time,
131. 7:58one brick by one brick.
132. 8:00It's a good idea to try and carve out at least twenty minutes, maybe thirty minutes, everyday
133. 8:04to work on a long term project that's beneficial to you and your career.
134. 8:08For example, if there's a new computer skill that you need to learn, if you just spend twenty minutes a day
135. 8:12on it, you can make real progress on something like that over time.
136. 8:16If you set aside daily time to work on your long term projects, you'll be pleasantly surprised by how much
137. 8:20you can accomplish. When you look back in six months or a year, you'll be amazed at what you've done.
138. 8:25And lastly, don't forget why it is you became a teacher in the first place.
139. 8:29The summer holidays.