3 Quick & Easy Ways to Get More Planning Time

Well, friends, we’re in the final sprint to the finish line. Unless you work in a year-round school, it’s likely that you have begun a countdown to final exams and the last day of class, and of course, that blessed LAST teacher workday. 

Are you “Teacher Tired” yet? 

That’s probably why you’re here.

I think that those outside the profession sometimes don’t really understand what it’s like: they see a “short” workday that “ends” between 2-4pm, which is several hours before the 9-5.

They see 3-5 days off for Thanksgiving, a week for Christmas, a week for spring break, various holidays throughout the year that most other jobs have to work, and of course let’s not forget about the summer…

Sadly, some outsiders see “glorified babysitters” who help kids to do fun projects. (These are probably the same folks who think that being a stay-at-home parent isn’t “real WORK”…)

And so they’ll look at a phrase like “teacher tired” with disdain…but if you know, you know…that our vacations and holidays are ESSENTIAL to avoiding absolute burnout…and even then, there’s a huge turnover rate right now in the profession, about 10% on average (and even higher in some places). 

But I’m preaching to the choir, right? You already know this, because those are the absentee spots you fill in for when there’s not enough subs in the building (which is every day)…

Now, I don’t want you to get the impression that this is a complaint-fest. Definitely not! Complaining and grumbling is counter-productive to relieving stress. Contrary to the belief that “getting it off your chest” is the way to feel better, if all you do is complain about something, it’s actually going to make you feel worse. This reminds me of a great quote I once heard: “We SEE what we FOCUS ON.”

So let’s choose to focus on solutions.

Let’s chat today about just one of the many reasons why you may be “teacher tired,” because if you don’t address the root of the problem, you can’t correct it in a permanent way. 

Around here we’re interested in long-term healing, not band-aids.

Teacher-Tired Reason #1: Not enough planning time/too many meetings

Ok, so I know that some of this you don’t have control over: you likely don’t get to choose your own schedule each year or semester, it’s just given to you. And you definitely don’t have a say in when mandatory staff meetings are scheduled.

We can only control what we can control. So let’s look a little closer at how we can micro-manage (in a good way!) the time we do have.

Solutions

Here are a few easy ideas for building more planning time into your day (that you can begin doing tomorrow!):

1- Arrive Early

I will admit: most days I make it to work right on time…not a minute earlier. I’ve just never been a morning person! Getting there by the required time of 6:45 really takes my full effort already…But some of you are morning people, and this can totally work for you! My colleague in the classroom adjacent mine does this every day: she gets to work at least 1 hour early and has completely quiet, undisturbed work time all to herself. Because she is so disciplined in this, she also leaves work shortly after the students do on most days. This works great for her! If you’re a morning person too, give it a try!

2- Work Through Lunch

I’ve done this since year 1: I always, ALWAYS have a working lunch. While on the surface “working through lunch” may seem like a “workaholic” move, I find it to be the opposite. When was the last time you actually enjoyed having lunch at work, relaxing and savoring your meal and the time spent eating it? 

I’ll wait. 

Contrast that to how you’d feel if you ate and worked through your lunch period so that you could leave the building an hour earlier, thereby potentially freeing up an hour to have coffee with a friend?  I’d rather use my work time to do WORK and be able to leave at a decent time, and schedule my leisure/social time on my own time outside work hours, thereby having the freedom and peace of mind to actually savor and enjoy it without waiting for a bell to ring.

3- Look for In-class Opportunities to Get Work Done

Multi-tasking while students work is something I do every single day in my classroom. Students working independently on an assessment for 20 minutes? That’s 20 minutes I can be working on something else. Of course, I am alert to students asking for help/raising hands, and I do circulate the room every few minutes. But if students are working, focused, and don’t need my help every single moment, I can definitely use that time to work on tasks that are “light lifting” and don’t require too much deep thought, but do require time to complete, like grading multiple choice questions, quick written responses, sending emails, organizing files, etc. 

If 20 minutes at a time sounds like too big of a chunk to you, try smaller bite-sized pieces: how about finding 5 minutes four times a day? Sounds more do-able, right? In a 5 day week, you just found yourself almost 2 hours of extra time! Those small pockets of time really do add up!

I’ve got lots more to say on the topic of “Teacher Tired” and suggestions for how to combat it. Meet me back here next week, where we’ll tackle another source of being perpetually teacher-tired: Buried in Grading!!