Time Management

Have you ever tracked how you spend time at work or the time you spend behind your desk? It’s fairly eye-opening to see how long some tasks actually take and how quickly you can complete others.
Like many businesses, we try to track our hours by project. A few months ago we ran across a free program to assist in the process called Klok. Klok is time-tracking software with many features.

I don’t use Klok constantly anymore, but it certainly made me aware of where I’m wasting time and helped me rearrange a few tasks throughout my day to make me more efficient. As a small business, it has helped us better estimate the real-time needed to complete projects and budgets.


Time management is one of those skills we all would like to be just a little better at. As educators, we’d really like for our students to be better time managers! The first step to improving is to look at where you’re currently at. How about asking your students to track their work time over a certain timeframe: a few periods, during the school day, over the course of a unit or say during a select 48 hours? Follow up with a journal entry or discussion to reflect and provide time management strategies. If you’re into technology, test out Klok. If you need something simpler, use the good old pen-and-paper method.

Suggestions for Effective Time Tracking:

• Set up the general categories you want to track
  -General category examples: sleep, homework/studying, in-class, non-school related computer or games, TV, hygene, etc.
  -More specific examples would be broken out by subject or even by specific tasks within subject


• Keep track while you’re doing the task (we are often off when we try to estimate after the fact)


• Be sure to sum totals for all categories (could be a good graphing exercise as well)

Reflection and Follow-Up Items:

• What surprises you about how you spend your time?


• What doesn’t surprise you about how you spend your time?


• In what areas could you easily be more efficient?


• How could you better balance your time?


• What tasks would you like to spend more time on?


• List 2 goals for how you would like to better allocate your time next week
  

Leadership Development Tip for August 28, 2008

Avoid Power Struggles with Choices

During my first year of teaching, I had a really good mentor in the classroom next door. I picked up a few good habits by simply watching. Perhaps the best thing I learned from my mentor was how to avoid power struggles by offering students choice. When a student was off track she would approach them with the following statement:

“You have two choices: you can head back to your desk and complete the assignment before class ends or you’re welcome to join me today after school and finish it then. Why don’t you take a minute to think about what would work best for you.”

Then she would purposely walk away for a minute or two to give the student his or her space. She never approached the student looking for confrontation and she always remained calm. She also stuck to her word of requiring students to show up after school if needed.

I tested out both methods: the “do this now” and offering choice and much preferred the results of the choice. I’ve since found more theory and great suggestions in two books: Teaching with Love and Logic and Positive Behavior Support. Next time you’re dealing with a challenging student, try it out for yourself!

Love and Logic offers these Rules for Giving Choices (pg. 31Teaching with Love and Logic first edition):

1. Always be sure to select choices that you like. Never provide one you like and one you don’t, because a child seems to have a sixth sense in selecting the one don’t like.


2. Never give a choice unless you are willing to allow the child to experience the consequence of that choice.


3. Never give choices when the child is in danger.


4. Never give choices unless you are willing to make the choice for the child in the event he/she does not choose within ten seconds.


5. Your delivery is important. Try to start your sent with:
   - You’re welcome to ___ or ___.
   - Feel free to ___ or ___.
   - Would you rather ___ or ___?
   - What would be best for you ___ or ___?

Professional Development Tip for August 28, 2008

Career Cluster Interest Inventory

Looking to expose your students to Career Clusters? Wanting to dig a little deeper than just asking what your students want to be when they grow up?

Check out the Career Cluster Interest Inventory available on CareerClusters.org. It’s a PDF you can print off for each student with the scoring directions and brief information on each cluster. The inventory itself is straightforward and very easy to score. It will help students identify the top three clusters they may be interested in. If you’re planning for students to take the inventory in class, budget at least 20 minutes for the actual assessment and scoring.

Take it one step further by compiling classroom results to help you cater content examples to your students’ interests.


Career Development Tip for August 28, 2008

Very Cool Class Project Idea

If you’re teaching in the classroom or work with teachers, you’ve got to checkout Common Craft. They’re a small on-line company doing great things. They self describe their product as “explanation.” They produce short, on-line videos which explain things like social media and the election process in “plain English.”

Electing a US President in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

As a teacher, I can see several of the videos coming in very handy in the classroom as they explain things much clearer than I typically do. I also think you could show a sample or two to your students and then charge them with the business of explaining something they’ve learned in class by making a similar video or presentation. All you’d need is white paper, a few markers and some kind of camera to record. Even a $15 web cam would work just fine. Picture a few students writing a mini script and making a little video explaining photosynthesis, the Civil War or proper sentence structure. And, you could add it to your own library to show classes in the years to come. It may also come in handy to show off to parents and administrators. Very cool!

Check out the

Common Craft Store for yourself. You can preview all the videos. Additionally, Common Craft offers a 50% discount on site licenses for school districts.

Classroom Engagement Tip for August 28, 2008