Ever wanted to only work contract hours? As teachers, we spend so much of our nights and weekends, outside of contract hours, doing everything we can to give our students the learning experience they need and deserve.
Step #1: Shift Your Mindset to Only Work Contract Hours
Ways to Shift Your Mindset
Think of all of the things you have accomplished, the successes from the day before, a mental list of all the things you’re grateful for. Avoid vampire teachers. Avoid negative self talk. Don’t write off an entire day or week. We make progress inconsistently – it’s human nature! Decide everyday to reinforce the boundaries you set. Think of it like exercising, eating healthy, sleeping, etc.
Boundary Setting
We train others that we are available at the drop of a hat. Anything, anytime. Be intentional about breaks and when to respond to others. Set boundaries on how often you check your phone, email and social media. Set boundaries around how late you will stay at school and how long you will complete work at home. I personally aim for 3-5 hours less than you worked the previous week. You can slowly decrease the extra hours over time. Don’t let your “to-do” list control your life! There will always be more to do in every area. Master the practice of letting go of more.
Why It’s Hard to Say No
- We’re afraid to make people mad.
- We’re afraid to hurt someone’s feelings.
- We want to be liked.
- We don’t want to be rude, we were raised to be polite.
- We underestimate how much time it will really take.
- We aren’t clear on our own priorities.
- We feel good by being helpful.
- We like earring future return favors.
Give yourself permission to say no without guilt!
Ways to Say No
First – saying “no” is enough. You don’t owe anyone anything more.
- Focus on your goals and priorities. Create a large bright sticky note with your key priorities on it. Tape it in places where you will see it regularly (such as on the cover of your planner, on your mirror, etc.)
- Focus on the outcome.
- Have an accountability partner or best friend at school to help you out.
- Practice being confident.
- Create a reason for saying no and meaning it.
- Ask yourself if this task will align with your goals, use up your time or energy.
- Practice various ways to say no. (being vague, it’s not personal, ask me another time, you’re busy, I’ll help some other way, etc.)
Step #2: Eliminate Perfectionism
Relax your standards. Especially if you lower them and no one notices. Don’t spend time and energy on things that aren’t necessary. Not all tasks are actually worth it. Oftentimes the only person who benefits from it or notices it in any measurable way is ourselves. If you’re doing a task because no one else can do it to your standard or liking is too. It’s dangerous to base your self-worth on what others think of us. Don’t spend too much time, and too much stress, on little things that don’t really matter.
We feel we’re supposed to do “whatever it takes” to ensure every single student in our class succeeds – but the word is WE. We, as in, a school community. Not you as an individual teacher who is constrained by a school system that’s not designed to support teachers or kids.
Don’t pressure yourself to “save” students with the “perfect” intervention or lesson. There’s a part of every teacher that believes if yous spend enough time looking through ideas and put enough effort into your lesson, a student who is living in poverty, has an abusive adult living at home, is not getting enough to eat, and is unmedicated for ADHD will miraculously learn how to work on grade level.
Knowing what is “enough” to give each student is about accepting that there is always something more you could be doing for a child that would help them.
Step #3: Overcome Procrastination to Only Work Contract Hours
Procrastination is the habit of putting off important, less pleasurable tasks by doing easier, more pleasurable tasks. You don’t procrastinate because you’re lazy – you do it because you have a lack of motivation or you underestimate the power of present emotions versus future emotions when you set your task list or goals. So how do we overcome procrastination?
How to Overcome Procrastination
Battle with your future self in the present to avoid future sabotage. Think about and visualize the why behind them. Grab an accountability partner. Punish yourself for goal “failure.” Self-talk yourself as if you already were your ideal self. Plan on settling for less than perfect.
Step #4: Time Tracking
Take a minute to think about the most valuable things in life. Really take a minute and even close your eyes. Come up with a list of all the things in the world that you value the most. What was on your list? Most likely: Spouse/Significant Other, Children, Family, Friends, Health, Money, Time. These things on your list are your “non-negotiables.” Highly successful people rank time as the most important item of them all. You can NEVER get time back. You can spend it, but not earn it again. You can’t rent it. You can’t buy it. You can’t borrow it. We let people steal our time or waste it all the time.
So now that we know we have approximately 960 minutes a day – LESS THAN 1000 – we need to know HOW we spend that time. We need to Time Track. The thing that makes tracking so scary is also what makes it worthwhile. Writing it down, measuring it helps you see unhealthy, unbalanced patterns. It helps us identify where we waste time and where we are sabotaging our success. You’ll also be better motivated to make better decisions about your time because you know you’ll be recording it.
How to Time Track
You can start by tracking how many hours you’re working by estimating in your head and writing it down. Work up to recording your actual work hours – every minute you work, whether from home or from school. Keep track of HOW you are spending your time. Write what you are doing during that time. Take note of what tasks drain you mentally or physically. Increased energy = more work done. Observe what happened during the day and the effects it had on your productivity. What gives you more energy? What takes your energy away? Can you quantify it on a scale of 1-10? Record it in a journal (negative and positive impacts).
A Few Tips…
This will help you learn to become more accurate in estimating how long tasks take to complete for when we get to time boxing. Observe what types of tasks take longer than you thought so you can adjust your mindset and schedule. Time working versus time being in the building – checking social media, emptying email inbox, talking to family members, fixing/eating snacks, chatting with coworkers, etc. Prolonged time feels like at school without working. Eliminate unintentional breaks. Rember, we have less than 1,000 minutes per day.
Step #5: The Most Important Task
Before we get started, let’s make a list of all of the goals we want to achieve. Get everything out of your head and on a list (it will all get done eventually).
Paring the List Down:
Now identify what are your most important tasks. These are activities that will lead to achieving your goals and are the most important right now. Sort by priority – high, medium, low. Cut out unnecessary tasks and ask yourself if you really need to do that item. You can create a paper list or an electronic list (my favorite platforms for lists are Google Keep and Trello).
Step #6: Time Boxing
How to Create a Schedule
Most tasks expand to fill whatever amount of time you allow it to fill. If you don’t give yourself a time limit, it’s going to take until you quit. Using excel or Google Sheets (or draw one on paper) create a spreadsheet of your day from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed. First start with hourly, but you change the increments to what best works for you. Add to the spreadsheets everything that is important to you and your non-negotiables (for instance: work time, family time, etc.) Leave blanks where you have “free time.” The blocks that are left when you have finished are your “time boxes” for items on your lists. (or alternatively your calender or planner)
Other Schedule Ideas
Go to school 2 hours early everyday and leave when kids do. Take no work home.
Work 9 hours on Monday and Wednesday, 8 hours on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.
Work only contract hours Monday through Friday and work from home 7am – 1pm on Saturday.
Stay 1 hour late everyday and work from 8pm-10pm three days a week.
Work 3 hours every Monday evening to prepare for the week and stay 1 hour late Thursday and Friday.
Scheduling Tips
Leave a few spots open and don’t put anything in it. These are for items on your lists that you can add each week. Always complete your Most Important Task as early in the morning as you can. Don’t cancel goals; reschedule them if necessary. Treat your time-blocked calendar entries as if they were appointments with your doctor. They are that important! Build in buffer time. This can be one day a week to “catch up.” At the end of the day/week, cross off tasks not completed and move them to the next day’s list.
Save the quick, easy tasks for the afternoon. Decide if you’ll work at home or at school. Be mindful of the tasks that drain you and don’t put too many other things on your to-do list when you handle those things. (Look at your time tracking.) Always think through your priorities. People who leave work at a consistent time are less likely to feel “wired” later at night. Aim for 75% of your tasks each day. If not happening, you’re overscheduling or underestimating the time it takes to complete tasks.
Step #7: Creating Systems
Plan out routines and procedures for EVERYTHING. Figure out what you want kids to do and how to communicate it. Create systems that make these routines simplistic and automatic.
Homework/Schoolwork System:
- The amount given
- The type given
- How you hold students accountable
- Collection
Grading System
- Which to grade and which not
- Use codes and/or stamps to mark papers instead of formal grades
- Have students grade and self-assess
- Only partially grade
- Give fewer assignments
Paper Work System:
- Partner work (pairs) – easier to get along, the accountability is higher, participate and interact more
- Predetermine partners for specific daily activities, assigned partners used day after day greatly reduces transition times
- Assign roles to each partner in list (p1 – in charge of getting materials, p2 – in charge of putting back materials)
- Can have students pick – write 3 partners want and those can’t work with
- Change partner assignments every few weeks, as students’ needs change and with student requests.
Always have a clear purpose and a why for your instructional decisions.
Step #8: Get Organized
Design your classroom to make it possible for you and your students to stay organized and work efficiently. Make it obvious what needs to be done. Everything you do in your room and design procedures/ routines, consider what’s the simplest, fastest and most intuitive way to meet students’ needs. Make it obvious what to do.
Think carefully about every item’s placement. Keep lesson plans well organized. Organize as you teach it through the year. Place in an easily accessible container that is clearly labeled. Organize photocopies and materials in advance and put in the same place. I use a rainbow drawer cart labeled with the days of the week and even drawers for the next week as well.
When we are organized, we are better prepared to save time. It must be easy and convenient to put papers where they go. Too many steps doesn’t work. Consider how you will organize:
- All incoming papers (papers from home, the office, homework)
- All important information such as your lesson plans, grade book, standards, and other important reference material.
- All student papers (graded, ungraded, etc.)
- All activities and worksheets for lessons.
- All teaching resources
- Any other general files.
Step #9: Batch It!
Avoid task switching. Multi-tasking only works when one task is mindless and doesn’t require full concentration. It’s not efficient to task switch. When we task switch, we have to focus on one thing and then another in rapid succession. Best to finish entirely before moving on. Example: checking email, then having to remember where you left off. Batch similar activities and get in a flow. Example: start recognizing answer patterns, you’re then trained what to look for, etc.
Things you can batch:
- Photocopies – a whole week at once – 1 trip rather than 1 each day
- Searching online for activities
- Making all of your parent phone calls at once
- Block off 2 long afternoons for grading instead of each night
- The rough outline of planning for the entire month.
Step #10: Use the Steps to Freedom to Only Work Contract Hours
Eliminate
Eliminate daily routines and unnecessary tasks that waste time. For example, 5 minutes taking attendance, 10 minutes of kids copying down homework, 30 minutes to prepare for dismissal. Eliminate the need to grade everything. Use stamps or stickers instead. Eliminate whole group presentations. Instead, have students give presentations in small groups. Eliminate making students write whole complete essays. Give students fewer problems to solve. After 10 problems, show you. If correct, move on. If not, address misconception(s) and complete 5 more. Avoid waiting until everyone is finished with a task. Set a timer for the amount of time an average student completes it. Loss of recess privileges or eating lunch with you.
Simplify
Bathroom breaks – they don’t need to be incredibly long. Make sure you are not doing more than required to do so. Requirements change all the time and a more efficient way may be used now. Record lesson ideas and adaptations of ideas as you think of them using technology such as the Notes app. Set a time limit on searching for choices and go with 70% it’s a good resource. Create a visual board on Pinterest. Use templates to quickly plug in information. For example, email templates (we will be discussing this more in a few weeks), for note taking, lesson planning, etc.
Automate
Collection of forms and homework with assigned bins or jobs. Create a set of abbreviations in your plan book. Have some information that is automatically typed in each week as a template. Automate your day with a basic daily routine that you would do each week. Use technology to automate plans for differentiation. There are lots of apps and websites that can figure out exactly what each student needs and provide the appropriate instruction and support. Then it advances the student to the next level automatically. Use many of the same learning activities over and over.
Delegate
Student Jobs
What tasks can you transfer responsibility for keeping the classroom running smoothly to the students?
- Substitute – prepares materials for absent students
- Grading Assistant – puts papers in number order and tells who is missing
- Other ideas – cutting out lamination, turning on devices, sharpening pencils, paper passer, straighten desks, floor monitor, filing, snack helper, etc.
Planning
How can you share the responsibility of lesson planning for your classroom?
- Plan alone, share together
- Assign subject/unit per teacher (I plan science, 1 team teacher plans reading, another plans math and we together plan writing and community building)
- Use technology to plan: One Note, Google Docs, share Pinterest Board, etc.
- Share photocopying duties
- Plan with teachers at other schools or online via Voxer, Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, etc.
- Purchase high-quality ready-to-use lesson plans
Get Your Workbook to Only Work Contract Hours
I put together a quick workbook to help you go through the steps mentioned above. You will be able to list out your successes, boundaries (with prompts to help you), track your time, set goals and brain dump. After your brain dump, you’ll be able to pair down your list, create a schedule for yourself and determine your steps to freedom. Just fill out the quick form below and you’ll get it straight to your inbox!