Time Management Tips for Teachers

Finding Time in the Teacher's Day to Get Everything Done

Dec 19, 2008

Finding time to finish everything can be difficult for teachers. Learn some ideas to handle the numerous tasks that need to be accomplished each day.

In order to organize your schedule as a teacher, you need to first write down everything you need to do on a regular basis. Include lesson planning, grading, activity preparation, organization and anything else that you find yourself doing every day. Once you have everything written down, take a separate piece of paper and write out your daily schedule. This needs to include everything from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night. Between these two activities you must find time to get everything done.

Finding Free Time in Your Schedule

After writing out your schedule you will see what free times you have available to you for getting things accomplished. Decide how much time you will spend on each task during your day. For example, you may have a total of 3 hours of time during the work day for teacher tasks. Include lunchtime in your free time, because you can work while you eat. Once you know how much free time you have, you will be able to decide how to organize that time to get everything accomplished.

Scheduling Everything that Needs to Get Done

Decide what needs to be accomplished on any given day. The most common tasks are lesson planning, grading and class prep. These activities should be divided equally throughout the day in the time you have available. For example, your planning time can be spent lesson planning. Your lunch time can be spent grading and your afternoon time when the kids leave, can be spent on class prep for the next day. This is not perfect and may not work exactly the way you need it to, but use it as an ideal and tweak it as necessary.

Scheduling the Odd Activities that Come Up

Things that need to be accomplished regularly but not each day need to be worked into your schedule as well. For example, classroom organization, including filing needs to be kept on top of. Parent communication needs to happen regularly, but not necessarily every day. Planning times with other teachers will probably take some of your time each week as well. Given these anomalies in your schedule, consider splitting your week up a little differently. For example, Pick two days to spend in lesson planning, one day for parent communication, and two days for team planning. Obviously this can change based on your particular needs.

Attempt to organize everything for ease of use when you have your free time. For example, use a basket contains all the student papers that need to be organized in your files. The more organized you are, the more efficient you will be in completing each task. Writing down your schedule will help you understand how to divide your time up, and keeping a list of what needs to be done each day will help you keep your priorities straight, and get you home in time for dinner.

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