Time, Teaching and Inspiration

Day 5 of the #28daysofwriting challenge and I am going to write about something that feels rather pertinent right now… Time.  Or rather the lack of it.  

So week one of term one for the 2015 school year is over.  Thank goodness it was a short one.  I am tried, But I have achieved a lot.  Had a crack at junior phonics assessment, grouped students for reading,  swimming assessment and grouping is done, trialed some maths games and problem solving activities that worked really well and the students have almost all decorated their placemats and name tags.  Awesome right?  

It might feel like a brag list but I still feel behind,  I'm still struggling to get enough time for friends, I squeeze in a solid chunk of family time before my two ratbags go to bed and I'm managing to run first thing in the morning.  The run is only happening because I saw a internet meme that said “Right now someone busier than you is running”... yea, I tend to accept challenges.  

And this is pretty normal in my school,  in every school,  in every country,  probably in every solar system and every galaxy of the universe.  E.T’s teacher probably needs more time too.

My point is that time is a very important resource for us teachers… so stop wasting it.  We need to be smarter… squeeze every bit of learning time out of our school day and develop systems that help us to get by and work smarter.  We don’t need another admin staff meeting, just email us or put it on a shared Google Doc.  We need time to teach and look after our students.  Our core business.  How many time have we attending meetings that we didn't need to...  Where a flier or letters behind a plane would have done just fine because we were just being told something.  

Time is important to everyone!! It the one thing we can never get back, never get more of.  It is our most valuable resource in life!

What we really want and need as educators is meaningful professional learning and discussion time around the practice of teaching.  Every staff room should have a admin time stopwatch… just see how much time you spend on it!  

We want our meeting to be engaging,  driven by excitement over change.  We want to discuss topic that expand and challenge our teaching, pitched at the Goldilocks level - not too easy, not too hard.  We want to have modeling occur so we see best practice in action,  stuff we can take and use in our own part of the world.  We want tools, because we want to be successful so please help us and please don’t waste our time…

Wait a second… doesn't that sound familiar.  Isn't that the same for our students?  For anyone?  Nobody wants their time wasted, because we all have something we would rather be doing.  Don’t get me wrong I love my job, but the beach, spending time with my kids?  

My point is that we need to make sure what we do as leaders to teachers, and what as teachers we do to students is relevant, powerful and inspiring - at least most of the time. That's the challenge to all of us I guess.  

“Right now someone busier that you is being more inspiring” - are you going to accept the challenge?

Thank you for reading my fifth post for #28daysofwriting.  It went of on a tangent a few times but i hope it still made sense.  And I hope that we all try to be a little more inspiring to others and considerate of their time.