The following poem and tip were written by Annette Breaux and featured in her book with Eye On Education: 101 Poems for Teachers.

 

Manage Your Time Wisely
There’s only so much time in the day,
and not enough time to do it all.
There’s no way to get what I need to get done.
What is sleep? I can’t recall...

 

A new teacher came into my office crying one day, saying, "I just can’t do this. There aren’t enough hours in the day." "Aren’t enough hours in the day to do what?" I asked. "To be a teacher and still have a life—to grade papers, plan lessons, complete paperwork, and still manage to take care of my family at home. It’s just not possible. I think I’ve chosen the wrong profession. My family is also beginning to suffer, because all I do is schoolwork, and I can’t allow that to continue." I asked her to map out her day—her typical routine. It went like this:

• Wake up, and either grade a paper or two or spend a few minutes planning.
• Prepare breakfast, and try to grade another paper or two while eating.
• Get ready for school and get my child ready.
• Arrive at school, get a little more work done—usually while visiting with coworkers.
• Teach all day—with one hour of planning time, usually spent listening to the gripes of coworkers.
• Come home from school and spend all afternoon and evening trying to juggle cooking, cleaning, grading papers, planning lessons, doing homework with my child, etc.
• Cry myself to sleep in the wee hours of the morning!

I knew I had to help this teacher to develop some time management skills. What she was doing was running from one activity to the next, never really finishing one before she moved on to another. It would be overwhelming for any teacher to try to accomplish what she was attempting on such a schedule. So I made a simple suggestion that literally changed her life! I asked her how much focused time she had set aside every day to be completely alone with planning and paperwork. The answer, as you saw from her schedule, was none. I then asked if it would be possible to either come to school one hour earlier or stay one hour later—ALONE—in her classroom. She said she could come one hour earlier, because her husband took her child to school in the mornings. So we agreed that she would spend one hour, every morning, of uninterrupted planning time. We also found another hour during the day—her planning period. She agreed that instead of going into the teachers‘ lounge with her stack of paperwork, listening to and engaging in conversations with others, she would now spend that time in her room, alone.

The results? I received a phone call from the teacher. She said, "You saved my life! I’m sticking to my schedule, and it’s working. I don’t even have to take work home with me anymore. I have my life back. And I’m managing to stay on top of my planning, grading, and paperwork." She added, "Oh, and both my students and my family have noticed that I’m a much nicer and happier person!"