Even on the best days, and even when conducted by the most high-capacity, motivated, and organized people, the teaching profession can be messy, uneven, and chaotic. The role of teachers is myriad. Cutting through the maze of these myriad roles to maintain a work-life balance of efficiency and productivity while still maintaining some personal harmony is an attainable objective if you have a teaching strategy. Because we understand the importance of teachers, we have compiled a list of a few easy tips to enhance your productivity and help you save time at school so that you can focus on yourself.
Learn to prioritize
The role of the teacher in students’ lives is immense. Only when you manage your time can you teach your students to manage their time efficiently. One can comprehend the importance of teachers from the fact that at any one time of the day, teachers teaching students have a billion things on their plates. Teachers teaching should prepare a list of everything they need to do to do everything at the right time. To accomplish this, you need to distinguish between the chores that must be completed immediately and those that can’t wait until later in the day. Prioritizing student-teacher tasks can help you and your students to be more productive in whatever you’re doing.
Plan ahead
Might be surprised at how much more productive you feel if you set aside a fixed amount of time each week to work on calling out the following week’s plans. Another technique for increasing the productivity output of teachers teaching students is to set hard start and stop times for your pending work. If you’re in a team and planning with other teachers teaching in your group, make sure to have a constant calendar that doesn’t alter week to week so that it is easier for everyone in the group to schedule their work.
Make a To-do list
The role of a teacher in students’ life is not only to teach lessons but also to teach life management. You can do that only when you can manage your life and time well. You will be much more productive if you keep a running to-do list that is focused on important things. It’s critical to examine the list at the end of each day and reorganize priorities as needed. If some of the less important things slip to the bottom, you’re effectively managing your time. Student-teacher tasks can be classified into four categories – “important and urgent” (do today), “important but not urgent” (schedule), “not important but urgent” (delegate), and “not important or urgent” (can do later) as described in the Eisenhower Decision Index.
Find the right time.
It is one of the good teaching techniques to find the time you feel more energetic and productive to finish your most tiring work. For example, early mornings aren’t the greatest time for some, while a few feel the most productive in the quiet of the dawn. Some may typically find that staying later after school to finish their work makes them more productive. It’s also quieter after everyone has left, which helps reduce interruptions. Some good teachers find nights the most productive. You have to observe yourself to find the most productive hours of your day.
Save time with templates.
An important role of teachers is to communicate efficiently. Templates save a lot of time when it comes to communication and generating materials for the classroom. You can utilize templates for notes, your weekly newsletter, missed assignments, and emails to convey information to parents. It aids in uniformity in your message and saves you time as well. One can even use templates as a teaching strategy in the classroom for things like student writing drafts and brainstorming, as well as providing feedback to students. This gives students a sense of what to expect and keeps a teacher from having to create something new for each new class or topic. Making your templates can help you personalize them, although there are hundreds of ready-made designs available. Don’t be hesitant to purchase something that someone else has already developed if you like it.
Tools and techniques
Productivity gurus understand that the most important discussion topic about teachers is productivity and hence recommend a variety of tools and approaches to help both teachers and students stay on track with their work and energy. For example, individual tasks can be written on sticky notes on a board, and their current state can be shown by moving them between columns labeled. “To do,” “Doing,” and “Done.” The Pomodoro Technique is another great technique that promotes the benefits of working in short bursts followed by a little break. It is based on the premise that the brain becomes distracted if we force it to concentrate for too long without a break. Bullet Journaling is one of the many effective teaching strategies, which is a note-taking approach that uses a sequence of symbols to indicate the state of each assignment, making it easier to carry to-do lists from day to day.
Leverage the power of technology
Teachers and students who stay on top of the latest developments and trends in their field are likely to feel more productive than those that resist new technologies because they do not understand them or are not confident in using them. With technology comes many ways to effective teaching. Whether managing schedules, storing teaching materials, or even implementing them and trying to be as tech-savvy as you can is an effective teaching strategy. A good teacher uses technology to her advantage. Utilizing apps such as Evernote and Dropbox are also terrific teaching techniques that can help a good teacher stay on top of their plans, lesson notes, student information, etc. One of the most effective teaching strategies these days is to share lesson resources with students using some apps that allow them to create online quizzes for homework or review purposes quickly.
The Final Word
The job of a class teacher is quite hard. It’s natural to feel worried when we have so much responsibility on our shoulders. Added to it are the challenges of our teaching professions daily. We may, however, overcome these difficulties with a little forethought and patience. Classplus can handle your everyday challenges with class administration if you’re an online class teacher who wants to design and sell courses online. Customized solutions for your class management are simply a click away with Classplus.
