In order to organize the school schedule, a teacher needs to first write down everything that is necessary to do on a regular basis. Include lesson planning, grading, activity preparation, organization and anything else that happens every day. Once you have everything written down, take a separate piece of paper and write out a daily schedule. This needs to include everything from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night. Everything else must fit between these two events.
Finding Free Time in a Teacher's Schedule
After writing out the schedule, it may look similar to this:
- Wake up 6AM. Morning routine: Get family ready for the day, eat breakfast, fix lunch, go to work.
- 7:00 - 7:20 free
- 7:20-7:45 duty
- 7:45-8:00 kids in class, ready for morning bell
- 8:00-9:00 math class
- 9:00-10:00 planning time
- 11:00-12:00 Language Arts
- 12:00-12:30 Lunch
- 12:30-1:30 duty
- and so on throughout the day.
After writing out the schedule you will see what free times are available to get things accomplished. Decide how much time to spend on each task during the day. For example, there may be a total of 3 hours of time during the work day for teacher tasks. Include lunchtime in the 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 Teacher Tasks
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 available. For example, planning time can be spent lesson planning. Lunch time can be spent grading and 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 a starting point 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.
Related Information:
Tips for Writing Lesson Plans - Learn how to write an effective lesson plan that will maximize student learning.
Tips for Teachers - Learn more tips and ideas to make teaching less stressful and more effective.
Jennifer Wagaman - Jennifer is a mother of 2 and has both public, private and administrative experience in the education field.
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