If you’ve ever gone freelance, or if you’re doing it now, you can likely identify with this:
You start off with a great big empty (or next to empty) bank account. The bills keep rolling in. The fridge keeps emptying. The kid needs new shoes. The car needs gas. The rent/mortgage needs paying…you know the deal.
That’s what I call BIG motivation. So you roll up your selves, and start working as hard as you possibly can in order to bring your income up. A few weeks or perhaps months pass, and you look at your schedule with great satisfaction: You’re loaded with classes. Cash flow is happening again, and the fam and the bill man are happy.
Packed teaching schedules are great for your wallet or purse. They’re great for keeping your bills paid each month, and they’re great at keeping food in your fridge and your family clothed and taken care of. But is a packed schedule good for quality classes? Sure it’s wonderful to have a full day of classes ahead of you, but how much quality time have you spent prepping them? How long have you spent on your own professional development as a teacher? (Remember: He who dares to teach, must never cease to learn.)
This has happened to me a bit. My schedule has filled out rather quickly, thank God! But I have noticed that I find myself outside my house most of the day. I’m either teaching, or commuting across the city for another class. At first, with only one or two classes, prep time was abundant. But as more and more clients came on board, I’ve seen my prep time dwindle down to the leftover scraps and crumbs of the day.
I recently read this post over at the Hello, my name is BLOG blog. Very thought provoking. Scott tells a story about a vetran toastmaster who always attended the toastmaster meetings:
During one meeting in late 2004, I spoke with a man named Les. He was a veteran of the organization, but told me that he still came every single week.
When I asked why he said: “Because the best swimmers are always in the pool.”
HELLO, my name is BLOG: The best swimmers are always in the pool
“The best swimmers are always in the pool.” Replace “swimmers” with teachers, and you have yourself something cool to think about.
I’m sure every single reader here will agree: professional development, and planning are vital to providing relevant and engaging classroom experiences. But for some reason they are also usually the first thing we sacrifice as business, or the school year picks up. At least that’s how I’ve been noticing things in my own life these days.
Creating and sticking to planning periods are vital. I don’t have the luxury of a whole day to do this, but then again, few teachers do. But I do have a few hours here and there that I can scrape together. Perhaps it comes down to wiser uses of time, and learning how to place proper priority on the activities of my life.
Last night, Sunday, I spent a good hour planning out my classes for the week. I waded into my bloglines account for content ideas based on the needs of each of my classes. It was great. Before long, I was saving files to my delicious account to access later from my student’s computers. I was burning a podcast onto CD (I don’t have an mp3 player yet…:( ) and was printing off a few articles to use as reading material. My total prep time was only an hour or so, but I was able to get 90% of my classes ready for the week.
It felt great to wake up today knowing that I had a well prepared for full schedule ahead of me.
Again, I’m not expert on time management. The conversation is wide open: How do you leverage your time to plan and hone your skills as a teacher?
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