The beginning of the school year is the beginning of the school year. That is, exciting, but also (largely) frantic.
And yet, at the end of September, I can say that I feel like I finally figured out how to put my prep weeks to good use. The start of the year was still busy, but not as busy; the start of classes still came as a shock, but not as much of a shock.
4 Questions Helping my Teacher Prep Productivity:
- What can I batch? Classic productivity advice that I’ve never really applied to my prep weeks. This year, I’m batching everything I can. For me, that meant a couple hours adding HiSET answer sheets to lessons throughout the year. Not super fun, but done, and one less thing to think about each week from here on out. And I used a ream and a half of paper in one massive bout of photo copying.
- What can I decide/plan now? Decision fatigue is real. I am susceptible to it. So, I did my big thinking for test prep and teaching students how to be effective learners in August, when I had bandwidth. Now I can focus on implementing.
- How can I build capacity? I know, it’s non-profit jargon, but I was lucky enough to spend time early in my career in programs that thought a lot about capacity building. It means investing in tools, systems etc. now so that you can do more with less effort later. This is a good mental framework for me. For my teaching, it’s setting up systems and organization. So, a playlist of videos, lots of pre-formatted spreadsheets, a class website made now… and less reinventing the wheel later.
- And, the key innovation: When will I need this time? I started prepping lessons ahead. Nice enough. My 2 weeks from now self will appreciate. But, the game changer was figuring out that I’m not going to be super frantic and frazzled when I need to prep the two week from now lessons. But I will be way frazzled and frantic when I’m trying to prep lessons in, say, December, when I’m also getting ready for the holidays, and the HiSET, and the end of the trimester, and the flu, the snow day and the progress reports… all at once. So, I looked at my outline and spent some unfrazzled beginning of the year time to (hopefully!) make the crazy points a little less crazy.
Proof? This one’s from a lesson I’m next teaching in January. It’s on TPT now.
Fellow teachers – I’ll take all the making-prep-saner tips I can get. Please share yours!
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