Time management for teachers can often seem like wishful thinking. You are restricted by the fact that you are unable to change a class schedule and also because you have to be available for both students and parents outside of classroom periods.

An effective time management technique for teachers is to group tasks as much as you can. You need to take advantage of the short blocks of time you have without interruption so that you are not constantly bringing your work home with you.

Some tasks that lend themselves well to grouping are making and returning phone calls and checking email.

Set a time of day when you will make and return phone calls that are not urgent, as well as a time for checking email. It could be 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the evening. Once you've decided on the time, stick to it! This way you will be less likely to allow either of these activities to dominate your day.

If you can focus on one activity at a time you will be much more productive as multitasking will only slow you down.

Scheduling is an important process for everyone but even more so for teachers. To schedule effectively you need an efficient scheduling system. There are many of these systems on the market. You can use a regular paper agenda, PDA or MS Outlook to name but a few. Use what feels most comfortable to you.

Once you've chosen a system to work with you first need to identify the time that is available to you. Second, mark down the essential tasks that you absolutely have to do for your job. Third, prioritize these tasks. Fourth, mark down time for unforeseen events to handle random interruptions. And fifth, schedule any activities that pertain to your personal goals.

In the end, time management for teachers is not much different than it is for anyone else. The goal is to identify those tasks that can be grouped and to focus on one at a time rather than multi-tasking and to set and prioritize a schedule that will cut out time-wasting activities thus allowing you to maximize the time you have at hand.

 

Go From Time Management for Teachers to Effective Time Management