How to Have Weekends Off as a Teacher
Have you ever heard the phrase “Your work will still be there tomorrow?” Or maybe you’ve seen memes from teachers online about how they walk away from work all weekend, because they know the piles of paper will still be sitting there on Monday?
This really bothers me.
It’s good to clock out and walk away from work. It really is. But, this messaging that I’m seeing online is that you should walk away, even if you didn’t really finish your job for the week. To me, all that will do for you is double your workload the next time you have a work day. And what good does that do? You’ll be behind before a new week has even begun!
We want the best of both worlds. We want our weekends off, AND we want to be caught up.
The good news? It’s possible (and totally manageable) to have both! I want to share with you all today the routines I practice to keep me on top of my to-do list each week!
Deal with Things as Soon as You Get Them
The beginning of the school year is rife with random administrative tasks. Random checks are being turned in for a variety of fees. Paperwork is stuck in your mailbox with no warning. Often, these tasks only take a few minutes at a time to complete. But, because we are busy, we let them pile up. There’s nothing worse than prepping to leave on a Friday afternoon and realizing that the stack of paperwork and emails you’ve let pile up needs to be dealt with. When you plan to do a bunch of odd jobs all in one sitting, you have to carve out time. You need a 30-60 minute block to knock it all out. If you handle things as soon as you get them, you don’t have to carve out any extra time at all. 2 minutes here, or 3 minutes there, is nothing you have to put into your schedule.
And when I say, deal with it immediately, I’m being literal. I have been known to find a form in my mailbox, and stand right there in the front office completing it to turn it in before I even walk to my room. Sure, if I do that, I get to my room two minutes later than I planned. But that’s not a disruption I’ll feel nearly as much as completing a bunch of forms at one time at the end of the week.
Use Pockets of Class Time Wisely
There are so many random transitional moments during the day that you can do a 2-minute task to get ahead. When you’re dismissing kids by table group to get a snack, you can create a small pile of things you need to turn into different people during your planning time. When the kids are packing up at the end of the day, you can file away that stack of assessments that’s been sitting on your table. While the kids are wrapping up a test and reading silently at their seats, you can take a minute to hang up work on the bulletin board.
I’m NOT advocating that we take precious instructional time to get ahead on work tasks. We’re here to teach, and that’s what we should be doing. But, if you really look at the structure of your day, you likely have a minute or two to spare. And you can use that minute to your advantage.
Assign Blocks of Time for Big Tasks
I just referenced the ‘2-minute tasks’ in our teaching lives…but we know that there are plenty of tasks that can’t be done in a couple of minutes. Grading, entering grades, planning, getting copies ready, prepping items for a lesson, etc. We all have those big tasks that need to be done on a reoccurring basis. My advice? Assign a block of time each week for those tasks. Maybe every Wednesday, your planning time is devoted to entering grades. Maybe every Tuesday morning, you take 30 minutes before school to grade all of your major assignments. Every Monday could be for writing the next week’s plans. Every Thursday could be for printing/copying materials.
My hope is that many of you are sharing the burden with a team, and you’re not responsible for every piece of your plans and every copy. But, speaking as someone who once was responsible for all of it by myself, you can totally fit it all in. Just create a schedule and stick to it!
Resist Reinventing the Wheel
It can be tempting to make your own version of every little thing, so the colors all match your room, or the fonts are all cute. But, if you hope to find sustainability in your career, you are going to have to get comfortable with just letting some things be ugly. Not everything has to match. Not every anchor chart has to be beautiful. Not every worksheet needs clip art. Sometimes, the worksheet your curriculum provides on that phonics skill is ugly to look at, but the content is just fine.
Also, never forget the power and magic of TeachersPayTeachers. If you want a cuter approach to the skill you’re teaching next week, rely on the hard work that others have put in! Supplement your curriculum with the powerpoint and worksheet set that someone else made, rather than feeling like you need to do it yourself. The sooner you let go of the pressure to make everything yourself so you know it’s always ultra-engaging and ultra-cute, the sooner you will have your weekends to yourself.
Create Posters/Charts/Displays in Real Time
I used to believe that every anchor chart I made needed to be Pinterest-perfect to be worthy of hanging up. I would spend so much time on the weekend or in the evenings drawing, throwing away, and re-drawing big, bubble letters and cute characters to make a chart. But you know what I was really doing?
Wasting a ton of time.
Educational research tells us that anchor charts are more impactful on student learning when you teach as you make them. If you present an ‘anchor chart’ that’s fully colored in and totally written on, all you’ve done is shown them a poster. Their learning is not anchored. They did not get to help you come up with those terms, or brainstorm what you should write. You are simply reading them a piece of paper. And, you also spent a ton of time doing it.
Make those things in front of the kids. If you need a chart for a lesson, don’t add it to your to-do list. Write it into your lesson plans.
Additionally, classroom displays that you want to hang up can be teaching moments. Just this school year, I had a whole classroom job display that I wanted to get hung up by the first day of school. It didn’t happen. But, instead of coming in late at night to do it, I just used it as a teachable moment for the kids. I taught each job card as I was hot-gluing them to my door. Then, I assigned the jobs to the kids as they were there watching me hang them up.
I have an accountable talk bulletin board I want to put together. and I plan to do the same. I will teach each talking stem as I staple the pieces to the board. No need to do it ahead of time. They may even learn it better this way!
Happy teaching, everyone!
