Do you ever find yourself sitting in your classroom with the lights off just trying to destimulate your brain after a few rough class periods? The days where your teacher planning periods turn into a mental health period and you feel like you need another class period to actually get things done.
Losing valuable prep time can be so challenging when you already feel like you’re barely staying afloat trying to get everything done without having to stay at school until 7pm. My goal is to help you take back your time so that you can feel confident and prepared to leave school at the end of your contract hours.
In this blog post, I’m sharing my secret to maximizing my teacher planning period and how you can add in those mental health breaks when you need them!
Disclaimer: Not all of the tips that I share work for me, but they might work for you! Experiment with these strategies to find your perfect routine.
The Pomodoro Technique is a time management strategy that can help boost your productivity in a short amount of time.
Here's how it works:
- Choose a task that you need to complete
- Set a timer for 25 minutes
- Work on that task until the timer goes off
- Take a 5 minute break
- Repeat 3 times, then take a longer break
This method will only work if you are in an environment that is free from distractions, so that you can hyper-focus on the one task you have outlined for yourself.
The timer holds you accountable for the task you plan to complete and the block of short time makes it feel more urgent (but also manageable). Of course if you only have 50 minute planning periods, you won’t be able to repeat this process, but it is a great place to start!
I’ve heard that you are the most productive during the hour right before you have company coming to your house. I don’t have a source for this so it could be completely wrong. When I think about it, though, the sense of urgency and accountability that I feel to make sure my home looks presentable seems to make an impact on my overall productivity.
The same can be said for lesson planning and grading. If I know that my goal is to have the task complete by the end of the 25 minutes, then I am much more likely to hold myself accountable.
Strategy 2: Batching My Workload
By my fourth year of teaching, I had a solid routine set in place to make sure that I was already prepared for the week ahead and (mostly) caught up on my grading. I was pregnant and tired, so I needed to maximize my prep periods. I wanted to be able to not get to school early and leave as close to the end of contract hours as possible.
Batching is a method for streamlining processes in order to increase efficiency. The idea is that when you have multiple tasks to complete, you will work on similar tasks at the same time. Once you have finished that task, then you can move on to the next.
For example, instead of outlining my lesson plans for one class, then going to download the activities and copy them, I will outline my lesson plans for all five classes. This keeps my brain on the same path and pushes away distractions.
So much time is wasted jumping around from task to task and batching is a great solution if you’re trying to increase your productivity.
This is what my weekly teacher planning period schedule looked like to keep me on track:
Monday: Administrative
Mondays are catch up days for emails, leftover copies, and creating any last minute answer keys if needed.
Tuesday & Wednesday: Planning
This looks like outlining my plans for all five classes for the following week, finding/downloading all the activities I plan to use, and if I have extra time, catch up on grading.
Thursday: Prepping
On Thursdays, I would print and copy assignments for the week ahead, then update the agenda slides for each class.
Friday: Reset
Before I left for the weekend, I would try to create all my answer keys, organize worksheets and activities, and reset my desk.
This weekly routine worked really well for me because I always knew what was on my to do list. Of course it wasn’t set in stone and if I needed to get something done on the fly, I could still make that happen.
Strategy 3: Create a To-Do List
When you finally have a chance to sit down to get work done, you don’t want to spend time thinking about what you need to do. Instead, at the end of every teacher planning period, create a to-do list of tasks that you need to complete or what you hope to accomplish during your next prep period.
Find a way to organize these tasks based on importance and by the amount of focus you will need to have to complete each one. This way if you have a little extra time during class while students are working independently you already have your to do list and can get one of the “mindless” tasks accomplished.
My Final Thoughts About How to Make the Most of Your Teacher Planning Period
Whatever strategies you choose to streamline your productivity during your planning period, it will likely take a few tries to figure out a routine that works for you. I would recommend starting with one new habit or routine and building on that as it fits into your schedule.