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Let’s Talk Time Management: My Tips To You

Over the years my role has changed. I went from a high school student to a college student, to a teacher, to a parent. As I transitioned to each new phase in my life, I found that I struggled with learning time management again. This is something I have always prided myself on being exceptional at, and to struggle with it was tough. I eventually compiled a list of tips on managing time to help myself during these transitions, and now I want to share them with you. 

  1. Time management is fluid. We are constantly moving from one phase of our lives to the next, so we cannot expect what we were using during college to work as a mom. Embrace the change.
  2. It looks different for every person. Just like it changes with different phases of life, it also changes from person to person. You cannot manage your time the same way someone else does and expect it to work. You are you, they are them.
  3. It takes a plan. It’s not something you necessarily need to write down every step unless that’s your style. But it is something that takes conscious awareness and practice.
  4. Dedication and effort are crucial. It’s easy to make a plan, but to follow through and stick to your plan will be the deciding factor of success.

Very few people have one or two parts of their lives they need to manage. The majority of us are juggling work, school, families, social lives, religion, and more. It can be a hard balancing act, but here are the tools that have helped me. 

  1. Set a day to plan. Every Sunday afternoon I sit down with my husband, pull out our calendars, and discuss what our week will look like, who needs to be where, and how we will work together to accomplish it. This is not a big planning meeting for us, it’s usually casually done sitting on the couch while a TV show plays. The weeks this doesn’t happen, it usually turns to madness.
  2. Prioritize your week. I walk through everything I need to do for the week and make a decision on the importance level. Either I absolutely have to be there, it’s flexible when it happens, or it’s not a need. The work commitment I made for midweek? That’s an absolute. My son’s doctor’s appointment in the afternoon? It can possibly be flexible if needed, those can be rescheduled. Going to the waterpark with friends on Friday? Not a need, but definitely a want.
    When I take the time to categorize these events, it helps me in those moments of feeling overwhelmed with my load for the week. As my Friday fills up with other work commitments or obligations to my church I made last minute and I start to wonder how to make it all work, I remember that going to the waterpark is not an absolute, it can and will be dropped if needed. That leads me to my next point.
  3. It’s okay to say no. If adding more to your plate is causing problems or making it harder to keep those non-negotiable commitments, start by cutting out the events in your life that are not needed.
  4. Delegation is your best friend. No, I did not say “making everyone else take care of your problems” is your best friend. But giving others opportunities to help themselves and you can have a high payoff. For example, while I was teaching first grade, I offered to stay after school to help a student read. With everything on my plate, did I have time to help this student? Absolutely not. But did I anyway? Absolutely.
    A few weeks in, my principal caught word of what I was doing, and while he admired it, he helped me find an alternative solution. He told me there was a free after school club that the student could attend where someone could sit with him every day, one-on-one to read. I passed the torch to the after school club and it was so freeing to know that the student was still being helped, and I had an extra half hour every day. Delegation at its finest.
  5. Be organized. Organization is placing something in structure or giving it order. This means for some people, like me, a neat planner with straight lines and color-coded highlights for each event is “organized”. For others, that may mean a messy notebook with everything written sporadically throughout. Find your definition of order and go with it. Trying to manage your life the same way as someone else will not make you organized, it will make them organized.

For me, these are tried and true tips that have guided me through every different stage of life. I’ve been prioritizing events for years now, they have just changed from college classes and social events with friends on the weekends, to my kid’s activities and park play dates with neighbors.

My last tip, which I find the most important to remember, is that you can start today. If you need better time management in your life, there is no need to wait for a new year, just start with a new day! Tomorrow, prioritize your events. The following day, delegate a few to-dos. On any given day of the week, sit down and plan out the next 5-7 days. Don’t wait for some big moment to organize your life, it can happen any time!

What methods do you use for time management? How has it changed over time for you?                

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Last-Minute Kindergarten: Distilling What Matters Most

Hi, there! Mary Wade back again for a quick post as promised on Twitter a few weeks back:

Jumping from teaching 5th grade to kindergarten certainly made for a steep learning curve in those first several weeks, intensified by the fact that everyone in my family has taken turns passing around various illnesses ever since school started.

But now that things have finally settled down and I’m feeling more like myself as a teacher again, I’d like to share some insights. When necessity forces us to keep things simple, what matters most? We already know the answer, of course: relationships, relationships, and more relationships.

That was not really a surprise. But what did surprise me was what does not matter as much. It turns out that contrary to what Pinterest or other pressures might have us thinking, being a kindergarten teacher does not require…

…love of crafts (nope; hands-on exploration through centers is my jam)

Our Look Closer Center is probably my favorite.

…Perfect handwriting (I really thought this would be so much more important for kindergarten as they are learning to form letters, but it’s just been a great chance for me to revisit my own letter formation!)

Haha, one of my favorite discussions on the year so far! We wanted to know the difference before practicing writing our letters and numbers in shaving cream. I definitely did not anticipate the conversation would go this direction, but that’s kindergarten for you!

… Drawing skills for labeling everything (kids are more than willing to help with this, and it creates more shared ownership anyway).

I love our class calendar. Students draw pictures representing each day on halves of index cards and then staple them up. They are always so proud of their shared work.
A few students volunteered to draw pictures of the different emotions and problem-solving strategies we generated together.

…Every manipulative or tool under the sun (I felt crushed at first under the weight of things advertised at LakeShore Learning; I since have learned that an exacto-knife + recycled cardboard can make letter tiles on the cheap in a much more environmentally-friendly manner, anyway). However, I would be remiss if I did not give a shout-out to my many incredible and generous family members and friends that donated all sorts of beautiful supplies and furniture to get my room assembled nearly overnight!

I didn’t have student whiteboards, but I did have dry-erase sentence strips, clipboards, and a basket. Viola! Student whiteboard for practice writing.
My classroom on the first day of school, thanks to the hard work of many family and friends.

…Posters for everything under the sun, waiting and ready for kids (turns out, the kids pay more attention to things they help create anyway; and it really is OK to build things up slowly over time. I have had many moments where I felt the impulse to prepare something for students, but then realized that it would be a more meaningful learning experience to co-construct it).

This poster is full of “sneaky letters” students have found or made that I snap a photo of. It kind of makes me crazy that it skips around and is incomplete, but it’s been an excellent exercise for me to let go and let the students take the lead!
We talked about the different kinds of stories people make during writing workshop, and I drew pictures of students’ ideas; I ended up printing the photo of this discussion, and it is now posted by our writing workshop cart for students to remember possible picture stories.

Signing my contract to teach kindergarten 6 days before school started was one of the crazier things I’ve ever done in my life. But now, I’m grateful for the way that it forced me to let go of less-important extras, and to focus on co-construction, sustainability, and ultimately, better work-life balance for me and more ownership for students.

What are the most important elements that have distilled in your room over the years? What are you glad you’ve let go of? How have these decisions improved what matters most for you and your students?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

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My Students Gifted Me “The Darkest Dark” And It Brought Me To Tears

The first time I came across the book The Darkest Dark by astronaut Chris Hadfield was a gift from my second grade students during my student teaching in college. Reading the book to these students on my last day in their classroom made me emotional because discovering space was a topic I felt deeply about and spent a good chunk of time teaching them. 

The Darkest Dark is about young Chris, who is scared of the dark in his room at night. He tries hard to overcome his fear with his parents’ help. Finally, after watching the moon landing on TV, he realizes there is a darker dark to exist in space. He later becomes an astronaut himself, discovering more of space. 

This book hit so close to home for me because I grew up learning about space while my dad worked on the New Horizons space project. He and ten other people worked on the battery portion to power the rocket that would fly by Pluto, then continue further into the Kuiper Belt.

As a little girl, it was hard to understand why my dad had to work long hours and miss big events like dance recitals and sports that we participated in. He would leave early in the morning before we were even awake, only to come home late at night after we were in bed. In our house, we were constantly talking about planets, rockets, plutonium, and especially Pluto, because our dad’s life revolved around it, so ours did too. If you want to read more about my experience, I wrote about it on my personal blog a few years back. 

When I was ten years old, the rocket finally launched. The plutonium battery that my dad had spent so many hours building, shot into space to discover new territory. It would take ten years for the rocket to reach Pluto and send back the data and pictures it would eventually find. 

Fast forward to eleven years later after New Horizons had successfully flown by Pluto. I am sitting in a second-grade classroom during my student teaching doing a unit on space. Quickly, the students caught on that I was very passionate about this topic, making them just as excited as I. For weeks we slowly discussed more and more about the sun, the moon, the stars, and the planets. It didn’t take very long before one of the students asked, “What is Pluto like?” 

I wish someone had been recording me because the way my face lit up after that question was asked would have been priceless to see. I quickly jumped up to grab a computer and google the words “Pictures of Pluto” for my students to see. In my mind, I still couldn’t believe that this day had come, that I was watching history unfold before me.

I showed them the incredible images New Horizons had taken just a year before, giving them facts about Pluto that many people did not know about until very recently. I was slightly emotional telling these students about my personal connection with this project, how my dad worked on the exact battery that powered the vessel through space over a long period of time.

When it was time for me to graduate and leave, the kids knew exactly what parting gift they needed to give me. They brainstormed with their teacher to find the perfect space book to send me on my way. They each signed their names on the inside cover, to remind me about the time I was able to share with them a large portion of my personal life for their education. 

The Darkest Dark is an incredible book. It can be used to teach overcoming fears. It can be a resource for historically accurate information in a picture book. We can read it to make connections about achieving our dreams, even if it’s scary. It is a perfect book to connect with a real-life astronaut. However, for me, this book will forever have a deeper, personal connection. 

“Being in the dark can feel scary… but it’s also an amazing place. The dark is where we see the stars and galaxies of our universe. The dark is where we find the Northern Lights shimmering and get to wish on shooting stars. And it was quietly in the dark where I first decided who I was going to be and imagined all the things I could do. The dark is for dreams- and morning is for making them come true.”  

– Chris Hadfield

I’m certain everyone working on the New Horizons mission had their own dark to be scared of. Working on such a big job is scary, time-consuming, and can take away from personal lives. The smallest mistakes from them could have led to detrimental consequences. I hope everyone can see what a sacrifice these scientists make to the furthering of our knowledge, whether it be Chris Hadfield, my dad, or any other astronaut or scientist.

Photo Credit: goodreads and Kelly Williams

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The Smaller Class Size Debate- What’s the Deal With The Numbers?

Research shows that “smaller classes are an apparently foolproof prescription for improving student performance: Fewer students means more individual attention from the teacher, calmer classrooms, and consequently, higher test scores.” 

But is it really this easy? Will removing a few students from the classroom hold up to these standards that research has shown? Let’s dive deeper into the study. 

There truly are benefits to smaller class sizes, however, to yield long-term, lasting results, it must be a more thought out process than simply pulling a few students out of the classroom. In a setting with 28 students, reducing the class size to 25 students showed no significant difference. Even moving the student count to 20 (which may be considered a small class in some schools and grades), still did not show a big enough impact. Class sizes need to be 13-17 students in order to be considered small enough to yield impactful advances. 

The cost is a factor in this study because the expense of these class sizes may not be worth the small growth. The fewer students per classroom, the more classrooms and teachers needed, which creates higher costs to the school in salary as well as resources for each room. It is suggested that placing a more capable teacher in a bigger class can be just as effective as a less capable teacher in a smaller class. 

Obviously, in a class with fewer students, the teacher can place more time and attention on the students that need extra help. It can also cut down on disruptive behavior, noise levels, and student or teacher stress. These are all factors that last short term, and truly are beneficial for the school year, but can be costly to the school. 

The best way to create a successful system with smaller class sizes, the research suggests following the guidelines of starting the students early in kindergarten or first grade. It also suggests that a “small class size” is a range of 13-17 students. If every student cannot be reached based on funds and resources, at-risk students should be placed in smaller classes first. The small-sized class also needs to be consistent for the students, letting them experience it every day, all day. They also need to be consistent over the years, placing them in the smaller classes for at least two years, if not more. 

With all of these factors, we truly do need to step back and think, is the smaller class size worth it in the long-term sense? Will the funds, time, and resources spent on these smaller class sizes benefit the growth of the students enough to use them? 

It is so easy to place a better education system in the hands of small class sizes, and it can be true, given the correct circumstances. However, better alternatives may be out there. 

What are the benefits you have found in a classroom with fewer students? Do you think shrinking numbers can fix a broken school system? 

Photo Credit: deathtothestockphoto.com

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We Need to Define Play-Based Learning

In my post about a blog schedule, I mentioned I wanted to write about where my realm of teaching is currently in my life- Working with my children through their own process, which is play. Children, especially young children, make the most connections and advances when given the opportunity to play and learn in their own way. However, I feel this idea has been skewed over the years, and play-based learning needs to be defined. 

Lexico defines play as to: “engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.” Play is for enjoyment and recreation. 

Play is not a task given to the child. 

Play is child-led. 

Play does not have a definitive ending. 

Play does end when the child decides. 

We are so quick to structure the day for kids, placing them in classes and providing them with educational activities, calling it play-based learning because they are active and having fun. However, this makes learning a task and not over when the child is done, but when the adult says it is. Do not get me wrong- There is a time and a place for structured learning with agendas and goals, but this should never be categorized as “play-based learning”, regardless of how “fun” it may seem. 

Play is a child using their imagination to build, create, and move. 

Play is not a child going through structured stations in the classroom. 

Play is how children grow and learn. Sara said it best in her post over at happinessishereblog.com, “be mindful of your agenda. Children should feel free to play and use what is available however they like, with no expectations. Maybe Johnny paints a picture of a flower with the paints you left out for him. Maybe he experiments with mixing colours. Or maybe he just wants to squirt the paint in his belly button. It doesn’t matter, because it’s his choice. He is learning through play, and that is always surprising and beautiful to watch.” 

It’s surprising and beautiful to watch because children will not make the same decisions in situations as we would make because they are aware of what they need and how they want to accomplish it. Watching the discovery happen in children can be magical if they are given the opportunity.

Let’s let the children be kids a little longer, using their imaginations a little more. Let’s let them play.    

Photo Credit: deathtothestockphoto.com

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Why You and Your Students Need Malala

I recently read the book I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World (Young Readers Edition) and to say it changed my perspective on education does not come close to how vastly this book impacted my life. I have heard the words “Taliban” and “terrorist” in my lifetime, in fact, quite often. However, I was completely blind to what exactly has been going on with these parties, and I regret that. Fortunately, Malala helped me fix that.

Schools across the nation have picked up on this young readers edition of I Am Malala, having their students read the words of Malala Yousafzai, one of these schools being Edith Bowen Laboratory School in Logan, Utah. I spoke with a few older students reading this book and their reactions amazed me! They made comments on how brave she had been and how inspiring she was to each of them. 

“She loves going to school and getting good grades and I want to be just like her!” one girl told me. I was inspired by her story before I had even read it. Once I did get my hands on a copy, I was not disappointed. Malala truly does have such an influential story that everyone needs to hear. 

Malala writes about her experience gaining a hard-to-obtain education in Pakistan because the Taliban is against girls learning. She speaks up to news stations, writes online under a pseudonym, and gives speeches when possible to speak about how unfair the Taliban treats everyone, especially women. While standing as an advocate for education, she was also studying hard for exams and even breaking rules to continue going to school. 

This book can be so beneficial in schools not only for the inspiring, hard-working story that Malala wrote but also because of the raw information she tells of her first-hand experience watching the Taliban in action. In parts of the book, I was emotional trying to imagine my family going through similar situations, leaving homes and pets, sometimes even loved ones. My life here in the United States is very comfortable living. I have ready access to food, water, shelter, and love, the simple, absolute needs that may not even be available in other countries. 

Why is it important for students to know and study current events? It can teach empathy, tolerance, and build communication skills. This article from Education World goes into more detail on how impactful current events can be in the classroom. 

I Am Malala is a book that should be on the shelves of every classroom and library. It brings two worlds together, inspiring and educating students. 

Have you read I Am Malala? Did you feel like it inspired you or your students? 

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Let’s Add One Hour of Instruction Time to Everyone’s School Day

Research shows when teachers spend time greeting students as they walk into the classroom, it can improve student behavior. There was higher academic engagement with the students, as well as less disruptive behavior. It increased their learning time by one hour. Teachers also commented on how easy the effort was for such a great outcome. 

One key point that I find very interesting in this study is the simplicity of human engagement and interaction. Students may come to school for an education, but long for relationships and trust to be built before real learning can happen. Another way I have observed this in my teaching is the use of personal storytelling to connect concepts. I often retold stories of my childhood to my first-grade students that would assist them in understanding concepts, which helped them feel connected to me in a new way by knowing me on a personal level. I truly believe that relationships are key in teaching, and research now shows that it is, even by simply standing at the door to greet students. 

Another aspect I find very interesting is the ratio of time spent to time earned. How long does it take to stand at the door to greet students? Maybe five to seven minutes max? In return, the study suggests that because of increased student engagement and decreased disruptive behaviors, a full hour was added in instruction time. 7 minutes: 1 hour seems to be a very fair ratio to me! 

Less disruptive behavior is appealing to any educator. Time spent redirecting and keeping students on track is not only unprofitable to the classroom but can also be wearing on the teacher over time, causing both the teacher and the students more stress. Spending a few minutes every day standing near the doorway to greet students truly can be very lucrative.     

Applying this to the classroom may look simple at first, however, once put into action, it can also seem too time-consuming. How often are you running through your classroom sorting last-minute papers, or writing up information on the whiteboard as students walk in? It can be so easy to use these last few minutes to finish up work before the day must begin. 

When we check our expectations of ourselves and remember that relationships must come before learning can happen, spending a few minutes greeting students will come before that last-minute work. It also does not happen in one day. This happens over time and with consistency. 

I challenge you to give it a try for a few weeks and let me know what you find. Do you have less disruptive behavior in your classroom? Are your students more actively engaged in the learning process? Was it hard to give up that time in order to greet students, or did you find it easy? 

Photo Credit: deathtothestockphoto.com