Dear paid subscribers: Thank you! You’re providing essential support that helps MiddleWeb.com continue our commitment to publish the voices of middle grades educators – and to update and curate our thousands of articles and reviews written for and by educators who support kids in grades 4-8.
If you are a free subscriber, we could really use your help; consider a paid subscription when you can. ($5 month; $50 year).
All our subscribers receive our free newsletters showcasing selections of articles on teaching and leading topics you care about. What follows here is one of the occasional full-text articles we share, plucked from a list of all-time popular posts.
★ MiddleWeb Substack Full-Text Article ★
Use the Power of 3 for a Smooth School Year
By Dr. Frank Buck
The summer has been fun. We’re relaxed. We’re refreshed. We see the “Back to School” signs in all the stores, and we’re ready. We’re always ready for that first day because we’ve had all summer to prepare. We leave school after that first day confident this year will be our best year.
But the grind is real. With papers to grade, lessons to prepare, many personalities with which to deal, and the administrivia that never ends, joy can turn to despair long before the Halloween candy goes on clearance sale.
All the while, you feel if you were somehow better organized, the journey would be easier, and you would likely be correct. Today, you’ll learn three strategies to help you be better organized, work less, and reduce the stress.
Decide how you will communicate
Good teachers know that front-end communication reduces the number of phone calls, emails, and conference requests from confused and upset parents. But over-communication is as bad as none at all.
People are overwhelmed. Between Facebook, Instagram, the third-party flavor of the day apps the school uses, the automated calls, the website, and the printed newsletter, it becomes a blur. People start to tune it all out. “If it’s really important,” they think, “I’ll get another reminder.”
In the process, we frustrate our most responsible parents, the ones who got the message the first time and put the appropriate information on their calendars and to-do lists.
Pick one means of communication and do it well. Get together as a team, department, grade level, or perhaps as a whole school and pick that one method of communication, not seven. Be so consistent that every parent trusts that if it’s information they need to know that’s the place they’ll find it.
They will come to look for their information there, refer back to it, and trust that what they need to know will be in that one place in a timely fashion. In a tarnished age, trust is one of the most cherished commodities.
Decide how you will document
Every teacher preparation program tells us the importance of documentation. Nobody ever gives a simple way to do it.
Most documentation will never be referenced again, and that’s the trap. We get busy. We stop taking those notes during phone calls, conferences, or IEP meetings, because forgetting the notetaking seems like a way to reclaim some time.
But which one of those phone calls, seemingly meaningless at the time, results in a phone call from the superintendent three weeks later? When that day comes, we wish we had taken some notes.
The trick is to make documentation easy enough you’ll actually do it. For most people, a simple paper journal is plenty. It’s nothing but a book of blank, lined pages. Where one day leaves off, the next begins. When the phone rings, open the book to the next blank writing space. When a parent sits down for a conference, open the book. When you attend meetings, that book goes with you.
When that phone call, conference, or meeting is over, the documentation is over. You close the book and have nothing to file. Later in the day, review what you wrote and ask yourself, “What do I need to do about what I wrote?” The answer to that question becomes to-dos for your task list.
Three weeks from now when Mr. Smith complains to the superintendent that he can’t get you to return his phone calls, you open your journal and read off the date and time of the call, what was discussed, and what actions you decided to take as a result of that call. When you have that kind of documentation, few people will argue, because few people have the system you will have.
While other people scribble on sticky notes they can’t find later, your documentation is all in one place and in chronological order. When others try to rely on memory to reconstruct events, you pick up your journal. When you fill up a book, you jot the date range on the cover, shelve it and open a new one. Documentation can be easy, and for you to sustain the practice, it must be easy.
Today’s technology brings us digital options for documentation, but be careful. For documentation to be consistent, the process must be easy. We now have tools that turn handwritten notes, even a full page of cursive, into editable digital text. Would you like to snap a picture of your had-written notes and watch those notes be transformed into text? Would you like to be able to read aloud your hand-written notes, and let the technology turn your voice into text? If so, I go deeper on the subject here: https://frankbuck.org/ditch-the-keyboard.
Decide how you will delegate
No teacher or principal can do it all. If you want to see a masterful job of delegation, visit the classroom of a master first-grade teacher five minutes before buses roll in the afternoon.
The teacher utters that “magic word,” and 20 students go into action. One student changes the calendar to tomorrow’s date. Someone else waters the plants. Two more students straighten the books in the class library. Another feeds the classroom gerbil. The whole time, the teacher watches as 20 students accomplish 20 jobs. Two minutes later, 20 students are back in their seats awaiting instructions from the teacher. This teacher is smiling, and why? Twenty tasks have already been done without her having to do a thing.
What are the daily and weekly tasks that happen in your classroom? Think about the tasks which must be performed to start the day, end the day, or begin and end each class period. It’s not that these tasks are hard to do. The hard part is keeping up with them all.
Start by listing these repeating tasks. Get them out of your head and onto a list. When that list is complete, don’t be surprised if it’s long. Don’t be surprised if you start to understand why you feel so overwhelmed. When you can list the tasks, you’ve taken the first step toward delegating them.
When students are busy handling their delegated jobs and the teacher observes, far less mischief happens than when the teacher is doing the jobs and the students are observing.
Delegation gives students a stake in the program. If we want to develop responsible students, we have to give them some responsibilities. For some, their classroom jobs may be the only responsibilities they have to a group.
Start strong. End strong.
A great first day is a start, but it’s only a start.
Many of us remember the episode of I Love Lucy where Lucy and Ethel are at the candy factory with the job of wrapping pieces of chocolate as they pass on the conveyer belt. The first few pieces are easy, but the situation changes. The teacher who feels the stress beginning to mount before the end of September understands the feeling.
Good systems help everything run smoothly. You still have time to hone yours. Communicate, document, delegate, and enjoy the peace of mind that comes with being organized.
Soon, the buses will roll and the bells will ring, and the first day of school will go well again. My hope is that experience extends all year long.
Dr. Frank Buck is a veteran school administrator, public speaker, productivity coach, and author of Get Organized!: Time Management for School Leaders and Get Organized Digitally: The Educator’s Guide to Time Management. He has spoken to audiences throughout the United States and internationally to help busy professionals achieve total control over their time and the peace of mind that nothing is falling through the cracks. Visit his website and subscribe to his free newsletter.