Getting Feedback From Your Students
Getting feedback from your students can help identify where you should focus your attention to improve your practice. If what you are doing in the classroom is not working from the student’s perspective, then making some changes is likely to be beneficial (for them AND for you). If students are disengaged, for whatever reason, they have an impact on our stress levels. Their disengagement may present as poor behaviour that disrupts the learning of others and demands our attention OR withdrawal that also causes us stress, by challenging us to find a way of reconnecting with them. Whilst students should be at the centre of what we do, you as the teacher are the person with the most impact in…
Life Balance: Myth or Possibility?
Stress is a fact of life, but it doesn’t have to be a way of life! How long have we talked about needing life balance and at that same time BEEN doing everything we can to go faster and to do more! At work and at home, people expect to do more with less and in less time. Families are LIVING in the ‘nightmare of the two career couple,’ where both partners are working, bringing up children and probably looking after their aging parents. More single parents exist than ever before. Change is constantly swirling around us – at work, at home and in society. In short, life is chaotic and lived at laser track speed! As life continues to…
Email and Productivity
Emails were meant to be a massive productivity booster: speed up communication to save time, access multiple items with attachments, communicate to multiple people at once, etc. … all hail the mighty email … I rarely hear people say how much they love emails. What I do hear is people defending emails so they have proof of communication yet in the same breath complain about the sheer number of emails and the lack of communication in the organisation! By 2019 we are going to be receiving at least 260 emails per day with three quarters of those emails requiring some sort of interaction. To be productive you must take back control of your emails. I was recently asked to mentor and train…
Helping Others Boosts Your Mood
We know that doing something to help others can make us feel good. Engaging in acts of kindness is one of the more reliable ways of boosting our mood. This is no surprise. But the science of positive psychology has furthered our understanding with these research findings on the impact of acts of kindness on the person who performs them. Choosing to do things for the benefit of others, activates pleasure centres in the brain. The release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter released in response to other pleasurable activities including sex, eating or receiving money is also released when being kind to people. Other altruistic acts with similar effect might include donating blood, visiting a friend in hospital, providing someone with a…
10 Keys to Happier Living
Working in schools can sometimes feel as though we are running on a never-ending treadmill, constantly in pursuit of the lifestyle we aspire to. At times it can feel like our work is not appreciated. The website ActionForHappiness.org provides the following guidance on 10 keys to happier living. Awareness – Taking time to switch off autopilot and be “in the moment” is important to combat stress. Pay attention to your senses – what can you see, hear or feel around you? Choose a regular point in the day to reflect Emotions – Positive emotions can build up a buffer against stress and even lead to lasting changes in the brain to help maintain well-being. Take time to notice what you…
Look After Your Health
Working in schools can be demanding for a number of reasons. Working with people can be stressful because at times they can be unpredictable. We never quite know what is going on in somebody else’s world. Whether we work in the school office, tuckshop, library, classroom or other area of the school, we can at times be at the forefront of some busy, frustrated and stressed parents or carers. We are trusted with the care, well-being and education of most parents’ highest priority – their children. Often we are called upon to provide stable and consistent responses and support to families who are struggling and under duress. It is therefore vital that we look after ourselves and ensure that we…
Try the 2×10 Strategy to Reach That Difficult Student (Part 2)
The 2×10 strategy is simple: spend 2 minutes per day for 10 days in a row talking with an at-risk student about anything she or he wants to talk about. This simple strategy builds rapport and lets the student see that you genuinely care about them as a person. I don’t have time to talk individually with kids. You may not be able to create a structured, dedicated time for talking individually to students…and that can actually be a good thing. The 2×10 strategy doesn’t mean pulling the child away from a task to corner him at your desk, then setting a timer and forcing the kid to bond with you for exactly 120 seconds. Relationship building works best when it happens naturally and authentically!…
Try the 2×10 Strategy to Reach That Difficult Student (Part 1)
Many teachers are talking about the success they are having with a strategy for working with a student for whom no other solutions seem to work. The 2×10 strategy is simple: spend 2 minutes per day for 10 days in a row talking with an at-risk student about anything she or he wants to talk about. This simple strategy builds a rapport and relationship and lets the student see that you genuinely care about them as a person. The strategy takes the abstract concept of building rapport and turns it into a step-by-step process that can be implemented. Most teachers who try the 2 x 10 strategy report a marked improvement in the behaviour and attitude of their one targeted student and often of the…
Crazy Busy at Work
It seems wherever I go, I find people who are, what I call, ‘crazy-busy’ at work: Teachers and other staff who are on the go from the moment they arrive at school, who often miss out on meal and toilet breaks, and who work late, preparing for the next day. If you can relate to this, you will know how physically and emotionally draining, very high workloads can be. Many of us scrape through to our holidays, where we fall into a heap, before recovering for the next round. Apart from the costs to our health, well-being and team relationships, there is also the cost to our loved ones, who deal with us when we are tired, grumpy, and impatient.…
How To Avoid Unintended Consequences When Emailing Parents
Email should be a convenient and efficient communication tool. However, it is also fraught with danger as messages can be misinterpreted, especially if a ‘tone’ is read into the content. It is important to remember these key points when communicating with parents using email. Once you press SEND, your message is gone. You can’t take back and it’s “on the record”. Filling in the TO section last, avoids making the mistake of prematurely sending the message. (PS Retracting an email just highlights your mistake and is likely to make them pay even closer attention to what you wrote!) Avoid rushing your response. Time pressures and the reactive nature of email can contribute to us rushing our response to a confronting…
Speak Up – How Busy is the Staff Car Park after meetings?
In many schools, the staff car park is a busy place immediately after meetings. Colleagues often congregate in small groups, in the staff car park, to reflect on the meeting and share, what they were going to say or should have said! at the meeting. In the car park, after a meeting, staff tend to congregate with trusted colleagues and are honest and open with their viewpoints. Sometimes they are too open and too honest! The length and vigour of the ‘car park meeting’ is often a symptom of the level of trust that exists within the staff. It is important to school culture that staff are honest, open and genuine with their viewpoints and share them in an appropriate…
Stop Multitasking
IF YOU WANT TO GET YOUR WORK DONE FASTER, STOP MULTITASKING! You lose up to 40% of productivity when you multitask? 40%! Can you afford to lose 40%? I know I can’t. One of the things when it comes to multitasking is that we’re actually really, really bad at it and it’s not really multitasking, it’s task switching. Time is wasted going back’n’forth between the tasks, remembering what you were up to and what the next step is. Energy is also wasted, as your focus has to be shifted backwards and forwards. As a result of this switching, error rates can be up to as much as 50% when you multitask. This not only wastes time and effort needed to…