We all have the same amount of time each day. The real issue isn’t time — it’s energy. When your energy is high, you’re effective, patient and positive. When it’s low, everything feels harder. The key is learning to manage your energy, not just your schedule
Report writing time can be stressful — late nights, pressure and additional workload at a busy time. Instead of dreading the approach of report writing time and using weak coping strategies like counting down the days till the holidays, try planning early (super-early – like, now!) to make reporting time much calmer. Planning early can make the whole process calmer and smoother.
Our school’s reputation and holding in the community is dependent on Moments of Truth. A Moment of Truth is any time a parent or student interacts with our school and forms an opinion about us. The concept started in the airline industry.
The final term of the school year is a crazy, busy time in schools. End of year events, final assessments, reporting and planning for next year, swamp us at a time when we are nearing exhaustion. Many of us are running low on reserves at the end of the year. Events that wouldn’t normally irritate us can become blown out of proportion. It is inevitable that the photocopier will jam when we are rushing to make copies, that difficult parent will arrive when we are feeling frazzled and the boss will want ‘just a minute’ when we are running late. The following five strategies can help at this difficult time of year:-
Last week, in Part 1 we looked at the factors contributing to sleeplessness. You don’t need to have young children or a sleep disorder to have a restless night’s sleep. Most people have difficulty sleeping, particularly when stress is involved. According to the Sleep Health Foundation, one in three people have mild insomnia.
Does this sound familiar? Worries and negative thoughts enter your head at night and become magnified. You check the time. 2.59am. You tell yourself ‘Go back to sleep’. Your neck, back and shoulders ache and you can’t get comfortable. The stress builds! Pretty soon the mind starts racing and worries from your day merge with anxiety about not being able to sleep.
In part 1 last week, I described an activity utilising technology to present student research. Producing the movie took much longer than doing the research. Whilst the additional learning is beneficial, the problem here is two-fold. First, the actual subject-relevant learning portion of the assignment (research and writing) took up a tiny fraction of her time. The additional learning (how to use the video-making software) may be valuable as a future workplace skill but the actual process of making the movie was really ‘busy work’. Once you’ve edited images to match one 5-second audio segment, you don’t learn anything more by editing the remaining 59 segments! It was an utterly ineffective use of potentially valuable study time. Second, the point…
Infusing education with technology is a wonderful idea. Classrooms with access to the internet and mobile devices have marvellous opportunities to make learning relevant to 21st Century students. Technology offers new ways to enable and encourage self-learning, engage students with content and build capability in vital workplace skills. However, as with every other educational strategy or tool, technology is only effective when embedded in a well thought out learning experience and specifically applied to support learning outcomes. Unfortunately, the rush to incorporate technology into our schools and classrooms (eg BYOD) has in some cases served to undermine fundamentally sound teaching and learning strategies. The overwhelming notion seems to be that, if we incorporate a computer, mobile phone or iPad somewhere…
We rarely know what is going on in other people’s lives. Whilst we might be frustrated by the behaviour of our students (and at times by our colleagues or boss) we rarely know all of the information about what is going on in their lives. We don’t necessarily know about health issues, financial pressures or other challenges they, or their family, are currently facing. We don’t necessarily know when they have had a sleepless night or an argument before coming to school. Many of our students also have additional demands placed on them. Many students are coping with health issues in their families, living with chronic sickness, surviving the death of a loved one, the break-up of a family, helping…
I’ve often heard the statement ‘students don’t learn from people they don’t like!’ In ‘Kids These Days’, author and psychologist Jody Carrington says, “Kids won’t learn from people who they think don’t like them.” This statement resonates with me and is consistent with behaviour management guru Bill Rogers’ position that the best teachers are warm-demanding. They have that balance where they have the warmth to relate to students but are also demanding and have clear expectations of their students. Teachers who are too warm and want to be every students BFF are unlikely to be respected. However, teachers who are too strict and gruff (They follow the “Don’t smile until Easter” philosophy), are unlikely to engage students. The sweet spot…