ARE YOU REAAADDDY!!!
It is Finally here!
All of us have been thinking about good ways in which to treat our readers and followers. We thought hard, and I mean it! Really, really hard… and decided that we can treat you to our best ideas to work smarter rather than harder… at school and home!
I know what it takes to be a great teacher, the stress, the time, the energy… I could go on and on! I also know that we crave time to ourselves and our families.
So here I go!
I have never met a teacher who only works an 8 hour day. Teachers are constantly working long hours to give the best education possible to their students. I spent long hours after school working on my classroom, grading and writing lesson plans. It came to the point when I felt guilty for not working at home because I felt like I was letting my students down! As I began to realize that I was consistently giving up my precious evenings and weekends to work on my classroom I began to evaluate the effectiveness of the time I was spending; I was wondering if all of the sacrifices I was making were benefiting my students. As I started to question if the time I was spending was effective, I began to be less willing to spend hours and hours of my time working after school was out on activities that were not even benefiting my students. So, I made a goal to work at home as little as possible. I was not always able to completely avoid working at home but by implementing the tip below I was able to greatly cut down on the time I was spending working at home.
Plan Your Planning Time!!!!
How many times have you got to the end of your planning time and realized you prepared for a craft your class is doing in 3 weeks but forgot to make copies of tomorrow's morning work? I found that I was not prioritizing my planning time, which meant that I was having to complete urgent tasks at home so they would be ready for school the next day. I began keeping a sticky note pad on my desk that I would use to write down tasks as I thought of them during the day. Then, when ever I had a few minutes of planning time, I would go through the next day in my head, checking that I had all of the supplies for the lessons ready. After I was ready for the next day of school I would go through my list and rewrite it in order of priority. Then every time I had a spare minute I would work on the highest priority task. This has cut down on time I had to spend working at home because I would always complete the most time sensitive tasks first-If a task did not need to be completed for a few days there was no reason I needed to spend my evening working on it!
Everyone needs to unwind after a long day teaching! My number one tip for unwinding is to do it! Make sure your schedule a firm "cut off" time each night. When your cut off time arrives your work is done! Put it away and enjoy some you time. Watch a TV show, read a book for fun, do a craft, or snuggle with a significant other. Even if you only have time to schedule 30 minutes to unwind each night it will do wonders for your well being,
When I am making my weekly copies, I always make sure to copy a few extra activities for those random times when we finish an activity early but aren't ready to start the next lesson. So that I don't have to spend precious planning time tracking down these activities I created Monthly No Prep Packets. These packets review the first grade common core and every sheet included requires no preparation to use in your classroom, just print and go! You can view my Monthly No Prep Packets here. Below is a preview of my August/ September Back to School Packet.
Top all these great tips and ideas with these top-notch prizes!
A $100 gift card to Amazon
A $50 gift card to TpT
2 $25 gift cards to TpT
1 $10 gift card to TpT
Thank you for reading! And now don't be silly and get your hands all over this awesome giveaway!!
