Make the Most of Your Week Lesson #5: Faster and Smarter

Make the Most of Your Week Lesson #5: Faster and Smarter

Make the Most of Your Week Lesson #5: Faster and Smarter There are many definitions of efficiency out there, but we like this one best: “accomplishment of or ability to accomplish a job with a minimum expenditure of time and effort.” Of course, there are many, many...
Making the Most of your Week Lesson #3: Using Small Pockets of Time

Making the Most of your Week Lesson #3: Using Small Pockets of Time

Are you like me? Do you sometimes find yourself completely wasting small 15 – 20 minute chunks of time? Of course, sometimes they should be wasted (see our hot chocolate post from the start of 2013). But for the most part, my orientation is to try my hardest to use...
Quick Quiz: Are you Time-Oriented or Task-Oriented?

Quick Quiz: Are you Time-Oriented or Task-Oriented?

Educators plan for their weeks at school in so many ways. The possible formats…Outlook… Google…Word…a hand-drawn list…are endless. Even still, teachers always seem to split into two camps. . . Those motivated by time and those driven by tasks. Are you time or...
Systems Tweaking: Returning Graded Work

Systems Tweaking: Returning Graded Work

I like to remind people that it may be hard to get HOURS back in your day, but it is much easier to get back minutes—both yours and your students’. Tess H., a middle school teacher in Philadelphia, recently shared how her systems for returning student work have...
Routines. . . Not Just for your Students!

Routines. . . Not Just for your Students!

Most of us are heavily focused on teaching various routines to our students at the start of the school year: how to enter the classroom, how to hand in homework, procedures for using bathroom passes, ways to get classwork if absent, etc. We invest so much time up...
FAQ: Falling Off and Getting On Again?

FAQ: Falling Off and Getting On Again?

It happens to all of us. You have the best intentions to be “Together,” and then, something happens. You get sick, you travel all weekend, a friend pays you a surprise visit, you watch too many episodes of Homeland (ummmm. . . whoops!). Whatever the reason, something...