3 Time Management Tricks for Teachers
Recently I was asked by a local college to teach a faculty development workshop for part-time instructors. I eagerly agreed, and the entire event was everything I’d hoped it would be. As a group, we all shared our best kept teaching secrets, and many of those ‘secrets’ had to do with time management, so I thought I’d share them with you:
- When grading assignments, put yourself on the clock.
I thought I was the only instructor who did this, but apparently it’s not that uncommon. To keep myself from wasting time or losing focus when grading a large number of papers, I give myself a time limit. I physically set my iPhone next to me at my kitchen table and turn on the ‘Stopwatch’ feature.
Typically, I try to grade the first 3 papers (in a set of sometimes 80 or more) as efficiently as I can while using the timer on my phone to see how long it takes. Once I see what my average time is for each paper, I try to stick to it. It helps me stay on task when I put this small amount of pressure on myself, and it prevents me from getting sidetracked with random thoughts or tempting YouTube videos. It may sound silly, but it’s empowering to be able to have some sort of control over what inevitably seems like an unending stack of work.
- Find shortcuts for writing the same comments on student papers.
When I started realizing I was typing the same feedback to multiple students on assignments for my online classes, I started keeping those comments in a Word document on my Mac. I do the same thing with important announcements and general class feedback that I send out to students semester after semester. It’s a huge time saver, and it also reminds me of the areas my students struggle with the most well in advance (this means I won’t have to copy and paste that same comment 100 times if I give my students a heads up about that particular trouble spot a week earlier).
Another colleague of mine sends out a list of common comments, numbered 1 through 20, to her students at the beginning of the semester. Then as she grades each paper, she simply writes numbers instead of comments, and the students can use the sheet to see what the number represents.
Lastly, I found out from another instructor at this event that a popular learning management system, Canvas, has an even more effective system for storing commonly used comments, so if you’re particularly tech savvy, that’s also a viable option.
- Give students verbal feedback instead of written feedback.
After my first year as an instructor, and after having graded hundreds of my students’ rough draft speech outlines outside the classroom, I knew there had to be a more efficient and effective system for both me and my students. I was tired of writing thorough feedback on each paper, only to have it ignored when the student submitted their formal version of the outline. I realized this task was taking up countless hours of my time, and it was not resulting in anything remotely valuable for the students. That’s when I decided that we would start discussing their rough drafts in class, instead. It saved me hours of previously wasted time, and I was able to hold the students accountable for making particular changes by the end of the class period with the help of their group members, if needed. My students and I both got great value from this change.
There are a number of other ways to save time and work more effectively, especially when some elements of teaching can feel a bit tedious. Experiment with what works best for you, and feel free to tell me about it!
Happy learning and happy teaching!