Time Saving Strategies for Busy Teachers and Administrators

Douglas Reeves*

January 9, 2023

            Education professionals have returned from a well-deserved rest after the stressful year of 2022. The top concern I hear around the nation is time – too much to do, too many standards to cover, too many behavioral issues, too many meetings, and despite abundant federal funding, not enough to purchase a 25-hour day.  This article offers five practical suggestions to save time and, as a result, reduce anxiety and stress that is the daily enemy of success for teachers and educational leaders. 

Transform Meetings

            If your staff meetings consist of one adult reading announcements to other adults, then consider reading “Goodnight Moon” instead – it would be more productive and less insulting.  A growing number of school leaders are radically changing the way that they conduct meetings. They establish a charter for every meeting, making clear that the purpose of the meeting is deliberation and inquiry, not the transmission of information.  One way of accomplishing this transformation is to end every agenda item with a question mark rather than a period.  We have seen schools that have adopted the protocol that any information to be transmitted is done in a brief 3–4-minute video distributed to all meeting participants before the meeting.  That allows participants to devote precious meeting time to collaboration, inquiry, and deliberation.  We have seen meetings dramatically improve in respecting the time of faculty and administrators from more effective grade level teams to the cabinet.  There is a substantial body of scientific research on meetings (Rogelberg, 2019) and I have offered suggestions to supercharge cabinet meetings (Reeves, 2020).  We know of superintendents who have conducted “meeting audits” with a goal of reducing the person-hours in meetings for the year ahead.  They are combining meetings, eliminating recurring meetings, and reducing the number of people who are present only to have a seat at the table, but who are not part of the central purpose of deliberation and inquiry.

Focus Curriculum

            Yes, there is a free lunch.  Let me explain.  Even before the global pandemic, every teacher knew that there were too many standards and too little time (Lynch, 2017). In light of the learning loss during school closures, teachers in 2023 are faced with the challenge of teaching the same quantity of standards and curriculum requirements with the same number of hours as they had three years ago.  Let me ask a blunt question:  How is your time allocation differing today than it was in 2019?  If the answer is, “Nothing has changed – we’ve had the same schedule for years,” then I want to respectfully push back on that viewpoint.  Frantic coverage of standards and curriculum is counterproductive.  Not only does the mandate to deliver content not work, but it undermines learning.  Every hour devoted to frantic coverage by teachers is an hour in which interaction, engagement, and feedback is absent.  What about the free lunch?  If you have persisted this long, here is my offer.  Whenever I speak to schools and districts, I ask the high school faculty to invite some 8th grade teachers to lunch and have an open discussion about what middle school students must know and be able to do in order to enter high school with confidence and success.  The answer is never “cover every standard” but always a list of knowledge and skills that is focused and brief.  Similarly, I ask middle school faculty to invite elementary school colleagues to lunch with the same conversation about what elementary school student must know and be able to do in order to enter middle school with confidence and success.  But who’s going to pay for those lunches?  I will.  I’m serious – if you are willing to have this essential inter-grade dialog but need funds to pay for it, send me the bill.  It’s a serious offer – Douglas.Reeves@CreativeLeadership.net.  You will leave that meeting with fewer standards for teachers to cover and, most importantly, the conversation will resolve the standards paradox – there are too many standards, but also too few.  There are no standards that say, “keep an up to date assignment notebook” or “ask for help before it’s a crisis.”  Yet every time I listen to teachers, they are more concerned about those skills than the Pythagorean Theorem.  Try it – lunch is on me. 

Practice in Class – Not at Home

            While homework is a time-honored tradition, it’s time to question its value.  In 2023, a growing number of artificial intelligence programs are doing the homework, including writing essays and solving math problems.  Therefore every “perfect” homework may not reflect proficiency by students.  The failure to turn in homework is not necessarily the result of a character defect of irresponsibility by students, but rather a reflection of home responsibilities, including sibling care, jobs, and other family duties.  Therefore, a growing number of teachers are getting practice done in class and not following the tradition of homework.  A synthesis of the research makes clear that homework is not related to student achievement (Neason, 2017).  Moreover, a major source of stress on teachers, especially those with newborns and young families, is the traditional expectation that they spend time on evenings and weekends grading homework.  No wonder that more than half of teachers are considering leaving the profession.  If we continue to make this profession anti-family, that statistic will only get worse.  Practicing in class rather than home means that we must lecture less and listen more.  One science teacher I know, who won awards for his entertaining 45-minute lectures has radically transformed his class into 3-minute segments – 3 minutes of a concept  presentation, 3 minutes of problem solving by students, and 3 minutes of discussion about which answers were correct and why.  We can save teacher time if we are willing to reject traditional models of homework and get the practice done in class. 

Change Behavioral Consequences for Students and Staff

            Even before the behaviorist movement of the early 20th Century, students were whipped, caned, or rewarded.  BF Skinner didn’t invent reward and punishment strategies – he just made it clear that it works for pigeons.  Yet here we are, in the 21st Century, ignoring decades of evidence that rewards and punishments are a demonstrably ineffective way to improve student behavior (Ablom, 2018).  Astonishingly, one of the top complaints I hear from teachers and administrators is that after schools re-opened, student behavior is out of control.  So, what do we do?  The same discredited strategies that have not worked in the past of punishment and rewards.  Stuart Abon, professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical School, asks this trenchant question:  When we have meetings to address the crisis in student behavior, who is at the table?  The answer is, almost always, adults.  We speculate about how to motivate students to behave better without giving a thought to giving students a seat at the table.  Professor Ablon’s solution is Collaborative Problem Solving, and he has seen it become an effective strategy with even the most difficult behavior challenges in schools. 

Prioritize Family and Family Time

            For all the talk about “self-care” after schools re-opened, I find it not credible when I see the time-stamps on e-mails from teachers and administrators at 10 pm and on weekends.  When I suggest that they use the “do not disturb” button on their phones, many reply that would be – and this is their word – “terrified” if they were not immediately available to parents, supervisors, and board members.  When police and firefighters are on duty, they are fully on duty.  But when their shift is completed, they are expected to rest, spend time with their families, and thus become ready for their next shift.  Why do we expect a higher level of vigilance for teachers and superintendents than for firefighters?  Much of this is self-imposed. I’ve been in meetings when participants resist the use of the “do not disturb” function, claiming that they must be responsive at all times.  The superintendent is sitting ten feet away and I will ask the superintendent, “Is that really your expectation?”  Without fail they reply, “If the building is on fire or there is a real emergency I can call – I do not expect after-hours responses to e-mails and texts.”   If we do not prioritize family and personal time, our profession is headed for an even greater crisis than the teacher and administrator shortage that we now face.

There you have it – save time by transforming meetings, focus curriculum, practice in class, change behavioral support, and prioritize family time.  And remember, lunch is on me. 

*Dr. Reeves is the author, most recently, of Fearless Schools:  Building Trust and Resilience for Learning, Teaching, and Leading.  He can be reached at Douglas.Reeves@CreativeLeadership.net or 781.710.9633.

References

Ablom, J. S. (2018). Changeable: How Collaborative Problem Solving Changes Lives at Home, at School, and at Work. Penguin Publishing Group.

Lynch, M. (2017, March 20). DISENGAGED STUDENTS, PART 20: TOO MANY STANDARDS, TOO LITTLE LEARNING [Https://www.theedadvocate.org/disengaged-students-part-20-too-many-standards-too-little-learning/].

Neason, A. (2017). Does Homework Help? ASCD Education Update, 50(1). http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/education-update/jan17/vol59/num01/Does-Homework-Help¢.aspx

Reeves, D. (2020). Supercharged Cabinet Meetings Establishing norms, recording commitments and requiring evidence for the body of senior leaders who advise the superintendent. School Administrator.

Rogelberg, S. G. (2019). The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance. Oxford University Press.