In My 2024 Era: Start Working Less

Last week I kicked off the second series of this blog with my story on why and how I started my personal growth journey. When I had hit my personal rock bottom I felt the final tiny ember of my teacher flame going out completely. I wanted to leave in the middle of the school year...just walk away from it all. But I was scared of being jobless and I felt like a failure. I couldn't do it anymore...I was broken.

During this struggle I realized that I'm a lot of things but I'm not a quitter...I pivot. And there is NOTHING wrong with that. Let's say it again for those in the back....THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH CHANGING YOUR PLANS AND PIVOTING. In fact, that is exactly what growth should look like. Just like when a plant's roots become too big for the pot it is in, we may have to change its environment all together in order for it to thrive.

While I am 'rooted in the classroom', I found that I was becoming root bound by staying in my current situation...so I went into basic survival mode until I could change my environment. But what I discovered during this time period was something that I wish I had done from the beginning of my teaching career. I was treating my job as just that....like it was just my job. And you know what, when I turned in my resignation letter, I was treated like any other employee that was quitting a job. As teachers, we often feel like we have to do it all, all of the time, in order to be the best thing for our students. However, the best thing for our students is a happy teacher that cares about them as a person. And a happy teacher is one that is not running themselves ragged.

So in the spirit of resolutions for 2024, I am challenging you to set a new one....work less.

Gasp! Did I really just tell you to work less? Um, heck yes I did! Now, I'm not saying that if you are doing the bare minimum already to work even less and not fulfill your obligations. But if I had to bet, I would say that you are probably not a teacher that does the absolute bare minimum anyways. So what I'm going to share below are ways that I cut my workload down (and that was before AI became so accessible for teachers!!).

STOP GRADING EVERYTHING

If you are currently taking work home to grade. Stop it. Stop it right now. You may be thinking "But I have so many papers to grade, I can't possibly get this all done at school." And you're probably right. But if your thought process is to grade everything your students complete, then you need to change your way of thinking. I bet your school only requires 1-2 recorded grades per week anyways. Everything you ask your students to complete does not have to be for a grade. Sometimes the work is just practice. If you think of it this way, we don't ask athletes to record every single practice or scrimmage performance...just what matters...actual game time. If you think your students won't do their work if they know you aren't grading it, you are probably right...but they don't have to always know your secrets. If anything you can always have them take ownership in what goes in the grade book. Let's say you have 5 assignments for the week, ask your students to pick 1 to 2 of them to go in the grade book. You may just be surprised to see them starting to care about their performance when they know they chose the assignments that matter for their overall grade.

IF YOU ARE GOING TO GRADE A LOT OF WORK...AUTOMATE IT

If you must grade the work, find a way to make it self-grading. Making a worksheet or quiz into a Google Form or Microsoft Form is a quick and easy way to turn a lot of your assignments into ones that grade themselves. If you may be new to this, here is a quick tutorial that shows you how to automate this process in Google Forms.

SPEND LESS TIME MAKING COPIES

When I stopped to really think about how much time I was spending printing copies for my 150 students each day, I was averaging 1 hour a week. That is almost 40 hours in a school year. Almost a whole work week just spent at the copier. However, when we went virtual for the pandemic I came across an online tool called Teacher Made that would allow me to take my pdf files of worksheets and turn them into online, fillable worksheets for my students. At the time it was a free tool for teachers, so I'm sorry that has changed as their business has evolved post pandemic but another alternative you may be interested in to save your budget and time is Kami. Saving time by not having to make so many dang copies is like the teacher equivalent to Spring Break at a kid free island in my opinion.

INVEST IN A FULL COURSE CURRICULUM

When I started teaching I couldn't process the idea of spending money on classroom lessons when there were so many of them for free out there. However, I was spending HOURS everyday either looking at websites and their 1000000s of free lessons or creating my own. It wasn't until my second maternity leave that I broke down and started using a full course curriculum that I purchased. Since I wasn't going to be starting the school year off with my students and wouldn't be returning until the new grading period started, I decided to just leave my sub with a binder of the printed curriculum and access to my online folder. I didn't want to stress anymore about making a maternity leave binder while I was trying to grow a human. But when I came back to school, I was so thankful that I also had that curriculum for myself as well. I didn't have to think about what to teach and how to teach it. I could come into class, teach, then leave as soon as my day wrapped up to be with my newborn and toddler at home.If you find yourself in a season of surviving instead of thriving, consider doing yourself a favor and invest in a full course curriculum or unit plan. If you break down the cost of those resources per day, you may just realize it's more affordable than your Starbucks habit...and many sites may just have gift cards so family members and parents can help you out.

MAKE AN EMERGENCY SUB FOLDER

I used to resent my husband a little bit every time one of our kids was sick or had an emergency and we had to have the dreaded talk about who was going to stay home with them. My husband could work from home or take them with him in his truck and didn't have to take off work. It wasn't that I resented him as a person, I was just jealous of his work situation. It was always so much work to prep just to be out of class and in times of sickness or emergencies, work should be the last thing on your mind. But when I put an emergency sub folder together with general agriculture plans and left it on my desk every afternoon, I was able to lose a lot of stress if anyone in our household woke up sick. That alone was worth its weight in gold.

STOP DOING ALL OF THE HEAVY LIFTING ON MAKING TESTS

In my second year of teaching, the big theme in education was "student voice". And while my older co-workers were rather laissez faire about the 20th new theme being shoved down their throat, I found it rather enlightening. This was the year that the student choice board type of assignments became a massive hit, but I took things further in my classroom. When it came time for my students to take their assessments on our unit of study, instead of spending an hour or so making a test, I would ask my students to use their notes, worksheets, and lab write ups to create 2-3 questions about what they thought should be on the test after I gave them a set of parameters to follow. And lemme just tell ya...the grumblings of "this test is too hard" and "we didn't go over this in class" ceased and their scores went up. They were the ones who made their test so they couldn't blame me now could they? 😉

Whether or not you are finding yourself in a season of just surviving, it is my hope that you try out some of these suggestions and take back some of your precious time to do the things that truly bring you joy and treat your body and mind well. If you are a podcast listener, check out "Truth for Teachers" by Angela Watson. She has a whole platform built around the 40 Hour Workweek. You may just find yourself to be a much better teacher when you work less this year.

Until next time,