The Gift of Time

I have recently been thinking more and more about my time and what I use it for. Last year and the year before that I was working on my Masters. At that time I was able to teach, coach two sports year round, make artwork, and do all the other work needed for the master's program. I was able to do most of that work at school. This year I can barely stay ahead of the students and I am not getting my masters anymore, and I am not going to coach track this year (due to incoming baby), and I do most of my coaching and other work at home. I haven't had time to work on any art at all. How the hell did I do all that other work before?

I would like to make a note here, that I realize mine is not the only job where there are too many meetings and not enough time. I am just commenting on my own experience and am not trying to make it seem tougher or less fair than any other job. I more want to discuss our best uses of time through the example of my own job.

This year they have added more meetings to our teaching work schedule, taking up more of my plan time (the unstructured time I use to grade, plan lessons, prep metals, make examples, communicate with parents, etc.) Personally, I teach three preps (three different classes), for three grade levels, for over 200 kids. During the day I have a 35 minute morning plan, 2 x 25 minute plans between grades, and a 25 minute lunch. This, in the past, has been enough time to do all of the work necessary to be ready for class with examples made, formative assessments ready to go, presentations done, and have time to work on coaching or my own classes if needed. We have always had some meetings, but it was once a week. This year my morning plan time, which starts right after I finish my morning duty from 7-7:20, has been taken Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays for meetings. Not only that, but we have homework to prepare for these meetings. We have to collect data and presentations to present this data, then comment and reflect to questions about others data and our own presentations. This might not seem like a big deal. It might even seem like a good idea, but for me, its actually been the opposite.

This has nothing to do with my topic, but I think its a pretty fun work of art

The last two years I have been able to really concentrate on my classroom lesson and incorporated a lot of formative assessment and data collection in my room. Formative assessment, for those that don't know, is basically data one can collect quickly to help you teach the next step or to make sure the students understand the concept before moving on. There are a lot of ways to do it, but they are generally not put into the grade book, but merely used to help us guide our lesson and teaching. I was doing a lot of that in my classes. The students were writing about their work and reflecting on their processes and goals. This is the type of assessment that we are focusing on in our Monday and Thursday meetings. Our Tuesday meetings are focusing on literacy practices. This year I have done very little of either of these things in my classroom. Why? I don't have time to plan them out or think them through or prepare the materials for them. Why? Because I am in meetings talking about them and listening to other people present data about them then spending my plan times writing reflections on these ideas I don't have time to implement.

I used these practices all the time in my room the last couple years. I was pretty good at it. Now, with all the time taken from me, I can't get around to doing it and preparing for it. Its the exact opposite effect they wanted. I have stopped doing any coaching work at school. I do that all at home. I don't even break for lunch anymore, I just eat in my room, working, and still there is not enough time to do the real work.

There was a TED talk I listened to once discussing these very ideas. The link follows...

(http://www.ted.com/talks/jason_fried_why_work_doesn_t_happen_at_work?utm_medium=on.ted.com-twitter&utm_source=t.co&utm_content=awesm-publisher&awesm=on.ted.com_qqjn&utm_campaign=)

The one idea that stuck out the most was the idea that the greatest gift you can give someone, especially as their boss, is time. Giving people time to think, prepare, be creative, process, research, etc. Time is the greatest thing you can give them. Listening to this video again at first made me feel relief and validation, then anger, because I know I will never get this. I will never be given more time. I will continue to be given less. The public school system is not an organization that allows for quick innovation or brave ideas allowing people and administrations to try new approaches. EVERYONE that works in public education has PLC meetings. I admit that the ideas behind them are sound and seem like they should help, but they often don't.

As I was writing this I realized I wasn't sure if I had done my homework for my next meeting so I quickly checked my email and Monday memo to see what I needed to do. Turns out I have something planned that would fit as the work I was supposed to be doing for the meeting, but it will take place after the meeting. I have quickly decided not to change my plans. What do you know? I had already planned on doing good teaching practices in my classroom without the meetings. Good thing I have that meeting to discuss the stuff I came up with when I had time not in the meeting.

I guess, after reflection and coming to terms with the fact that I will never be given more time to solve problems, I am just upset that I lost something I didn't know was so important to me. I used to have time enough to load my kiln during the school day with all the students work. I used to have time to make examples during the school day. I used to have time to grades at school. I used to have time to research ideas and plan lesson at school. I didn't realize how precious this time was until it was taken away from me. I didn't realize how frustrating it would be to talk about the good things we should be doing, even though I was doing them, and then not have time to do them.

Its like if I was coaching (I coach cross country at a high school) and I spent the entire time having the kids read articles on running and injury prevention and then report out what they read and ideas they had about it. Then we watched short videos on running and motivation videos to get excited. We would get in groups and discuss our goals for the week in running as relating to the season and how it would help us get better. Then I would expect them go home and come back 2 days later with evidence that they had put all these ideas into practice with evidence that they improved. You know what they wouldn't really have time to do much of? Running!

I am sure many other professionals and jobs fee this way. You just want to tell the people in charge to just let you do your damn job. As a teacher, trained with 8 years experience and an ever growing expertise in art, sometimes I just need time to do my damn job. Let me teach! I realize that there are times where meetings and coming together have helped create new ideas and better approaches. I am arguing that these get togethers would be far more meaningful and helpful if they were done with much less frequency. Give me time to teach, research ideas, make examples and try out techniques. Give me time to think of ways to push the kids intellectually and developmentally. Right now I am barely ahead of them  in the projects. I need time to think and try things out, and... God forbid... fail at a few things so that I, too, can grow as an educator.

We talk a lot about letting kids fail to learn these days. Giving them time and encouraging them to try and fail and figure out why. We need these times as well. I don't want to fail at something because I didn't have time to get it right. I want time to come up with ideas that are new and have time to develop them and try them. If they fail after that, so be it, but I will have learned something. All I feel I have learned this year is that I need to stay one step ahead of the students. That isn't pushing them or me to get better.