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Real Talk About Time Management
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Real Talk About Time Management
35 Best Practices for Educators



February 2020 | 216 pages | Corwin

“This book is exactly what busy teachers need! I found so many tips and strategies to streamline all the busyness of planning, grading, collaborating, interacting with parents, engaging students, and even the layout of the classroom. What a joy to read!”
Janel Meehan
English Language Arts Teacher, Grades 6 and 7
San Diego Unified School District
San Diego, CA

Gain more productive time in each day! Real talk about managing time, reducing stress, and avoiding teacher burnout.

Do you love teaching but feel overwhelmed by getting it all done? Effective time management skills transform teacher confidence and morale, energize and engage students, and improve the learning climate of a classroom—for both you and your students.

Time management directly relates to classroom management, your personal sanity, and your overall quality of life inside and outside of the classroom. Time management experts Serena Pariser and Edward F. DeRoche are here to help you reduce stress and find more time in your day with short, practical time management strategies that can greatly improve your classroom learning environment and your mental health. Weaving wellness research with classroom-tested tips and tricks on everything from lesson planning to grading to meeting the needs of individual students, Real Talk About Time Management includes

·         35 practical, teacher-proven strategies for saving time and setting personal boundaries

·         Stories and vignettes from educators about proactive time management adjustments that worked

·         Real anecdotes from new teachers about the challenges of time management

·         “Your Turn” questions after every strategy that invite personal reflection and strategic planning

Students deserve teachers who are energized, optimistic, and in control of the daily grind while still having the energy and time to foster meaningful connections. Develop proactive habits for managing time and give your best self to your students.

 
Acknowledgments
 
About the Authors
 
Introduction
 
Part I: Time Management Mindset
 
Strategy #1: Ask Yourself Questions
 
Strategy #2: Be Tuned in to the Advice Other Teachers Give You About Time Management
 
Strategy #3: You Have So Much to Do . . . Why?
 
Strategy #4: Be a Hunter: Track Down Controllable Factors That Add to Your Workload
 
Strategy #5: Change Your Language Around Your Workload
 
Strategy #6: Am I Scraping the Right Car?
 
Strategy #7: Watch Your Water Cooler
 
Strategy #8: Get Unstuck When You Feel Paralyzed by Too Much to Do
 
Strategy #9: Organize and Unclutter
 
Strategy #10: Prep Where It Counts Before the Start of School
 
Part II: Planning
 
Strategy #11 Cut Down Your Grading Time
 
Strategy #12: Meetings: Stick to an Agenda to Save Time
 
Strategy #13: What’s Your Right Climate?
 
Strategy #14: Be Proactive, Not Reactive With Tasks
 
Strategy #15: Cell Phones, E-mails, and Social Media . . . Oh My!
 
Strategy #16: Plan Enough Time for Each Student
 
Strategy #17: Peer Mediators to Save Time in Your Classroom
 
Part III: At School
 
Strategy #18: Healthy Habits With Curriculum
 
Strategy #19: Groupwork
 
Strategy #20: When We Have to Be Present
 
Strategy #21: Manage Time in Your Lessons
 
Strategy #22: Technology
 
Strategy #23: Necessary Multitasking
 
Strategy #24: Helping Your Students Manage Their Time
 
Strategy #25: Get a Handle on Paperwork
 
Strategy #26: Manage Time in Parent Conferences/Parent Meetings
 
Strategy #27: Managing Your Time Dealing With Extracurricular Activities
 
Strategy #28: Have a System to Keep Up With E-mails
 
Strategy #29: Know When to Take Little Breaks Throughout the Day
 
Part IV: At Home
 
Strategy #30: Manage Correspondence With Parents and Students
 
Strategy #31: Taking Care of Yourself
 
Strategy #32: Meditation
 
Strategy #33: Enjoy Your Time After School and on the Weekends
 
Strategy #34: Secondary Trauma
 
Strategy #35: Compassion Fatigue
 
An Open Letter to Teachers
 
References
 
Index

Pariser and DeRoche draw from their own classroom experiences to provide a practical time management resource for classroom teachers. With thought-provoking questions at the end of each chapter, this text is a great springboard for collaborative conversations. Real Talk About Time Management is a resource I look forward to sharing and utilizing with the teachers in our system!

Julie Cantillon
Associate Director, Office for Schools, Catholic Diocese of San Diego
San Diego, CA

As a middle and high school English teacher, I often felt like there wasn’t enough time in the day to get everything done. This struggle against the clock is one of the practical challenges I try to help the preservice teachers I now work with to prepare for, but considering time management frustrates even seasoned teachers, Real Talk About Time Management is a helpful tool. With assistance from sources as varied as Marie Kondo and YouTube car commercials, Serena and Ed provide accessible and applicable strategies for time management as well as tools for self-reflection and planning. Along with honest reflections and anecdotes, this book includes advice from actual teachers and realistic consideration of how preparation allows for successful teaching. Serena and Ed’s applications are presented alongside a sense of respect for the significant workload and varied demands on teachers’ time, which they also use to provide specific advice for tasks like grading, communication, and considering our workspaces. Two specific pieces of advice I appreciated from the authors were filtering the advice from others to best fit our needs and personalities and distinguishing between being busy and being productive. Ultimately, Real Talk About Time Management will help teachers to reprioritize their tasks and priorities and to optimize their work flow.

Jason J. Griffith
Assistant Professor of Education, Penn State University
State College, PA

Real Talk About Time Management is exactly what busy teachers need! Even after nearly two decades of teaching, I found so many tips and strategies to streamline all the busyness of planning, grading, collaborating, interacting with parents, engaging students, and even the layout of the classroom. Ideas for dealing with mountains of paper as well as making sure to connect with colleagues are interspersed with heartwarming and hilarious stories of Ed’s and Serena’s classroom experiences. What a joy to read!

Janel Meehan
English Language Arts Teacher, Grades 6 and 7, San Diego Unified School District
San Diego, CA

Real Talk About Time Management is written in a comforting, practical style complemented with many thought-provoking, meaningful anecdotes and quotes. Offers excellent reminders and tips for K–12 teachers of any subject desiring to better manage their time in order to be more effective, more efficient, and more healthy caretakers. Deftly differentiates being busy from being productive and from tasks being important versus being urgent, and will help the dedicated teacher balance what they can control from what they cannot. The authors offer pragmatic resources, sharing perspectives from both a classroom teacher and a school administrator’s lens. This book is a wonderful reference that will help educators work smarter, not harder. No-nonsense, applicable, and full of great tools and strategies for helping teachers better manage their time so that they can be their best in and out of the classroom.

Harlan Klein
Head of Middle School, The Bishop's School
La Jolla, CA

An organized, thorough, and insightful book that captures real-life situations and strategies. A great read for any educator and administrator looking to make an immediate difference in the lives of children. A perfect read on strategies for establishing a work–life balance.

Jennifer Shemtob
Owner and CEO of Teacher Time to Go
Conshohocken,, PA

Serena Pariser gets right into the guts of our perennial problem: we don’t have enough time! I can’t imagine a more comprehensive or helpful book on time management for teachers. I hope it gets a wide and earnest reading.

Dave Stuart Jr.
Author, These 6 Things
Cedar Springs, Michigan

The daily demands of elementary teachers such as responding to student and parent needs, curriculum preparation, academic reflection, collaboration with colleagues and administrative requirements can seem daunting. How necessary, important and valuable to have Real Talk About Time Management, a resource full of tools and practices to help balance the personal and professional lives of teachers!

Suzanne Hagan
Elementary Teacher
San Diego, CA

Great read for someone just beginning their career and those that have been in the profession for years! I’ve been teaching for 22 years and learned so many new time management strategies that I am excited to implement in my classroom. I love how it uses real experiences and real life classroom situations making it relevant to teaching today. Thought provoking. Really gets you to reflect on yourself and how this translates into your teaching style. The strategies in this book can be applied not only in the classroom but also in everyday life.

Michael Clarke
Elementary Teacher
Trappe, PA
Key features
Many of the features will be consistent with the features in Real Talk About Classroom Management.
  • Real Conversations: humorous anecdotes from new teachers about their time management woes
  • Stories and vignettes from the authors’ personal experiences with time management
  • Your Turn sections after every Strategy to provide opportunities for reflection
  • 35 practical strategies for saving time and maintaining wellness

For instructors

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