Workload and Stress Management
Did you know?
How teachers manage time and space in the classroom, often labeled proactive management, plays an important role in shaping students’ behaviors (Johnson et al., 2005; Morrow, Reutzel, & Casey, 2006).
Teacher resilience is the key to successfully dealing with the stresses of the classroom (Bernshausen & Cunningham, 2001).
Classroom management has the most powerful impact on student learning, even more significant than parental support, curriculum design, school culture, and school demographics (Wang, Haertel, and Walberg, 1994).
"Are you doing what you love?
Are you loving what you do?
Are you living who you are?
Are you loving being YOU? "
–Martha Belknap, Educator
Now that the school year has kicked off, you may find yourself longing for the quieter days of summer and wondering where your time is going. Grading, meetings, and extra-curricular activities above and beyond the hours you spend in the classroom might be catching up with you. Feeling like we don’t have time to do everything we need or want to do can lead to stress. If you feel the pace of your life is speeding up, it’s time to take charge of your time.
There are three ways you can take charge of your time and decrease your stress.
Plan: Managing your time is really about managing your energy. The key is to gain more control of both by learning to plan appropriately.
Prioritize: An essential part of reducing stress is learning to set and maintain priorities.
Organize and Simplify: Is your life too cluttered, fast-paced, or out of balance? You can improve the quality of your life by organizing and simplifying such areas as your lifestyle, personal time, shopping, work, finances, and health.
Check out our related on-site graduate course on Classroom Management: Orchestrating A Community of Learners.
Read on for how to take charge of your time and manage your stress.
Think of your time as a pie. Each day the pie is sliced up as you allocate pieces of it to specific projects. The pie is sliced and served until, at the end of the day, the pie is gone.
Unfortunately, just because the pie is sliced and served doesn’t mean the projects that those slices of pie represented are finished.
Your energy pie is a finite entity with only so many slices available. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Now imagine time and energy as being one and the same pie, with only so much to give each day. If you give too much away to projects that are a low priority, you will not have enough time or energy left to do the things you really want or need to do. Keeping the time/energy relationship in mind can help remind you to prioritize the slices of pie that are available.
On a piece of paper, draw a big circle. Then divide the circle into four equal quadrants by drawing one line splitting it in half vertically and one line splitting it in half horizontally. Each quadrant represents six hours of time.
Now indicate how you spend your time. Include categories such as teaching, sleeping, eating, relaxing, commuting, doing household chores, and spending time with family and friends.
Are you satisfied with the ways you allocate your time and energy? If not, draw a new pie graph to show how you would like or need to spend your time.
Then work each day to meet your goals. You may find that you need a pie graph for each day or for each week. You can decide what works best for you. Using the pie graph with your students can help them learn to manage their time and stress too.
Bernshausen, D., & Cunningham, C. (2001). The role of resiliency in teacher preparation and retention. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Collegesfor Teacher Education, Dallas, TX. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED451191)
Johnson, D. D., Rice, M. P., Edgington, W. D., & Williams, P. (2005). For the uninitiated: How to succeed in classroom management. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 42(1), 28–32.
Morrow, L. M., Reutzel, D. R., & Casey, H. (2006). Organization and management of language arts teaching: Classroom environments, grouping practices, and exemplary instruction. In C. M. Evertson & C. S. Weinstein (Eds.), Handbook of classroom management: Research, practice and contemporary issues (pp. 559–581). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Wang, M. C., Haertel, G. D., & Walberg, H. J. (1994). Educational resilience in inner cities. In M. C. Wang & E. Gordon (Eds.), Educational resilience in inner-city America: Challenges and prospects (pp. 45–72). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Source: The tips above are based on ideas offered in the PLS course Classroom Management: Orchestrating a Community of Learners®. For more information see "Featured Graduate Course" to the right.
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