Problem-Solving – A Teacher's Life

Finding Balance Is a Myth

February 11, 2022November 23, 2022 Laura

You Know This Story

It’s Wednesday evening (not afternoon, mind you), and I trudge to my car after another long day at work. It was dark when I arrived at school, and it’s dark as I leave school. Thankfully, the parking lot lights scare away the shadows. I might be physically leaving school, but mentally I’m still there.

The end of the semester fast approaches despite my attempts to ignore the looming date. I missed my workout session with the other gals because I had a student who wanted to stay after to discuss a grading rubric. This isn’t a problem. It happens from time to time, and I’m more than happy to talk to students who take the time to come after school to ask questions. However, as I walk to my car, it’s one of the few left in the school parking lot, which is the same scene five days out of the week. This year, I have refused to take things home to grade, so I’ve been staying later in order to work on it. I arrived at school at 7:15 and I’m now leaving a little after 5:00. Thankfully, I only live four minutes away from work.

Finding Balance

We all struggle to find that ever elusive work-life balance, but the truth is that finding balance is a myth, along with multi-tasking. These are unicorns, so there really is no such thing, especially when you are a teacher. You put in a 40-hour work week (sometimes many more), then you go home to grade or plan and it keeps going for ten long months. It’s frustrating and one of the many causes of teacher burn-out. So what can you do to keep from feeling the pull of misery that sucks you down into the Pit of Despair and makes you dread getting up each morning? Let’s take a look at some options.

Do Your Work at School: Stay as late as you want at school, but don’t take anything home to grade during the week. Home is home; work is work. Doing this will help separate these two important aspects of your life. The workload is already extreme, so why take your papers on a field trip to and from your house when you know that eight times out of ten your papers will stay nice and cozy in your backpack? Additionally, grading takes longer because you are distracted by other tasks that suddenly have to be done now even though they’ve been calling to you for days.
Know How Long It Takes to Grade: I’m pretty sure I’m the world’s slowest grader. It’s really hard for me to concentrate on grading essays if I don’t comment a lot on them. Commenting keeps me focused, but that means I’m reading and re-reading to make meaningful comments. And I know that it takes me an average of 20-30 minutes to grade one essay. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. That equates to 9 hours of grading for a class of 25. I know it takes me 30 minutes to grade vocabulary quizzes and an hour and a half to grade advanced vocabulary quizzes. When you know how long assignments truly take to grade, it can help you decide which day of the week to assign them or if you need to stagger some lessons. It can also help you decide if adding those five extra questions is really worth your time to grade.
Plan Your Weekly Hours: If you know that you need to put in a fifty-hour work week in order to keep on top of your workload, then make sure you spread that out if you struggle working in long chunks. Let’s face it. If you teach a subject that has a lot of reading in order to grade, or you have a lot of planning, you’re probably scoffing at a fifty-hour work week. This is where you have to think about how many hours of your time you are willing to give that will also keep you from being miserable come progress reports, parent-teacher conferences, or semester’s end.
Find Ways to Cut Down the Grading: I really struggle with this one, so I’m going to have to defer to some of my colleagues’ practices. One gal I work with simply doesn’t grade most practice. If she happens to, she gives it a pittance of a score for completion. She also has students regularly self-evaluate and finds that many times they are much harder on themselves than she is. Another gal uses a lot of rubrics and doesn’t put any comments on student work. She tells them to schedule an appointment with her if they need clarification that the rubric doesn’t provide. A couple of our math and social studies teachers have homework packets that are not required to be completed unless a student does poorly on a test and is looking to attempt a retake. Then the student must complete the packet, turn it in, and earn a certain percentage. All of these could potentially work for you depending on what you are working on at the time.
Find Your Hours Somewhere Else: Maybe you were researching something for school and received one of those pesky notifications on your computer that one of your friends tagged you in a Facebook picture. Naturally, you open up Facebook and proceed to spend the next two hours looking through your feed. Those baby goats get you every time. We love to tell ourselves that we don’t have enough time, but that’s another myth for another post. We have 24 hours in every day like every other person. But we don’t have our crap together. My DVR is my time-suck. When I look at what is truly important, I’m ashamed at how much time I spend daily on things that really aren’t as important to me. It’s time to be honest with ourselves. We’re behind sometimes because we didn’t work on our priorities and values first. We opted for fun and regretted it later. Much like that pair of shoes you had to have that now kill your feet. Fun now, painful later.

You could potentially do all of the above or just one of these to have a little more piece of mind. But you will never find that mythical 50/50 balance. You have to find what works best for you and your priorities and what fits into your life. You also have to be mindful that balance one week may not look like balance the next week. Sometimes, work may be more important than what’s going on at home.

Kill the Unicorn

If you are like I was just a couple of years ago, you’ve been trying to figure out how to find balance. Stop doing this and just kill the unicorn already. Something has to give, and it can’t be your health, your job, or your home. You cannot balance it; you must juggle it. A juggler doesn’t balance anything. He or she focuses on one ball at a time while the others are in the air. Focus on your one priority task at the moment (health, job, home) then move on to the other one figuring out how long you need to make your life comfortable.

You probably keep telling yourself that you’ll get better next year about keeping on top of things at work and at home. Isn’t this the same thing you tell yourself every year? Stop looking for balance and figure out what needs to be done and how much time you’re willing to give to the task, then get it done with laser focus.

If you have a time-saving strategy, please leave your suggestions in the comments.

Please feel free to like this post, comment, share, or ask questions.

Problem-Solving, Rules of the Trade

The Kids Constantly Talk Over Me

February 9, 2022 Laura

You Make Me Feel Brand New

Despite the sincere and wonderful meaning of this Stylistics song title, for a veteran teacher, this phrase is like the kiss of death.

A few years ago, I decided to go back into public education after experimenting with private education. I ended up landing a part-time job with a non-continuing contract. One of the issues I had when I took over the classes after being their third English teacher for the year (yeah, you read that correctly) is that the kids would repeatedly speak over me. It was obvious that the practice had been going on for a long time, but it was foreign to me because I had always been able to cultivate a classroom of respect for verbal communication. However, I had never been a replacement. I had always started the year with my own classes, so I had my methods down. They weren’t working here.

The Embarrassment

Frankly, their behavior was embarrassing to me as a teacher. I didn’t have control. I couldn’t get control. They didn’t even care when an administrator was in the room which told me a lot about myself and the district that hired me. I did what any teacher might do in that situation: I blamed the kids. Why couldn’t they just be quiet long enough for me to get through a set of instructions? Why couldn’t they just let me do my job? When another teacher or administrator walked into the room, my face was hot with embarrassment and shame. I looked like a teacher who didn’t know how to command a classroom. While I’d had a couple of bad classes in the past (three, actually, during my seventeen years of experience at the time), they occurred earlier in my career. I felt like a brand new teacher all over again. It made me doubt whether or not I’d made the right decision to go back to the public classroom.

The Power of Google

For the first few weeks, I blamed the kids for their behavior. One day, out of sheer frustration, I googled “Why is my classroom out of control?” Apparently other people googled that exact phrase, so I felt some small comfort there, but it was short-lived. I came across an article that made me feel even more shame. You can read it here. Ultimately, the article kicked me in the butt and told me to take control of my room again and to stop blaming others for my mistakes–something I’ve always told my students. It was my fault, and when I chose to take control again, it would happen. That’s just what I did.

I invited an instructional coach into the room to get an outsider’s perspective. I had already determined a few mistakes on my own and figured out ways to correct them:

I needed more consistency at the beginning of class. In the past, I had simply greeted the students and discussed what we’d done the previous day. This wasn’t enough. These kids were used to Early Work in most of their classes. Because they had no specific task to complete when class began, it became a free-for-all with kids standing and speaking to their friends long after the bell rang. Once I started creating Early Work in the form of journals, the kids would sit down right away and begin writing. Such a simple idea.
I was trying to teach to the kids as if I’d had them all year. In the past, I taught the kids to raise their hands in order to speak for any reason. After the first quarter, the students organically moved to speaking in turn without raising their hands. I was expecting these students to automatically take turns speaking as if I had already trained them during first semester. Silly, silly teacher. At this point, it was too late in the year to train them, so I backed off. I stopped getting so upset since they were doing what they had been taught was acceptable by other teachers. I did, however, work on getting them more engaged so that the conversation was about the topic at hand. This was by no means perfect, but it drastically changed the culture of the classroom and my attitude by the end of the day. This time, they were still talking over each other, but they were doing it in excitement to respond to other students’ comments.
I was trying to move on even when the kids were out of control. This was dumb. I would simply tell them to be quiet and try to continue going over directions as if that would really work. I started making them practice silence. They really hated this which made it extremely effective. There were times we would wait in silence for three minutes before moving on. If I didn’t elongate the time, they would simply begin speaking again within seconds of stopping the first time. Trust me, it was torture the first few times I did it. The seconds dragged on, and I wanted to move forward so badly. But I couldn’t. The point had to be made. It didn’t take long before the silences became significantly shorter without the fear of having to stop again.

Strategies From the Instructional Coach

One of the practices the instructional coach noticed was my lack of movement in the class-room. In my old district, I would have the kids stand up and stretch to wake them up and get the blood circulating again. This seemed to be enough for them. However, it wasn’t enough for these kiddos. Kelly (the instructional coach) suggested more activities that would get the kids up and moving. We talked about 4 Corners, group work, small presentations, and acting out scenes from reading. These were activities I had done in the past, but this group needed to do them much more. The activities worked to help the kids focus when they needed to.

The classroom was never perfect, but it improved, and my relationship with my students improved greatly along with my attitude. These examples worked for me, but there are so many more you can try if you find yourself in my situation. Remember that you can always get control back when you want to.

Please feel free to like this post, comment, share, or ask questions.

Problem-Solving, Relationships, Rules of the Trade

My Students Don’t Turn in Homework

February 9, 2022 Laura

This is a tough one. After many years of teaching, I still don’t have a clear-cut answer for this. All I can do here is offer some suggestions. Each class and kid is different, so it is really hard to figure out the best way to get kids to do the daily stuff. However, basic professional requirements have to happen regardless of the other tactics that may differ from year to year.

PRACTICES YOU HAVE TO DO:

You have to have a conversation with the student as soon as you start noticing a pattern. I’m not talking about eight missing assignments later. No more than three. I might even have the conversation at two if I get the vibe that the student really dislikes the class or school, in general. It’s important to know why the student didn’t do the work. Is it done but in a locker? Is it at home? Does the student care about the grade? Is there something happening at home preventing the student from being able to complete school work? Is this happening in other classes?
You have to update grades online regularly. I am still working on this because I am slow to update. Updating once a month doesn’t tell the parent anything, and I’ve had my fair share of updating way too slowly. If you can, make it a habit to update no less than once week, even if it’s just one assignment. If you can’t get that assignment in the grade book, at least get the missing work in the grade book so parents see that right away. We have the option at my school to label it as missing or missing with a zero as a temporary grade. The zero really gets attention quickly.
You have to find a way to keep parents informed about what is happening in your classroom. Maybe this is a very basic homework blog. Some teachers use Google Classroom to upload documents so there is no excuse that it was forgotten on some cafeteria table. Some teachers send mass emails to parents when something big is going down. And I use the Remind App mainly for students, but the parents have the option to sign up to see the posts for the class. You might think that it’s too much hand-holding, but I prefer to think of it as covering my butt while keeping parents in the loop. You can’t follow each kid home to make sure they do their work, but their parents sure can. Let them decide how much hand-holding to do with their kids while using your information. Also, you may only opt to use one or two of these.

PRACTICES YOU MIGHT DO: (Not all of you are going to agree with these. Keep in mind that I’m just offering ideas.)

Have a late work policy in place that is approved by the administration and is clearly understood by parents and students. Sometimes it really depends on the school district. In one school district, I had a policy that allowed students to turn late work in within 45 minutes of school ending and receive no penalty. This meant that if a student left the homework in a locker, he or she could easily retrieve it after school, and they wouldn’t feel the desire to ask to get it during class. It also allowed me keep the work with the rest of class instead of separating it as a penalty reminder. If the student did not turn it in after school, he or she could turn it in during class the following day for a 10% reduction on the assignment. After this, however, I wouldn’t take it. Some school districts shy away from a policy like this. I worked in one district that allowed students to make up work that was two months overdue and no more than 10% off the grade. This frustrated me because it took away any incentive for the students to hold themselves accountable. It also made for horrible paperwork issues.
Make homework a small percentage of the grade. If homework in your classroom is really just practice for something much larger, there is something you need to ask yourself. Is it worth the hassle? Is assigning the homework really worth the time and worry that it’s causing you to plan it and grade it? If the answer is no, then don’t assign it. Evaluate all the homework you give and make sure that it’s absolutely necessary for students to complete in order to understand the final assessment. Or assign the homework and don’t panic when it’s not turned in because it’s a small percentage of the grade.
Assign some sort of homework detention. One school district I worked for encouraged homework detentions and created an 8th Hour, a study hall after school in the library where students with missing work were required to attend. A teacher was paid extra to do this hour-long study hall, and parents were informed that it was a school-wide practice. Other teachers assign detentions before or after school or during lunch.

You will find that you struggle to find middle ground in this area year after year. Some years, your late work policy is golden; other years, you find yourself changing it up because the students don’t respond to your policies. It’s frustrating, but you have to think of what works for your students at that time and what works for you.

Please feel free to like this post, comment, or ask questions.