December 9, 2024 • 18 mins
As teachers, we're always having more and more added to our plates - but do we ever stop to take anything off? Discover thirty ideas of things you can stop doing (or at least do less often) to take back some time!
Get notes + links at http://teach4theheart.com/330
00:00 Balancing the Teacher's Load
03:09 Strategies for Reducing Workload
05:54 Doing Less: Trimming Tasks
09:10 Transferring Responsibilities
12:10 Practical Examples of Delegation
14:57 Experimenting with New Approaches
If you enjoyed this episode, check out 6 Time-Saving Principles to Achieve Work-Life Balance: https://teach4theheart.com/147
For more support and encouragement, check out Teach 4 the Heart+ Membership: https://teach4theheart.com/plus/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Teachers have so much on their plate.
If we keep stacking and stacking and stacking and never take anything off, we are going tocollapse.
So today, we're gonna talk about how we can actually take some things off our plate tomake room for the things that matter.
Welcome back to the Teach for the Heart podcast where we tackle teaching challenges from abiblical perspective.
(00:22):
Why are we here?
Because we don't believe that our spiritual walk and teaching profession should exist intwo separate domains.
Rather, the hope we in Christ should change how we approach everything, not just at home,but at school as well.
So join us as we explore both the spiritual and practical sides of key teachingchallenges, integrating them together so we can succeed at teaching, glorify God, and make
(00:43):
a lasting difference in our students' hearts and lives.
This episode is brought to you in partnership with the Herzog Foundation.
Today we're really excited to bring back one of the older episodes out of our vault thatwe think will be really helpful for you as you finish this year and head into the next.
So let's dive right in.
If you're a teacher right now, chances are you're pretty busy.
(01:05):
There's more to do than you feel like you have time for, and you might even find yourselfnot getting done everything you want to get done.
And one of the remedies for this
is to actually identify things to stop doing or to do less of.
The truth is as teachers we are often adding things to our plate, but rarely do we stopand look for things to take off.
(01:29):
And if you think about that for more than two seconds you realize that's a recipe fordisaster, right?
We're just gonna get busier, busier, busier if we don't take things off in equal portionor more portion to what we put on.
Now back in episode 159 we talked about
Taming your to-do list with the four T's.
And the concept is this.
(01:49):
It's that you write down everything that's on your to-do list, whether they're just thingsyou have to do now or things you do repetitively.
And then for every item, you decide you look for things that you're going to trash, whichmeans you just stop doing it.
Trim, which means you do have to do it, but you do it less often or you set boundariesaround it.
Transfer, which means you get someone to help you with it, which yes, that is possible.
(02:14):
or treasure, meaning it's valuable and you're going to keep doing it and you're going tovalue it.
So every single item on your to-do list you'd go through and say, is this a trash, a trim,a transfer, or a treasure?
And it's a really great exercise to help just do what I just said, where you're saying,OK, I have to take something off my plate.
I literally can't get all of this done.
(02:34):
So what I want to do today is kind of build on that.
So if you haven't listened to episode 159, I recommend maybe even going back
and listening to that either before this episode or after this episode.
Because what I'm gonna do here is give you some examples of things that teachers havestopped doing, things that teachers are doing less or less often, and things that teachers
(02:57):
have transferred and gotten other people to help with them.
So these are examples.
Please keep in mind when I give you this example list, I'm not saying that you should stopdoing all of these things.
Very few of us could stop doing all of these things and still be effective.
But they are examples of things that teachers have stopped doing and still been effective,and in some cases even more effective.
(03:22):
So what you're looking for is inspiration from this list.
Okay, this is not, like I said, something where you're gonna, I want you to exactly followand stop doing every single thing I say here.
You're looking for a few things that you're like, I could stop doing that too, or I coulddo that.
less often or I could get someone to help me with that.
Okay, you're looking for a few things that you can remove from your to-do list.
(03:45):
And then also inspiration.
Maybe this will, you know, spark something in your head and say, what about this?
What about this?
What about this?
Okay.
So these are examples and I hope that you will find them helpful.
So first, first set we're going to go through, these are examples of things that teachershave stopped doing, just stopped.
(04:07):
Okay.
first one is correcting students' work.
So in other words, rather than collecting papers or tests and actually going through andputting all the correct answers, just don't put the correct answers on students' tests,
realizing you can have them do that themselves or even have that as an assignment.
Number two, extra roles that their heart is not in.
(04:30):
So responsibilities at school or at home or at church.
that you said yes to kind of out of guilt and now realize, no, that's actually not thebest use of my time.
Some teachers have even stopped giving and grading homework altogether.
They don't give homework at all.
(04:51):
I'm not saying everyone should do that, but some teachers have done that and foundthemselves still being really effective.
Number four, a making-
PowerPoints.
So some teachers have said, you know what, I'm not making PowerPoints anymore.
It's too much of a time suck.
It's not necessary.
I'm not going to do it.
Number five, video editing.
So if you're making videos for your class, rather than spending all this time editing themso that they're quote unquote perfect, just leaving the mistakes in, like letting them be
(05:19):
more raw and simple.
Next one, changing bulletin boards or classroom decor.
This is definitely one I embraced.
I decorated my classroom at the beginning of the year, and then I didn't change it verymuch at all.
Just let it be.
Some teachers have said they used to keep a paper gradebook as a backup, and they'vestopped keeping a paper gradebook backup, just have the one gradebook.
(05:44):
Here's an example from home, and that's something I want to encourage you with as well iswhen you're looking at this, don't just think about school, also think about your personal
life.
Because I mean it's your life right that they all flow into each other So one example isgrocery shopping some teachers have decided to use Instacart or something similar to do
grocery shopping for them So those are all examples of things that teachers have stoppeddoing and remember as I said I'm not telling you to stop doing all of those But can you I
(06:13):
hope your mind is expanding a little bit already some of these things you might think Icould never stop doing that But maybe you could
That's what I want you to start asking yourself.
What if I just didn't do this?
Particularly look at the things that are most time consuming for you and ask, what if Ididn't do that?
(06:34):
Is there another way to be just as effective without taking so much time?
And it's kind of amazing what some teachers have been able to cut out without it affectinghow effective they are.
The next one, the next section that we're gonna go through,
are things that you can do less.
And this, in some cases, is a little bit easier than just saying I'm stopping italtogether.
(06:56):
You can identify areas where, OK, I can do this way less often.
So here's some examples.
Grading.
my goodness.
This one is a huge example.
If you are grading everything in particular, you have to stop grading everything that youdo.
Definitely not a good idea.
You can definitely.
Almost every teacher can look for ways to grade less unless you're already cut down to thebare minimum.
(07:20):
So ask yourself, if you grade, let's say, every homework assignment, ask yourself, could Igrade half the homework assignments instead of all of them?
Same thing for classwork, same thing for lots of things.
know, say, can I grade half of this and still have an accurate grade representation?
If yes, do it.
Another thing is emails.
So rather than checking emails 10 times a day, teachers said, I'm going to check it once aday or I'm going to check it twice a day.
(07:42):
That's my email time.
Also removing email from your phone so you're not on there in the evening or saying I'mnot checking it over the weekend.
Those are some ways to cut down on time and energy spent on email.
Social media is something that a lot of teachers have identified as doing less.
That's not necessarily something on your to-do list, but it is a huge time suck.
So kind of putting boundaries around this is the time I'm spending on social media andthat's it.
(08:06):
Another thing that some teachers have done less often is a classroom newsletter.
Which I would actually say some teachers have stopped doing this altogether.
They don't send a newsletter anymore.
But some have said, okay, rather than every week, I can do it every other week.
So that's something you might consider about.
Lesson planning is obviously a huge area that can take up a lot of time.
So there's a lot of ways that you can look to do to spend less time on lesson plans.
(08:31):
But one simple tip, I guess I could almost do a whole other podcast just on lessonplanning.
But one tip is using a timer.
in such a way where you'd say, okay, I have, you know, 55 minutes or whatever it is toaccomplish this plan, you know, whatever, however much it is.
I believe that's a reasonable amount of time.
(08:52):
I believe I can do it in that amount of time and I'm going to, I need to be done by thetime this timer goes off.
When we do that, this doesn't work for everybody, but for a lot of people this is reallyhelpful.
Just kind of giving yourself that deadline of like, I have to be done in this amount oftime can really force our mind to focus.
and actually get done and not get distracted because sometimes we go down rabbit holesthat are not helpful.
(09:15):
So simply using a timer, like giving yourself a deadline to get stuff done can be reallyhelpful in keeping it in its place and taking up less time, trimming it down.
PowerPoints also go here too.
We talked about some teachers have said, don't do PowerPoints anymore.
Some teachers...
have chosen to spend less time on PowerPoints by still having them, but making them muchsimple versus elaborate.
(09:40):
So rather spending all this time, you know, with the animations and all this craziness,just being like, nope, I'm just gonna put the bare bones of what needs to be there.
I'm not gonna spend time, you know, making it super elaborate.
The last example I have here is one from the home, and that is if you cook dinner on aregular basis, you can make two-day meals.
(10:01):
This is one, this is...
My personal example, a lot of times I will make a meal, and we don't call it leftovers, wecall it a two-day meal.
I said this meal is for Monday and Wednesday, or for Thursday and Sunday, or whatever itis.
And that's how it works.
I make double the amount, which takes a little longer, but definitely not as long asmaking two different meals.
And then when that day comes, I just reheat it, or just prepare a couple of new sides, orwhatever it is.
(10:25):
It saves a lot of time and stress in the home front.
This episode is brought to you in partnership with the Herzog Foundation, and we want toin particular recommend Herzog's trainings for Christian school administrators and
teachers.
They have so many amazing free trainings, many of which are online and others that are inperson.
(10:48):
The great thing is that they're all completely free and the in-person events even includefree lodging.
So you definitely wanna check out their full catalog of upcoming trainings and events.
You'll even find some on there that we at Teach for the Heart are doing together withHerzog.
So check them all out at HerzogFoundation.com and click events at the top of their page.
Now back to our program.
(11:12):
All right, so so far we've gone through some examples of things that teachers have stoppeddoing altogether.
They've just trashed it.
Second, we've talked about things that teachers are doing less often or spending less timeon.
That's called trimming.
And the last one is transferring, which means getting people to help you with it.
And I want, I'm excited.
I have actually a ton of examples of things that teachers have told me that they havegotten students or parents or various paras or whatever it is to help with.
(11:41):
So here's some ideas, okay?
First of all, tutoring.
You can sometimes get parent volunteers or older students to help tutor students in yourclass.
Your class weekly newsletter is something that you might be able to hand off to a parentor depending on the age of your student, probably, this is more of an elementary thing, so
(12:01):
probably we need to be a parent or a paraprofessional.
But could you train a parent or a paraprofessional to do your weekly newsletter?
And number three, grading.
If you have a para or a teacher's assistant, or in a lot of cases, students can oftengrade smaller things.
I know I almost always had my students grade homework or classwork or things like thatthey would exchange in grade and then I just have to look over it real quickly rather than
(12:25):
actually looking at every single one.
Cleaning the classroom is something that definitely your students can do.
You can put procedures in place.
Which let me pause for just a moment and talk about this.
When you think about getting help, we talk about this
in great detail in our Tame Your To-Do List program and in our mentorship as well.
But the key is training someone, OK?
(12:47):
And this is maybe a good time to just say, have our Tame Your To-Do List system is comingup.
And in that, we go into a lot of details about how you can effectively delegate things toothers, because it does it without it taking a lot of your time and without it being
stressful, OK?
So I don't have time to go into all of that right now.
(13:08):
But the point is you really can train people to do something.
The key is just having a process, teaching them what to do, and then having the sameperson do it repetitively.
Because the first time or two that they do it, it's probably not gonna really save youthat much time, because you're have to tell them what to do, and then you're have to check
over it, and tell them what to do differently.
But the third, the fourth time they do it, now they're getting the hang of it.
(13:32):
And then if they can do it for the full year,
then it really saves you time.
So just a thought there that same thing with students.
If you're teaching your students to clean the classroom the first time or two you do it,you might feel like, this is not gonna work.
But if you stick with it and teach the procedure to them, it can really save tons of timein the long run.
So with anything you transfer, keep in mind it's a little bit of a time investmentupfront, but it can pay huge dividends in the long haul.
(13:59):
Okay, back to our list.
Next one is decorating the classroom.
So we talked before about simply, you know, not decorating the classroom very much.
But another option is to transfer that to students or to parent volunteers, right?
And say, hey, you're in charge of this bulletin board, or you're in charge of putting upthe good example work, or whatever it is.
(14:19):
If your classroom has a lot of setting up, tearing down, or you have to set up like labsor projects, that is something that can be assigned to, once again, same thing, students.
Paraprofessional parent volunteers.
Planning class field trips or parties is something that a parent volunteer may be able todo.
That's definitely something in my son's, my kid's school.
(14:44):
They have room moms that plan all the parties for the year.
So all the classroom parties, the teachers don't plan any of them.
The room mom plans it and coordinates with the other parents.
So that's a huge relief for the teachers to not have to worry about that.
But I could imagine some teachers have also worked with parents to help plan field tripsand a lot of the administrative details for that too.
(15:05):
Making copies is another thing that students, in some cases if it's not a test, studentscould help with.
Or a parent, you might be able to have a parent come in and make copies for you.
If you do a lot with small groups or Zoom groups, it's another opportunity for a prayerprofessional, a teacher's assistant, or a parent to help monitor those groups.
(15:27):
Creating review games is something that students can help with in many cases.
I for students are a little bit older.
So rather than, let's say you want to put together a Kahoot!
review game or whatever review game, you could have students come up with the questions orput that together.
You can even have that be like the first part of your review is everyone get, here's athree by five card for everyone.
(15:48):
want everyone to write down two questions and you can use that for your review game.
And then we talked again about the home.
So are there household jobs that you could transfer to someone else in your home, whetherit's a spouse or roommates, if you have children that are of age to be able to help?
(16:11):
Is everyone involved?
Is the home all your responsibility or are they involved too?
So you can kind of have a family meeting and talk about that, things like cooking dinner,cleaning the house, laundry, grocery shopping again, right?
A couple other final answers of transferring, classroom library organization.
A lot of teachers have had success assigning a student or two to be in charge oforganizing the classroom library.
(16:34):
And finally, answering the classroom phone.
I love this idea.
You know how the phone is always interrupting sometimes throughout the day.
One teacher said they have a student that's trained to answer the phone in the classroomand then to relay the message.
I hope you guys have enjoyed listening to these ideas of things that maybe you can stopdoing or spend less time on to save time.
And if you like one of these ideas but are nervous about actually trying it, remember youcan always try it as an experiment, which means you can say, hey, I'm gonna try this for a
(17:02):
week or two and see what happens.
So we encourage you to do that.
If you'd like to check out this list, you can look at this list at our blog atteachfortheheart.com slash 330.
That's teachfortheheart.com slash 330.
And if you'd like more help,
With saving time, I wanna invite you to a free training, five time saving practices tostop feeling overwhelmed.
(17:24):
It's on demand, you can watch anytime that's convenient for you.
Simply head to teachfortheheart.com slash save time, that's teachfortheheart.com slashsave time to sign up for this free training, five time saving practices to stop feeling
overwhelmed.
If you've enjoyed this episode, please do share it with a friend and subscribe to thispodcast.
(17:46):
That really helps us reach more teachers.
And once again, you can share this episode easily at teachfortheheart.com slash 330.
This episode has been brought to you in partnership with the Herzog Foundation.
All views and opinions are our own and do not necessarily reflect those of the HerzogFoundation.
Thank you so much for being with us.
I look forward to speaking with you again soon.
In the meantime, teacher, remember God is at work in you and through you, and He's usingyou to make a difference.
(18:11):
Keep your eyes on Him and teach for the heart.
Teachers have so much on their plate.
If we keep stacking and stacking and stacking and never take anything off, we are going tocollapse.
So today, we're gonna talk about how we can actually take some things off our plate tomake room for the things that matter.
Welcome back to the Teach for the Heart podcast where we tackle teaching challenges from abiblical perspective.
(00:22):
Why are we here?
Because we don't believe that our spiritual walk and teaching profession should exist intwo separate domains.
Rather, the hope we in Christ should change how we approach everything, not just at home,but at school as well.
So join us as we explore both the spiritual and practical sides of key teachingchallenges, integrating them together so we can succeed at teaching, glorify God, and make
(00:43):
a lasting difference in our students' hearts and lives.
This episode is brought to you in partnership with the Herzog Foundation.
Today we're really excited to bring back one of the older episodes out of our vault thatwe think will be really helpful for you as you finish this year and head into the next.
So let's dive right in.
If you're a teacher right now, chances are you're pretty busy.
(01:05):
There's more to do than you feel like you have time for, and you might even find yourselfnot getting done everything you want to get done.
And one of the remedies for this
is to actually identify things to stop doing or to do less of.
The truth is as teachers we are often adding things to our plate, but rarely do we stopand look for things to take off.
(01:29):
And if you think about that for more than two seconds you realize that's a recipe fordisaster, right?
We're just gonna get busier, busier, busier if we don't take things off in equal portionor more portion to what we put on.
Now back in episode 159 we talked about
Taming your to-do list with the four T's.
And the concept is this.
(01:49):
It's that you write down everything that's on your to-do list, whether they're just thingsyou have to do now or things you do repetitively.
And then for every item, you decide you look for things that you're going to trash, whichmeans you just stop doing it.
Trim, which means you do have to do it, but you do it less often or you set boundariesaround it.
Transfer, which means you get someone to help you with it, which yes, that is possible.
(02:14):
or treasure, meaning it's valuable and you're going to keep doing it and you're going tovalue it.
So every single item on your to-do list you'd go through and say, is this a trash, a trim,a transfer, or a treasure?
And it's a really great exercise to help just do what I just said, where you're saying,OK, I have to take something off my plate.
I literally can't get all of this done.
(02:34):
So what I want to do today is kind of build on that.
So if you haven't listened to episode 159, I recommend maybe even going back
and listening to that either before this episode or after this episode.
Because what I'm gonna do here is give you some examples of things that teachers havestopped doing, things that teachers are doing less or less often, and things that teachers
(02:57):
have transferred and gotten other people to help with them.
So these are examples.
Please keep in mind when I give you this example list, I'm not saying that you should stopdoing all of these things.
Very few of us could stop doing all of these things and still be effective.
But they are examples of things that teachers have stopped doing and still been effective,and in some cases even more effective.
(03:22):
So what you're looking for is inspiration from this list.
Okay, this is not, like I said, something where you're gonna, I want you to exactly followand stop doing every single thing I say here.
You're looking for a few things that you're like, I could stop doing that too, or I coulddo that.
less often or I could get someone to help me with that.
Okay, you're looking for a few things that you can remove from your to-do list.
(03:45):
And then also inspiration.
Maybe this will, you know, spark something in your head and say, what about this?
What about this?
What about this?
Okay.
So these are examples and I hope that you will find them helpful.
So first, first set we're going to go through, these are examples of things that teachershave stopped doing, just stopped.
(04:07):
Okay.
first one is correcting students' work.
So in other words, rather than collecting papers or tests and actually going through andputting all the correct answers, just don't put the correct answers on students' tests,
realizing you can have them do that themselves or even have that as an assignment.
Number two, extra roles that their heart is not in.
(04:30):
So responsibilities at school or at home or at church.
that you said yes to kind of out of guilt and now realize, no, that's actually not thebest use of my time.
Some teachers have even stopped giving and grading homework altogether.
They don't give homework at all.
(04:51):
I'm not saying everyone should do that, but some teachers have done that and foundthemselves still being really effective.
Number four, a making-
PowerPoints.
So some teachers have said, you know what, I'm not making PowerPoints anymore.
It's too much of a time suck.
It's not necessary.
I'm not going to do it.
Number five, video editing.
So if you're making videos for your class, rather than spending all this time editing themso that they're quote unquote perfect, just leaving the mistakes in, like letting them be
(05:19):
more raw and simple.
Next one, changing bulletin boards or classroom decor.
This is definitely one I embraced.
I decorated my classroom at the beginning of the year, and then I didn't change it verymuch at all.
Just let it be.
Some teachers have said they used to keep a paper gradebook as a backup, and they'vestopped keeping a paper gradebook backup, just have the one gradebook.
(05:44):
Here's an example from home, and that's something I want to encourage you with as well iswhen you're looking at this, don't just think about school, also think about your personal
life.
Because I mean it's your life right that they all flow into each other So one example isgrocery shopping some teachers have decided to use Instacart or something similar to do
grocery shopping for them So those are all examples of things that teachers have stoppeddoing and remember as I said I'm not telling you to stop doing all of those But can you I
(06:13):
hope your mind is expanding a little bit already some of these things you might think Icould never stop doing that But maybe you could
That's what I want you to start asking yourself.
What if I just didn't do this?
Particularly look at the things that are most time consuming for you and ask, what if Ididn't do that?
(06:34):
Is there another way to be just as effective without taking so much time?
And it's kind of amazing what some teachers have been able to cut out without it affectinghow effective they are.
The next one, the next section that we're gonna go through,
are things that you can do less.
And this, in some cases, is a little bit easier than just saying I'm stopping italtogether.
(06:56):
You can identify areas where, OK, I can do this way less often.
So here's some examples.
Grading.
my goodness.
This one is a huge example.
If you are grading everything in particular, you have to stop grading everything that youdo.
Definitely not a good idea.
You can definitely.
Almost every teacher can look for ways to grade less unless you're already cut down to thebare minimum.
(07:20):
So ask yourself, if you grade, let's say, every homework assignment, ask yourself, could Igrade half the homework assignments instead of all of them?
Same thing for classwork, same thing for lots of things.
know, say, can I grade half of this and still have an accurate grade representation?
If yes, do it.
Another thing is emails.
So rather than checking emails 10 times a day, teachers said, I'm going to check it once aday or I'm going to check it twice a day.
(07:42):
That's my email time.
Also removing email from your phone so you're not on there in the evening or saying I'mnot checking it over the weekend.
Those are some ways to cut down on time and energy spent on email.
Social media is something that a lot of teachers have identified as doing less.
That's not necessarily something on your to-do list, but it is a huge time suck.
So kind of putting boundaries around this is the time I'm spending on social media andthat's it.
(08:06):
Another thing that some teachers have done less often is a classroom newsletter.
Which I would actually say some teachers have stopped doing this altogether.
They don't send a newsletter anymore.
But some have said, okay, rather than every week, I can do it every other week.
So that's something you might consider about.
Lesson planning is obviously a huge area that can take up a lot of time.
So there's a lot of ways that you can look to do to spend less time on lesson plans.
(08:31):
But one simple tip, I guess I could almost do a whole other podcast just on lessonplanning.
But one tip is using a timer.
in such a way where you'd say, okay, I have, you know, 55 minutes or whatever it is toaccomplish this plan, you know, whatever, however much it is.
I believe that's a reasonable amount of time.
(08:52):
I believe I can do it in that amount of time and I'm going to, I need to be done by thetime this timer goes off.
When we do that, this doesn't work for everybody, but for a lot of people this is reallyhelpful.
Just kind of giving yourself that deadline of like, I have to be done in this amount oftime can really force our mind to focus.
and actually get done and not get distracted because sometimes we go down rabbit holesthat are not helpful.
(09:15):
So simply using a timer, like giving yourself a deadline to get stuff done can be reallyhelpful in keeping it in its place and taking up less time, trimming it down.
PowerPoints also go here too.
We talked about some teachers have said, don't do PowerPoints anymore.
Some teachers...
have chosen to spend less time on PowerPoints by still having them, but making them muchsimple versus elaborate.
(09:40):
So rather spending all this time, you know, with the animations and all this craziness,just being like, nope, I'm just gonna put the bare bones of what needs to be there.
I'm not gonna spend time, you know, making it super elaborate.
The last example I have here is one from the home, and that is if you cook dinner on aregular basis, you can make two-day meals.
(10:01):
This is one, this is...
My personal example, a lot of times I will make a meal, and we don't call it leftovers, wecall it a two-day meal.
I said this meal is for Monday and Wednesday, or for Thursday and Sunday, or whatever itis.
And that's how it works.
I make double the amount, which takes a little longer, but definitely not as long asmaking two different meals.
And then when that day comes, I just reheat it, or just prepare a couple of new sides, orwhatever it is.
(10:25):
It saves a lot of time and stress in the home front.
This episode is brought to you in partnership with the Herzog Foundation, and we want toin particular recommend Herzog's trainings for Christian school administrators and
teachers.
They have so many amazing free trainings, many of which are online and others that are inperson.
(10:48):
The great thing is that they're all completely free and the in-person events even includefree lodging.
So you definitely wanna check out their full catalog of upcoming trainings and events.
You'll even find some on there that we at Teach for the Heart are doing together withHerzog.
So check them all out at HerzogFoundation.com and click events at the top of their page.
Now back to our program.
(11:12):
All right, so so far we've gone through some examples of things that teachers have stoppeddoing altogether.
They've just trashed it.
Second, we've talked about things that teachers are doing less often or spending less timeon.
That's called trimming.
And the last one is transferring, which means getting people to help you with it.
And I want, I'm excited.
I have actually a ton of examples of things that teachers have told me that they havegotten students or parents or various paras or whatever it is to help with.
(11:41):
So here's some ideas, okay?
First of all, tutoring.
You can sometimes get parent volunteers or older students to help tutor students in yourclass.
Your class weekly newsletter is something that you might be able to hand off to a parentor depending on the age of your student, probably, this is more of an elementary thing, so
(12:01):
probably we need to be a parent or a paraprofessional.
But could you train a parent or a paraprofessional to do your weekly newsletter?
And number three, grading.
If you have a para or a teacher's assistant, or in a lot of cases, students can oftengrade smaller things.
I know I almost always had my students grade homework or classwork or things like thatthey would exchange in grade and then I just have to look over it real quickly rather than
(12:25):
actually looking at every single one.
Cleaning the classroom is something that definitely your students can do.
You can put procedures in place.
Which let me pause for just a moment and talk about this.
When you think about getting help, we talk about this
in great detail in our Tame Your To-Do List program and in our mentorship as well.
But the key is training someone, OK?
(12:47):
And this is maybe a good time to just say, have our Tame Your To-Do List system is comingup.
And in that, we go into a lot of details about how you can effectively delegate things toothers, because it does it without it taking a lot of your time and without it being
stressful, OK?
So I don't have time to go into all of that right now.
(13:08):
But the point is you really can train people to do something.
The key is just having a process, teaching them what to do, and then having the sameperson do it repetitively.
Because the first time or two that they do it, it's probably not gonna really save youthat much time, because you're have to tell them what to do, and then you're have to check
over it, and tell them what to do differently.
But the third, the fourth time they do it, now they're getting the hang of it.
(13:32):
And then if they can do it for the full year,
then it really saves you time.
So just a thought there that same thing with students.
If you're teaching your students to clean the classroom the first time or two you do it,you might feel like, this is not gonna work.
But if you stick with it and teach the procedure to them, it can really save tons of timein the long run.
So with anything you transfer, keep in mind it's a little bit of a time investmentupfront, but it can pay huge dividends in the long haul.
(13:59):
Okay, back to our list.
Next one is decorating the classroom.
So we talked before about simply, you know, not decorating the classroom very much.
But another option is to transfer that to students or to parent volunteers, right?
And say, hey, you're in charge of this bulletin board, or you're in charge of putting upthe good example work, or whatever it is.
(14:19):
If your classroom has a lot of setting up, tearing down, or you have to set up like labsor projects, that is something that can be assigned to, once again, same thing, students.
Paraprofessional parent volunteers.
Planning class field trips or parties is something that a parent volunteer may be able todo.
That's definitely something in my son's, my kid's school.
(14:44):
They have room moms that plan all the parties for the year.
So all the classroom parties, the teachers don't plan any of them.
The room mom plans it and coordinates with the other parents.
So that's a huge relief for the teachers to not have to worry about that.
But I could imagine some teachers have also worked with parents to help plan field tripsand a lot of the administrative details for that too.
(15:05):
Making copies is another thing that students, in some cases if it's not a test, studentscould help with.
Or a parent, you might be able to have a parent come in and make copies for you.
If you do a lot with small groups or Zoom groups, it's another opportunity for a prayerprofessional, a teacher's assistant, or a parent to help monitor those groups.
(15:27):
Creating review games is something that students can help with in many cases.
I for students are a little bit older.
So rather than, let's say you want to put together a Kahoot!
review game or whatever review game, you could have students come up with the questions orput that together.
You can even have that be like the first part of your review is everyone get, here's athree by five card for everyone.
(15:48):
want everyone to write down two questions and you can use that for your review game.
And then we talked again about the home.
So are there household jobs that you could transfer to someone else in your home, whetherit's a spouse or roommates, if you have children that are of age to be able to help?
(16:11):
Is everyone involved?
Is the home all your responsibility or are they involved too?
So you can kind of have a family meeting and talk about that, things like cooking dinner,cleaning the house, laundry, grocery shopping again, right?
A couple other final answers of transferring, classroom library organization.
A lot of teachers have had success assigning a student or two to be in charge oforganizing the classroom library.
(16:34):
And finally, answering the classroom phone.
I love this idea.
You know how the phone is always interrupting sometimes throughout the day.
One teacher said they have a student that's trained to answer the phone in the classroomand then to relay the message.
I hope you guys have enjoyed listening to these ideas of things that maybe you can stopdoing or spend less time on to save time.
And if you like one of these ideas but are nervous about actually trying it, remember youcan always try it as an experiment, which means you can say, hey, I'm gonna try this for a
(17:02):
week or two and see what happens.
So we encourage you to do that.
If you'd like to check out this list, you can look at this list at our blog atteachfortheheart.com slash 330.
That's teachfortheheart.com slash 330.
And if you'd like more help,
With saving time, I wanna invite you to a free training, five time saving practices tostop feeling overwhelmed.
(17:24):
It's on demand, you can watch anytime that's convenient for you.
Simply head to teachfortheheart.com slash save time, that's teachfortheheart.com slashsave time to sign up for this free training, five time saving practices to stop feeling
overwhelmed.
If you've enjoyed this episode, please do share it with a friend and subscribe to thispodcast.
(17:46):
That really helps us reach more teachers.
And once again, you can share this episode easily at teachfortheheart.com slash 330.
This episode has been brought to you in partnership with the Herzog Foundation.
All views and opinions are our own and do not necessarily reflect those of the HerzogFoundation.
Thank you so much for being with us.
I look forward to speaking with you again soon.
In the meantime, teacher, remember God is at work in you and through you, and He's usingyou to make a difference.
(18:11):
Keep your eyes on Him and teach for the heart.
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