This week I took on my third course to reach my “full” 75% practicum teaching load. I put full in quotations because it is not really a full load, and as a teacher I would expect to have a 100% load for one half of the school year. It was quite an interesting experience because I underestimated how difficult the jump from 50% to 75% would be. I considered that I would have less prep time during the day, and I realized that I would have more that I would need to prepare, but I didn’t really think about the two of them together. So far it has been manageable, but I have been staying later at school after the final bell to catch up from the day.
It reminds me of my UBC courses because I have also had to become smarter with managing my time. I need to budget time for specific things during the mornings, after school, and during my “prep” block. Things like preparing for lessons, marking assessments, and getting labs or demonstrations ready. Especially during the last few months of courses at UBC I had to do the same. I needed to be smart with my time and budget for studying, writing assignments, and preparing for the practicum start. Hmm… I do believe that this will be a consistent theme in teaching for me! Time management will be very important. I will need to come up with good strategies now so that I can cope as a first-year teacher and avoid burnout.
Time management is so important! You are right! As you increase your load block by block, the mathematics of planning time becomes surprising. Suppose you had just one class to prepare for and 6 hours of free time. 6 hr./class…no problem, no pressure, you can afford to work methodically, take break do something else. 6 hr/2 classes = 3 hr/class…a little tighter, but probably doable. 6 hr./3 classes = 2 hr. class…not a lot of flex time here, and so on. Add on to that the demands of coaching, sponsoring a club, providing time for students outside of class and it’s no wonder that beginning teachers find their first year challenging. Everything is new, everything takes for time because it is new. You still have a life outside of school. I always tell my first year teachers to make themselves a promise: “Promise yourself that you will come back for a second year because Year 1 is not what a typical year in teaching looks like”. Having said that time management will always be important.