I’ve been thinking a lot about time and how I do not have a great way to figure out how I spend my time each week. I had a conversation with my principal about spending more time co-teaching. I do not know how often I co-teach and my principal is not sure how much I should be co-teaching. So, we start by collecting data to establish a baseline.

I am Toggl, which has a number of wonderful tools. I can use my phone to say I am starting working on something (co-teacher, processing emails, whatever). I can also assign projects and tags.

The state of Virginia has guidelines for how ITRTs spend their time. I am making each broad category a different project. The percentage at the end is what the state of Virginia says I should be doing with my time. Right now my projects are.

• Instructional – Working and planning with teachers, modeling and co-teaching, researching new technology, designing new processes and programs for our school (70% or 27 hours a week)
• Admin – Working with Admin, working on tech committees with an impact outside of my building (14% or 5.5 hours a week)
• PD for myself (5 or 2 hours a week)
• Digital Parent Communication – Newsletters, social media, (9% 3.6 hours a week, or 14 minutes a day)
• Minor Troubleshooting (3% or 1.2 hours a week)
• Records Maintenance (1% or .5 hours a week) – I really am not sure what this one is)

I’ve also added the following projects, which are not on Virginia’s list, but I thought it would be good to track.

• Email – This could be any of the above categories, but it seemed to make sense to make it all one. Sometimes email can be any of the above.
• Rounds – This is where I just walk through the school and check on people. And again, it can be any of the above. Sometimes it is tech support, sometimes it is co-teaching on the fly.
• Duty – My morning and afternoon duties for the school (kiss-and-ride) and the like
• Other – Other things that pop up

So Monday this is an example of what I did.

• 8:00 I worked on this process for 9 minutes (Project: Other)
• 8:09 I attacked my email for 12 minutes (Project: Email)

The idea being if I can track these broad categories, maybe I can be more thoughtful about how I spend my time.

So, I have 3 days left. Here is my summer list.

• Exercise for 24 of those days, to get me closer to my #19For2019 goal of doing 100 workouts in 2019.
• Stanford has a MOOC on Databases and I found a good book on mySQL to extend my love of databases past Microsoft Access
• Posting here more often, again getting me closer to my #19For2019 goal of 50 blog posts.
• Updating the memory and hard drive in my 2008 MacBook Pro.

Here are the results.

• Exercise: Zero Days
• Stanford MOOC: 4 courses (about a third of the possible). And I learned that it was STANford not STANDford
• Blog Posts: 4, which is not terrible.
• Updating the Mac: Memory upgraded, HD upgraded, and fan replaced (which is now like whisper quiet!)

I feel good about the MOOC, blog posts, and mac upgrades. Nothing terrible about those results. The exercise is the worst. Zero! I have a book to work on. I have the equipment, which is still in the box. It is just something that I did not succeed.

Thinking of ways to level up my own professional development, I keep coming back to book groups. And really, my problem with book groups.

If you have ever done a book group as an adult you know how it goes. Not everyone finished the book. When you get to the meeting you do not want to leave anyone out, so it becomes a conversation around the book, but not necessarily about the book.

• Instead of having after everyone has read the book, a start of the week, 30 minute, book session each week.
• Have one person read the chapter ahead of time. She creates a plan for processing the book. Let her prepare a discussion about the actionable parts of the book and what people need to learn and do for the book. Everyone should know what they need to do to be ready for the follow up.
• The next week is the follow up. Everyone comes together to share what they learned. Then you move on to the next chapter chapter with a new leader.

And if you forget to read that chapter? Oh well, just pick up with the next one.

How many books are you going to process a year? Maybe four if you are lucky. But the engagement through those books will be higher