Managing Time

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.