Research reveals 65% of teachers believe that teacher efficiency and productivity is an essential factor for improving education quality.
Efficiency when coupled with better decision-making, yields better productivity. In the world of education, higher productivity leads to better student outcomes. Hence, efficiency tied to prioritization of work is critical to achieving the mission of high achievement for all students. As already understood productivity is the ratio between the inputs you give and the outputs you receive, and as a teacher, you have both productive and unproductive days. So, if you find yourself struggling, learn some ways to make the most out of your unproductive days.
5 Ways To Increase Teacher Productivity And Efficiency
Source: alisonyang.com
If you are struggling daily but are still being questioned on productivity, here are a few things that you can do differently:
1. Stay Organized With Organizational Tools
Staying organized is one of the most crucial aspects of being productive. If you cannot stay organized chances are you will end up overworking yourself. Hence, create a sense of order and follow it diligently. Use organizational systems like binders, folder bins, or drawers. Practice doing all your tasks immediately so that they do not pile up and add them to your list of priority jobs.
Additionally, take advantage of digital work and technology. Make the most of those tools to optimize your tasks. These tools will enable you to grade electronically, organize information into easy-to-use templates, access files for collaboration, and a do lot more.
2. Plan Ahead Of Time
Effective planning is another essential quality that teachers must have. However, in some unexpected turn of events, planning ahead of time is not always possible. So what can you do? Try to block a specific time of the day to work on the upcoming week's plan to make sure that you are all prepared for the coming week. In case some emergency arises and you cannot take the session, your substitute teacher can follow the plan and take classes accordingly.
Outline what materials need to be printed, what lessons should be coming up, and also detail the progress of your classroom. Furthermore, encourage administrators to hold bi-weekly or weekly follow-ups to ensure that all the teachers are on the right track and figure out if any help and support are required by them to run an effective classroom.
3. Use Personalized Grading Stamps
Several online sites provide personalized rubber stamps that can be used for grading. If you find that you are giving the same feedback over and over again then you can create a mapping of the review to a specific stamp time. Also, if you are going down this route then ensure that your students are aware of the various stamps.
This is because, if the learners are aware of the mapping, they will know what the comment means every time they see a particular stamp. This will also reduce your time and effort as instead of writing a personalized comment every time, you can just use a stamp to make the process faster.
4. Create A To-Do List
Developing a habit of creating and maintaining a to-do list makes life much easier. Not only does this increase your efficiency but also allows you to sort tasks based on priority levels. You can either create a physical to-do list in your classroom table or use digital ones.
Frequently reviewing this list and reorganizing them as per importance and urgency is also vital. Studies show that to-do lists can help free brain space by offloading some tasks from your working memory while still keeping track of important goals and tasks.
5. Prioritize Your Tasks
To-do lists and prioritizing go hand in hand. Since as a teacher you have a gazillion of things on your plate, it might sometime become tricky to stay on track and get everything done on time. Thus after creating a list, you need to identify which tasks deserve your immediate and undivided attention and which of them can wait for the later part of the day.
Prioritizing tasks is a great way to increase productivity in whatever you do and achieve a sense of accomplishment once all the tasks are completed.
Magnify Your Production Capacity
Teaching is not a trivial task and there are a lot of things that teachers need to take into consideration. On top of that increasing productivity can be really challenging especially when you are unsure about the obstacles. Lacking intrinsic motivation and feeling burned out can be horrifically true if you are dealing with young learners. Thus, apart from having a certificate in Early Years Care and Education Classroom Learning course, you also need to have the right mindset and stick to a good time management plan to stay efficient and productive.
Written By : Sanjana
