A challenge that all schools face is saving their teachers’ time. Teachers are facing an ever-growing workload and a multitude of stresses which are negatively impacting their ability to teach well.
There are many factors that contribute towards a teacher’s stress levels – many of which are out of our control. One of the ways in which we can help our teachers is by reducing their workload and giving them the tools that they need to improve productivity.
We spoke to Ian Deledicq, Assistant Vice Principal, Head of Learning Area – Maths & Computing at Mossbourne Community Academy to find out some of his top tips for improving productivity and saving time.
1. Utilise mobile technology
“We all have a smart phone. Use it to your benefit and save time doing your daily tasks. One of the ways that I make the most of having a phone on me most of the time is by logging behaviour points from it at the end of a lesson whilst it is still fresh in my mind.
I save the chrome webpage for ProgressTeaching on my phone background so it’s instantly accessible and I can log behaviour points at the end of the lesson without the need to sit down at a computer.”
2. Don’t duplicate work that you’ve already done
“It sounds like an obvious tip, but you’d be surprised at how often it happens. One task that can be quite time consuming is creating seating plans. When you need to do this for every room and every class that you teach it can quickly amount up to a few hours of work.
We replicate the seating plans that we know work to different rooms. This saves us so much time! ProgressTeaching has pre-loaded seating plan layouts too for each room which is a great starting point. Making minor changes to these instead of creating seating plans from scratch is a big help for us.”
3. Make the most of the tools at your disposal
“There are probably lots of smart and helpful features in the technology your school uses that you aren’t utilising. It can seem daunting to some teachers to change the way that they work but it’s often a small learning curve that will massively benefit them in the long run.
You’re paying for technology and placing your trust in your solutions provider to be an expert in what they do – make the most of it! If your technology isn’t reducing your teacher’s workload, then you should look at what other options are available to you.
One of the features of ProgressTeaching that I find useful when it comes to improving productivity is the gap analysis tool. I can immediately draw out and illustrate under-performing groups relative to the cohort at a large scale.”
4. Use your data to your benefit
“Your data can be your best friend or your worst enemy. If it is presented to you in a digestible format, it helps you to immediately identify trends and positively shape the way that you teach.
If it is siloed in multiple platforms in different formats, it takes a frustrating and unrealistic amount of time to analyse and make use of. This is another time when, if your technology isn’t making your life easier, you should be looking at what other solutions are available that will reduce workload.
When I use ProgressTeaching I get an instant snapshot of our data. One of the ways I quickly recognise strength and improvement areas is I analyse trends relating to behaviour logging across my team and see how many points are being awarded to students and classes.”
