(aside: I think all of my titles should rhyme!)
I remember the time crunch of being in the classroom. I never felt the pressure more than when it came time for our state tests. No matter how hard we’d worked I always had the thought in the back of my mind that if I could just have ONE more week, I’d feel so much better about what I’d covered. Just ONE more week…
Last week we met with teams discussing our new amazing RTI roll out process. My principal made the statement that if your team was supposed to get started at 10am, she wanted to see it at 10am sharp! Not 10:01, not 10:03…in fact, 9:59 sounded pretty good!
That stuck with me and brought me back to my classroom and being desperate for more time.I started to calculate the hours we spend with instruction.
Did you know that there are roughly 177 school days in our year? That equals 37 weeks of instruction. I averaged our school day to be 7 hours long, minus an hour for a lunch and recess…so 6 hours. Still with me?
If you miss 3 minutes of instruction a day…(think how easy that is…three measly minutes throughout the day…) Your students at the end of the year, will have missed 531 minutes. That’s roughly 9 hours…or a day and a half you’ve lost.
If you miss 5 minutes of instruction a day your students will have missed 885 minutes. That’s 15 hours of academic time…or 2 1/2 full days of instruction.
10 minutes? You’ve lost 1770 minutes. 30 (30!!) hours of class time, or 5 full school days.
15 minutes? You’ve lost 2,665 minutes or about 44 hours. That’s 7 and 1/2 days.
30 minutes? 5,310 minutes…89 hours…about 14 days.
Classroom management becomes even more important when looking at these numbers. No time to spare when switching subjects or coming in each morning. Our minutes are precious…just like our kiddos!Transition times, coming back from the bathroom, assemblies, etc…there is always something that seems to drag throughout the day. My goal here is just to remind you how intentional you have to be in your classrooms. Protect your instructional time…those opportunities to be the kin of teacher you’d want your own children to have. There are 1,0632 hours in the course of your school year…and you know how valuable they each can be!
Some links to help you think about classroom management:
Tips for Managing Classroom Time
AmCuckoo
I agree on the importance of being mindful, but take care in worrying about the minutes. Consider time spent at the beginning of class asking students about their weekend an investment in time that will pay off later. Students will work for teachers they feel a connection to so part of an educators job, especially at the k-12 level is to make those connections with kids.
Hi Scott! Thanks for reading and commenting! I wouldn’t consider that wasted time… 🙂 Was thinking more along the time actually wasted during the day. Like transition time, or while the teacher is gathering materials…playing candy crush, etc.
🙂