Workload is probably the biggest culprit behind the teacher retention crisis and while there is no magic bullet to address it, making the most out of micro-gains can make it more manageable.
Like many other teachers, I used to work all hours in a bid to stay above water; staying late, taking books home over the holidays, only to spend most of my holidays working and still returning unmarked books back to school.
Ironically, it was only once I had children and my windows for work became significantly shorter that I was able to better manage my workload.
Here are some of the little changes that have worked for me.
Tips to cut your teacher workload
To-do lists
Between the planning, marking, emails, meetings, reports and countless other things that pop up in a teacher’s day, it’s easy to miss something and get snowed under. Staying organised is vital, and apps such as Google Tasks and Microsoft To Do are simple and effective tools to create priority lists.
Every time I am given a task, sent an email I need to reply to or have a class set of books to mark, I add it on to my list, along with any relevant links. This means that when it comes to actioning the task, I don’t have to trawl through my email and spreadsheets looking for it first.
Everything I need to do is right in front of me and it is much easier to prioritise my workload. As I’m not relying on my memory to retain everything, I can focus better and am less likely to forget or miss deadlines.
Use the time you have efficiently
It is easy to fall into the trap of working all hours of the day to clear things as they come in, but in a job where it is impossible to be on top of it all, with this approach you run the risk of overwhelming yourself and mismanaging your time.
The key is to really think about how you allocate your time to different tasks. There’s no point trying to mark three sets of class books in a one-hour free period, for example. However, five 10-minute emails can easily be cleared in that time.
When you allocate set times for tasks and use your to-do list, you can manage your time and resources efficiently, rather than struggling through everything that’s on top of your pile.
Plan by topic and class
Instead of planning individual lessons by the day on your timetable, plan in terms of weeks and units.
I’ve found that planning three consecutive lessons on a topic, or for a single class, is so much quicker - and, by doing this, you also build a stronger sense of continuity between topics, which helps your lesson sequencing.
You also avoid the morning dash to the photocopier and get the micro-gains of not having to go back and remind yourself of what you still need to cover in each topic or class.
More teaching and learning:
Planning over a longer period also provides a bigger picture of the topic overall, making it easier to decide which pieces of work would be best to mark in terms of facilitating progress before you get to the end of your marking cycle with every class set piled high.
Collaborative planning
It makes no sense for every teacher to plan every lesson individually.
Collaborative planning, whether that be within departments, across schools or across subject networks, means you get the benefit of diversity in teaching styles, expertise and approaches.
Divide planning between different members of departments, reach out to partner schools and build networks online. There are plenty of helpful people who are willing to share and swap resources.
And while I would not advocate just delivering downloaded lessons without any regard to your curriculum and classes, it is much easier to adapt existing resources than it is to start from scratch.
Marking strategies
Marking is arguably the most time-consuming part of the job, so use systems to help you.
I swear by coded marking grids in which a set list of codes correlates to what went well (WWW) and even better if (EBI), to save writing the same thing over and over in each book.
In each book is a printed sheet with a list of codes and suggested actions for meeting that code. For example, W7 means “accurate use of grammar”, while W2 means “include a variety of punctuation”. So if I wrote “WWW: W7, EBI: W2” in a child’s book, it would mean they used grammar well, but needed to include more punctuation.
Students can cross-reference and action the codes themselves, as well as track the patterns in their work, and it’s much quicker than writing out full sentences in every single book. And again, always look for the extra micro-gains: have students pile books up open to the piece of work you need to mark, so you’re not wasting time searching for the right page.
Other strategies include whole-class feedback where one sheet is printed addressing both whole-class targets and individual student feedback, which saves rewriting common feedback in individual books; and sample marking, where a random sample of books is used to ascertain how a whole class can address misconceptions or progress.
You could also use formulated spreadsheets that require individual targets to be entered on to spreadsheets to create individual feedback sheets, which can then be printed, or live marking, which is when you give quick feedback in the middle of a lesson.
All of these strategies can drastically reduce the time it takes to mark student work with maximum impact.
All in all, it is a tough job, so find systems that work for you both in terms of time and impact. Most importantly, don’t take the micro-gains for granted: the minutes all add up.
Bhamika Bhudia is a head of English in a secondary school in London, she tweets at @MissMika_Eng
