Peek into classrooms during the first week of school and you will find students completing a student interest inventory. Teachers collect this information, but don’t always know how to use it effectively. Combine the information you’ve collected with this research-based strategy that will positively impact even your most challenging student.
Boys are sent to the office more frequently than girls. The research has not changed. Teachers not only hold the power, but also have the professional responsibility to change these statistics.
I cannot count how many times a student was sent to me for behaviors that could have been handled at the classroom level. 99% of those office referrals were boys. Almost every time, he said the teacher never gave him a chance to explain. I have heard (and verified) this same story countless times over the years.
Many teachers don’t understand that when they send a child to the office they give up their authority in the classroom. The message the teacher sends to all of the students is I can’t handle this.
Every time teachers send a student to the office, they not only miss an opportunity to strengthen their relationship with the student, but also risk an increase in the unwanted behavior.
One of the most important decisions a teacher makes, will affect the entire school year.
Teachers know they must decide how to get their students’ attention. The most effective teachers are able to get every student’s attention at the same time. Some use the same cue every year, others mix it up. Every teacher has one. Not all of them work.
Why does the exact same classroom cue work in one classroom and not another?
The power of the classroom cue lies in how well the teacher has implemented the following five steps.
At no other time, do teachers think more about routines and procedures, than at the beginning of the school year.
The word routine rolls off the tongue of seasoned teachers as well as first year teachers. Not one teacher I know would deny the power of a routine for a well-ordered classroom.
Inevitably, some routines and procedures, put in place in August with the best of intentions, seem to fail by September, creating frustration for both teacher and student. Fear not! This year can be different. You can create effective and efficient routines and procedures.
Wouldn’t it be great if you actually had the time during the school day to grade those papers and plan your lessons instead of working on those things when you get home at night?
Eliminating all the work you take home may not be possible, but significantly reducing the amount of work you take home absolutely is possible.
Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things. –Peter Drucker
Effectiveness is the ability to produce your desired effect. Efficiency is about doing it in a way that uses the least amount of time, energy, and resources.
At the intersection of effectiveness and efficiency is the sweet spot—getting the most desirable result with the least amount of work. This sounds great, but what’s the point?
Why is it so important to be operating from the “sweet spot”? When operating out of this place, not only does it build confidence and resilience, but also, and more importantly, it creates margin.
Andy Stanley describes margin as “breathing room—the space between our current pace and our limits.” Every teacher that I know could use more breathing space—more margin—between their current pace and their personal limits.
Margins are those glorious, empty spaces that allow us to breathe. They give us time to recharge. -Jed Jurchenko
When we don’t have margin in our professional lives, we are increasingly stressed and our personal lives suffer as well. Our enjoyment of life begins to wane. “Life becomes an exhausting flow of endless activity,” according to Jed Jurchenko.
We need to find the right balance between effectiveness and efficiency to help us increase the margin in our professional and personal lives.
Teachers who are effective but not efficient are often accomplishing the things that matter most at the expense of themselves. They spend an enormous amount of time, energy, and/or resources to get those results. At the end of the day, they do not have much left for themselves.
Teachers who are efficient but not effective may be super organized and run things like a well-oiled machine, but often it is at the expense of the desired effect. Their organizational abilities may seem effortless. They spend the least amount of time, energy, and resources to put things in place so that everything runs according to plan.
Oftentimes, their “organized plans and systems” don’t allow for any deviation or interruption including the need for flexibility in response to what students need.
At the end of the day, they may have missed the most important goals like student learning and building relationships, and they can’t understand why they aren’t seeing the results they want.
Esteeming efficiency at the expense of effectiveness is dangerous.
. . . If we are building the wrong product really efficiently, it’s like we are driving our car off a cliff and bragging about our awesome gas mileage. – Eric Ries
Teachers, who are effective and efficient, use the least amount of time, energy, and resources to have the greatest impact on things that matter most. This is the sweet spot—the greatest opportunity for increased margin in your professional life, which in turn creates margin in your personal life.
A few simple modifications to your practices and/or processes can increase both your effectiveness and your efficiency. How do you know if you are being as effective or efficient as you can be?
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Dr. W. Edwards Deming, known as “the master of continual quality improvement,” concluded that approximately 95% of the problems or difficulties lie in the system not with people. Deming discovered that it is futile to attempt to change people without changing the system because “A bad system will beat a good person every time.”