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Use, as well as a monthly blog. He is a consultant, evaluator, author, teacher trainer, and a recipient of several awards, including the Sanford N. McDonald Award for Lifetime Achievement in Character Education from Character.org, the University of San Diego’s School of Education’s Outstanding Administrator of the Year Award, and the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Educator of the Year Award. Under Ed’s leadership, the School of Education offered educators the opportunity to earn a master’s degree in character education, one of the first advanced degrees in the field. In addition, the Character Education Resource Center pioneered online teacher training in character education for both graduate and professional credit. Now in its twenty-fourth year, the center continues to offer its popular summer conference Character Matters. Ed is honored to be the co-author of this time management book with Serena and appreciates her advice and counsel as a member of the Character Education Resource Center’s Advisory Committee. Ed can be reached at [email protected]. Feel free to reach out to sign up for his monthly News You Can Use blog or just to e-mail.

      [Ed] This book is dedicated to the many teachers in my life (they know who they are) who took the time to advise me, counsel me, guide me, befriend me, warn me, tolerate me, and contribute to my love of teaching and administering.

      [Serena] This book is dedicated to my grandpop, who kept his life simple so he could always get everything done. May we all be so lucky.

      Introduction

       Roughly 61 percent of educators said their work was “always” or “often” stressful, compared with American workers, in general, citing their work was stressful 30 percent of the time, according to a new survey released by the American Federation of Teachers.

       —Joel Stice, writing for Education World

      Yet it’s also reported that over 96 percent of teachers love their jobs. Let’s face it, we love what we do, we just want to be able to feel less stressed each day doing it.

      If we could give you more minutes in the day, how would you use your extra time? Did you know that there are 1,440 minutes in a day? It rarely ever feels that way, especially in our classrooms. Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard a teacher say that they’re stressed or overwhelmed—or if you’ve ever said the same thing. If your hand is not up, you are either the luckiest teacher in the world or . . . well . . . *cough* lying.

      To be honest, stress isn’t all entirely negative. Actually, a little bit of stress can be helpful in motivating us to perform. We don’t need time management skills when we are on a Caribbean vacation, but we do need them in the classroom. Why? Time management is important when you have a series of tasks to do. That’s teaching. Our success in time management—before class, during instruction, after class, and even in our personal life—can have a real effect on our teaching, for better or worse. It all comes back to the classroom. Time management doesn’t mean that you’ll never feel stressed again, but hopefully the tools in this book will help you mitigate stress on a daily basis.

      As stated in the quote above, just under half of us feel stressed daily (46 percent). Ed and I have found ways to keep ourselves with the 54 percent of educators who have found positive means to handle stressful situations. We’d like to share with you what has worked for us.

      [Serena] When Ed offered to join me for this book I quickly agreed. Why? Ask anybody who knows him and they will tell you he is one of the best time managers you will ever meet. I mean that. I have yet to meet anybody who can manage time like Ed. He makes it seem so easy, always has a smile on his face, and gets things done quickly and thoroughly. He’s accomplished more in his lifetime than most and still always seems to have time for friends and family and to lend a helping hand. Also, Ed gives the time management perspective from his many years in not only teaching but also in administrating both an elementary and a middle school, and I bring in the perspective of a teacher. You’ll find both perspectives to be equally valuable.

      Like Ed, I’m exceptionally skilled at time management. Together we will share what works. Some of these best practices we’ve discovered on our own, and some we have borrowed from others over the years. We’re going to tell it to you like it really is: Time management directly relates to classroom management, your personal sanity, and your overall quality of life inside and outside of the classroom. It’s all about how we manage our workload, manage our time, and have a healthy mindset about our responsibilities. We have two personal stories to share.

      [Serena] I’ve been there. It was December, right before winter break to be exact, during my first year as a classroom teacher. I was a sixth-grade teacher at a charter school in West Philadelphia. A few months in, I had made up my mind: I was done. I would put in my resignation midyear. I felt stuck. The tasks had piled up too high, I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere with my twenty-nine rambunctious sixth graders, and I had too many angry parents. The only way out was to quit. I would cut my losses and walk.

      In an effort to try to get some moral support, I knocked on the door of my neighboring teacher, Mr. Davis. He had been my lifeline so far that year. As I described my feelings of failure and being completely overwhelmed, he simply said, “You can’t leave your first year teaching. You’ll get through it.” I scraped my pride off of the floor and took his advice. I stayed and completed the first year of what later turned out to be the profession of my dreams.

      What changed?

      For starters, I stopped working in my classroom late hours every evening. I learned to take breaks and balance myself, even if the work wasn’t done. I asked for help when I knew there was an easier way to do something in the classroom. Neighboring teachers started sharing organizational tricks that saved me many precious minutes. These were just a few of the time management techniques that kept me in the classroom that year.

      I realized that having strong time management skills was the most important factor in being able to manage stress on the job. It directly affected my ability to connect with students, actually smile while teaching, and have an enormous amount of job satisfaction. I gained control of my classroom, and I wasn’t going home mentally exhausted anymore. More importantly, I didn’t feel like a hamster on a wheel. I knew where to put my energy, how to work efficiently, how to produce the same if not better results in my classroom, how to have more energy to connect with students, and how to have fun while teaching. Many of the strategies I learned that year are covered in the chapters in this book.

      Also, I brought Ed on board to add another perspective. Ed and I met at a conference at the University of San Diego, and he invited me to do a workshop with teachers after my eighth-grade classroom participated in his writing contest. I immediately noticed his remarkably strong time management skills, his dedication to keeping his work–life balance, and the amount he has accomplished with this mindset. He’s also here to share his experience.

      [Ed] Probably like you, time management is and has been a constant factor in my personal and professional life. One example from my years as a principal comes to mind.

      Many of the new teachers I supervised (as well as a few veterans) had similar time management problems as Eileen, a first-year teacher for our sixth-grade students. We liked Eileen; we were influenced by her talents, attitude, and enthusiasm. However, Eileen “overplanned” everything and anything. Her supervising teacher and I had talked to her about this when she was a student teacher, noting that it was not healthy and could increase the stress level of being a teacher. Eileen would spend hours developing unit and lesson plans, often after school was over. Leaving at 5 p.m. was not unusual for her, and I frequently found myself saying, “Eileen, you cannot stay later than the principal—it’s time to go home!” This behavior occurred at home as well. She was only one month into her full-time teaching position and I found her volunteering for any activity that was going on at the school. In her classroom, every minute of every day had been mapped out, in writing, noting what she and her students would be doing that day and that week.

      In early October, Eileen came into my office showing “end of the day” exhaustion, near tears and frustrated. We began our discussion. After an hour, during which she did most of the talking, we set up another meeting. She shared

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