Budget Time and Reduce Stress

Teachers are usually very organized. They have to be in order to do the job. At home, they may budget their finances, but frequently fail to budget their time. They allow their teaching workload to fill all waking hours. There is no work life balance. In order to keep this from happening to me, I learned a simple way to budget my time.

Each year, I purchased a lesson plan book from a teacher supply store. I then laid out a plan for the year. I didn’t go into detail, but did organize the work I needed to cover in the months allotted. I wrote in holidays and state or district mandated testing. I also recorded the dates I intended to give major unit tests throughout the year.

Each Thursday during the school year, I created my detailed lesson plans for the coming week. I did this for each subject I taught (being a foreign language teacher, there were often several). Once technology and the school district where I worked gave us a website to use as a tool, I also began listing homework assignments on my website on Thursday. 

This allowed students the flexibility to do homework according to their busy schedules. It also removed the excuse of “forgetting” to write it down. The amount and quality of homework being completed increased. This reduced stress for all of us.

Doing my planning on Thursdays, not only helped my students, but freed up time for me on the weekend. The only thing I took home Fridays was essays. I graded them Sunday, in the early evening. The rest of the weekend was mine. Budget time wisely to avoid burn out.

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