Time management has been an issue for me as well as my students this year. I have a student teacher for a full year; she’s working on her masters and we are conducting research together this spring. I have a great group of kids that are building high power rockets after school and learning advanced construction with composite materials. I have a group of students currently working on a full scale trebuchet. Uhmmmm, oh yeah I am a junior class sponsor so I am responsible for planning the prom. I’m participating in two teacher quality grants AND I’m doing my best to teach physics in the best way I know how. I can’t live without my calendar and sticky notes.
The only way I know to survive and how I’m teaching my students to survive is to be goal and product oriented. I tell them the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Each day I try to be productive and move one step closer to the goal or end product. We can’t afford “the suck”- that place where we get bogged down and fail to produce.
With flipclass videos we have often said, “Do we need it perfect, or tomorrow?” I have a similar approach to projects and deadlines. If I make an imperfect step forward today, it is better than no progress at all. It is possible to improve on something. It’s very hard to improve on nothing. Does that make sense?
One thing my students know for sure is that I don’t accept laziness. I expect incremental progress towards the end goal. I suppose that can be considered my class culture. It doesn’t work with 100% of the students, but they all understand the expectation.