I’ve seen so many negative comments from parents and just people giving their two cents about teachers teaching from home. While everyone may have an opinion, only teachers know how difficult it is to teach from home. I found out at the end of the school year how hard it was to teach from home.
I’m not bothered by what parents have to say about teachers and neither should you. What parents are doing is just confirmation of what I always knew about parent-teacher relationships. Parents will advocate for their child/children no matter what, even if that means turning on their teacher. So, don’t be discouraged by what is being said about teachers. What can I say it comes with the territory. Does it make it right? Absolutely not!
At this point I figure I have two choices, I can either focus on parents or teaching. I chose the latter. I began to start planning for the most challenging school year of my career.
Choose a Planner
I’ve never been much of a planner much less a person has to write everything down. Since I’m in a difficult position of having to teach from home I decided to purchase a planner. I looked online for a planner but ultimately decided to go into a store to purchase one.
Purchasing a planner during back to school promotions was perfect timing. The planners were on display, so I didn’t have to do any digging. I looked at several planners but decided to get the Your Year to Shine Happy Planner. I chose this planner because of the layout, the Daily To-Do pages, and the extra notes pages at the end of each month.
Prioritize Tasks
Inside of the Your Year to Shine Happy Planner there’s a section for you to list the top three most important tasks that you need to complete. This is important for me because not everything you have to do MUST be done immediately.
Prioritizing your tasks can help you not become overwhelmed. For example, it seems as if I have one hundred one things to do to prepare for the school year, but there are certain things like setting my virtual classrooms expectation and routines and procedures that have to be created first.
Make a To-Do List
My distance learning Daily To-Do list seems like it’s never ending. Fortunately for me, I learned a different way to do work through my to-do list so that it doesn’t make me feel overwhelmed.
The steps I take to complete my to-do list is:
- List all the things that need to be completed for the week.
- Decide which tasks need to be completed first.
- On day one complete the most important tasks.
- Then rewrite the to-do list again minus the completed tasks.
- Decide which task needs to be completed first.
- Repeat the first 3 steps until the to-do list is completed by the end of the week.
Distance learning is one thing but working from home can create a whole other situation. Just because you’re teaching from home doesn’t mean that the grocery list disappears.
Having a way that you plan to get your tasks done for distance learning can you help in unimaginable ways. Don’t wait until school begins, create a plan today!
