One of the big challenges I’ve found in jumping from classroom teacher to teacher-librarian has been how to organise myself efficiently. As a classroom teacher work overload was absolutely a struggle, but at least during the day I had a timetable to follow and could move from one activity to the next without having to think too much about it. As a teacher-librarian, my timetable is much more flexible and therefore requires more of my brainpower to stay organised, especially given all the interruptions we have throughout the day!
As part of my SWOT analysis I’d identified that despite my ambitious vision for the library, I needed more time scheduled to implementing these projects and reflecting on their progress. My wonderful ALIA mentor, Emily, gave me some excellent advice to help overcome some of these challenges. She mentioned a PL she’d done a while back where the presenter was very disciplined in scheduling her time to include all the various tasks that need to be completed. I love a good colour-coded schedule, so thought I’d give it a go to see how it works!
My weapon of choice was Google Calendar. It took a fair while to figure out how to set it up, but now that my regular timetabled classes and duties have been added it should roll over each week. It’s pretty user-friendly and seems to integrate well into my Outlook calendar and personal calendar on my phone, so it doesn’t matter which system my colleagues and suppliers use – I should hopefully have all bases covered.
One of the best features I’ve found so far with this set-up is the time breakdown function. Google Calendar allowed me to create colour-coded tags to keep track of the different tasks I’m scheduling, and then gives me a breakdown of how many hours each week I’m spending on each task as well as how much unscheduled time I have remaining during my working hours. I initially forgot to turn off the notification settings though – big mistake! Being shouted at by my computer every time a new task was about to start was not a great experience!
So far it’s been a great tool to help me feel a bit more in control of the tasks that need to be completed and hasn’t been too hard to stick to for the past few days. It’s been especially useful scheduling specific time to check and respond to emails, which as many teachers know is a huge time-suck! Rather than check everytime I get the ding for a new email, I now close that browser window until the scheduled times and feel so much more productive already.
However, the library is currently closed due to HSC exams so it’ll be interesting to see how things change in a couple of weeks time when we’re back to our regular, unscheduled chaos!