Subscribe to my mailing list

Time Management Problems for Teachers (and how to solve them!)

July 29, 2022

Time management problems for teachers are the worst! If there is one thing busy teachers are always wishing for, it is more time!

Why is time management SO important for teachers?

We always need time for our students, our families, our partners, and OURSELVES! However, we all know that there are only twenty-four hours in the day.

So today I am dishing my best tips on time management for teachers in the classroom. I want you to walk away with strategies to maximize the precious minutes you have so there is time left in your day for friends, family, and self-care.

Time Management Problems for Teachers

Inexperience
Disruptive student behavior
Inadequate planning
Lack of organization
Exhaustion

Inexperience causes issues with time management for new teachers. During the first few years in the classroom, everything is new to you! You have to master classroom management, teach a new curriculum, and learn to communicate with parents. The list goes on and on!

How can you possibly keep up day to day much less have any time for yourself?

One absolute must is for you to find a mentor. Some districts will assign a mentor to a beginning teacher. I was absolutely blessed to have two co-mentors during my first year of teaching. They took me under their wings and were a constant source of information and encouragement.

What if your district doesn’t provide you with a mentor? That is okay. You can still seek out the wisdom of experienced teachers in your building. Most teachers remember how difficult their first years were and are happy to share time-saving tips and resources. This will save you loads of time looking for just-right lessons, curriculum supplements, and more!

Another great way to avoid time management problems for teachers is to join an online community. There are lots of wonderful Facebook groups started by teachers that are a perfect place to pop on and post a quick question. This is a great way to get advice if you just aren’t finding any support in your building.

Be careful here though! Getting sucked into reading lots of posts will not be a time-saver! 🙃 Be sure to stick to searching for what you need and get back on task.

Disruptive Student Behavior Management Problems

One easy way to lose time throughout the day is when students become disruptive and derail your awesome lesson plans.

The best way to avoid this is to hone your classroom management skills. If you are losing time for poor behavior on a daily basis, you should consider these questions.

Am I communicating my expectations clearly?
How can I consistently review my expectations?
Do I have a way to reward or recognize students for meeting/exceeding those expectations?
What other resources in the building can I utilize to help students with behavior problems?

Students need to be very clear on what types of behavior you are expecting in any given scenario. For example, what should their voice level be when sitting at the carpet with you versus when they are working at a center? When is a good time to get a tissue or a drink of water? How can your students get a pencil if their pencil breaks?

By setting these expectations early, you will avoid constant questions and disruptions throughout the day. It may seem small at the time, but these lost moments can really add up over 180 days of school!

Have you ever had a student have a complete meltdown and have to clear your classroom of students? If you have a student that is prone to highly disruptive behavior, it might be a great idea to have a “go bag” hanging by your classroom door. You can grab it quickly if you have to leave the room unexpectedly with the rest of your students.

(Wait to leave the area until an administrator or other authorized adult has arrived to maintain the safety of the child that has lost self-control.)

Having a “go bag” can prevent you from having a total loss of instructional time. After relocating your students to a safe space and checking to see that you have all the other students, you can choose an activity from your bag and keep the learning going.

Here’s what I would put in the bag:

Class list
2 read-alouds
2 sets of flashcards

Usually, these types of situations are resolved quickly and you are able to return to your room with your class. However, it makes sense to have something on hand, so that your other students can keep learning and do not get out of control themselves!

Be aware that many schools have other supports in place to help your students that are struggling with self-control. Is there another teacher that has had success with this child? Maybe he/she can offer you some new strategies to try. Have you tried referring this child for counseling?

If you need some EASY behavior management strategies, check out this post.

Inadequate planning

Want to know one of the worst time management mistakes I used to make as a beginning teacher? I was an under-planner. Yep. It is true.

I didn’t yet have a sense of how long things would take my students to complete, and I didn’t have a wealth of ideas on how to teach each skill. This can cause a few problems. If a teacher under-plans, students are sitting around waiting for more instruction or work. These minutes are totally wasted.

What is even worse? These moments of boredom are the times that behavior problems often crop up. This spirals into even more lost instructional time.

Fortunately, as time went on, I had more ideas than I could ever teach in a given school year.

However, this can create the opposite problem! A teacher can end up planning way too many activities. The lesson may have to be cut short, and the most essential part could end up being skipped. It could leave no time for an informal or formal assessment to see if students are actually achieving mastery.

If lessons spill over every day, teachers get hopelessly off track and run out of time at the end of the year.

Accurate planning is one of the best ways time management for teachers can be enhanced. How do you strike the right balance?

Ways to Stay on Track With Time Management

Use those pacing guides! They will help you keep pace with the rest of the teachers in your building or district.
Set timers for everything. If you are the teacher that gets carried away and doesn’t realize how much time you are spending on a topic, a timer can be your best friend.
Build some catch-up time into your planning. You will likely never have a single week where every little part of your day goes exactly as planned. There are fire drills, sick kids, and a multitude of other little unexpected things that crop up. For this reason, I built in a short amount of time each Friday to catch up on things that were not completed earlier in the week.

Lack of Organization

Another source of time management problems for teachers is a disorganized classroom! Nothing wastes time more easily than spending time hunting for materials that you are supposed to be using in your lesson. Where did that set of leveled readers go?

I really love to have a set of paper trays behind my desk. I have one for each day. In each tray, I place any copies for the day, a read-aloud, papers to pass out, and anything else I know I need for that day. This is a serious game-changer.

You will never again be digging through stacks of papers for your math worksheets or hunting for that book you wanted to read with your science lesson. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

First, I have another set of letter trays or drawers that are for papers to grade, papers to copy, and papers to file. It keeps me on task! Just don’t let that file pile sit there all year. Be sure to spend a few minutes each week filing. I have a post coming up all about organizing your teacher desk, so stay tuned for that!

Next, I also have a teacher binder to keep myself on track. This binder has all of the important information that I need at my fingertips. You can see the resource that I use in my own teacher binder by clicking here. Of course, I also couldn’t get by without my to-do lists. There’s just something special about using my cute pens to check something off the list. Motivates me to keep on going!

Exhaustion

I can almost see you nodding. I get it. Teachers are SO tired. It is very difficult to keep the energy needed to maximize every minute of your instructional day without rest.

Here are a few ways to care for yourself:

Drink your water. I mean it! Your body is not functioning properly if you are not hydrated.
Get more sleep. Many of us are trying to fit so much in each day that we end up staying up way too late. You will be more effective with your time if you just get the rest your body needs.
Develop a self-care routine and stick to it! Not sure where to begin? Check out this post, “How to Start a Teacher Self-Care Routine”
Then, partner up with another teacher and share the workload. If you are planning to teach the same skill, maybe one teacher can gather some games and read-alouds and one teacher can gather resources and make copies. Anytime you can share duties, you are saving yourself lots of time and precious energy.
Sometimes you just need a minute to rest and reset. You can still keep learning flowing by letting students work on a quality website like IXL or watch a quick instructional video on BrainPop Jr.