Effective time management is a crucial skill every tutor must have. From grading exams, arranging classes, making lesson plans, and providing one-on-one mentoring to students, tutors usually have much work on their hands. But these activities are not as cumbersome as many think. The only reason they are is poor time management.
To be productive as a teacher, learn these five useful time management tips. You might even earn more money and take up more rewarding tasks that you can handle.
- Plan
Before you step out of your house, make sure you have an idea of how you intend to spend your day. Planning will make it easier for you to get most of the activities for the day done. It will help you prevent confusion and frustration even when you end up not attending to everything on your list for the day.
You plan might include simple things like teaching your students first thing in the morning. Others might be marking of assignments, providing essay help and more. Put everything down on paper, and assess yourself based on completed tasks at the end of the day. Proper planning will make moving tasks you could not accomplish to the next day easy.
Tips:
Write your plans down on paper. Having it in your mind might be stressful, especially when they are too many even to remember.
Write down how you intend to execute each of the plans if need be.
- Learn to prioritize
One way to effective manage time is to prioritize. While making plans, organize each task according to impact or importance. The thing is no matter the cumbersomeness of your activities for the day; they can never be of equal importance. Handling daily activities according to importance will make you achieve more and have less to worry about for the day.
Tips on prioritizing:
Write down all your workload or activities for the day
List workload according to the importance and resulting impact. That is let the number one on the list be the most important.
Be able to assess projects to know if you can put them on hold in case the unexpected happens.
- Avoid procrastination
Many tutors find themselves doing this often. They procrastinate to the point where the workload becomes too much for them to handle. To manage time effectively, teachers must learn to get things done at the right time. There should be time to socialize with colleagues, study, teach or grade students.
Talking about grading, many tutors have learned to efficiently carry out this dreadful task by splitting the grading materials into smaller units. Each of the groups will be attended to on a daily basis to avoid encroaching into the time one is supposed to spend doing something else. Unless grading is the only task you have for the day, breaking the grading materials into groups will help you manage time and other activities efficiently.
However, splitting tasks isn’t enough. You must take action to accomplish what you plan to do. As a tutor, you have to discipline yourself, and avoid things that could force you to procrastinate. One of them is neglecting what you are supposed to do today for tomorrow. You never can tell, you might have more to do the next day.
- Have a backup plan
Your activities for the day might not go as planned. So whenever you are creating a plan, always have a backup plan in case something goes wrong. There might be crises in the classroom that would take much of your time. If you don’t make plans to tackle them, you might end up being more frustrated and not achieve anything.
Your plans should be around meeting the needs of students, not on others like natural disasters. There is little or nothing you can do when such crises occur. But you can handle emergencies related to students at least to an extent. It could be about their behavior or a health challenge. You have to handle the situation in a way that would not encroach on your time. Study how each student behaves and how to make them concentrate for the few hours you will be spending to teach them.
- Have time for yourself
Typically, tutors have no choice but to attend to every issue that comes their way. These might include meeting parents to talk about their kids, preparing lesson plans, studying, and coaching students. All these activities can take place on the same day. It all depends on the time management skills the tutor has. But even as you tackle other activities, you also need to create time for yourself to be more efficient on the job assigned to you.
Have your own time for relaxation, and eat properly. Think about progress you have made thus far, and areas that need improvement.
Conclusion
As a tutor, you need to learn how to manage your time. You will be able to achieve more daily and have minor things to worry on with that. Also, proper time management would make the job more comfortable for you. There would never be any time that the workload would be too much for you because you know how to manage time well.
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