By Pete Middleton
Okay, so I admit I’m a bit biased here about our own products, but our goal has always been to help teachers save time whilst providing good quality resources for their learners. If you are reading this and have worked in Functional Skills for a while, regardless of whether you are a teacher, teaching assistant or a manager you will probably be able to relate to my story.
Let’s imagine that you are a part time member of staff who is asked to cover sessions for colleagues, often without notice, who might be off work sick or on holiday. In these situations, you will have little if any planning time and will be reacting. Your head could be spinning trying to quickly come up with some ideas so you can deliver a good lesson. If the class has large numbers or challenging students, this poses even more of a problem.
Alternatively, you could be working one evening at a local college or training organisation while holding down a separate full-time day job. If this is your scenario, then planning time will certainly be limited.
When do you get time to plan?
On a Saturday afternoon, or an evening when the kids are in bed? Or perhaps like I have done; you have a set time of the week in your diary to plan such as a Friday morning or afternoon. We all know these best laid plans can go out of the window. The demands on front line tutors are ever growing and the list is lengthy: so many meetings to attend, emails, conference calls and training events. The planning time that was in your diary is being swallowed up by other commitments.
Soon enough you find yourself looking forward to those well-earned holidays because you feel like you’re working 24/7 without time to recharge. If you have ever reverted to saying, ‘I will stay behind late once a week to do my planning…’, you’re not alone as this is an approach I have seen several staff take. It would be easier and make you more productive if you could reclaim some time back for you, to enjoy what you want to do.
Maintaining Your Own Health
The impact of all this on your health can reduce your resilience, make you tired and drained and make you more likely to pick up the usual round of colds and other bugs and this can start to contribute towards mental health issues such as stress and depressions.
The stress you carry from the pressure of ensuring quality resources, include the differentiation you want to provide for your learners, can lead to serious health conditions. The symptoms may not be immediately apparent, but the warning signs will be there. We get it – you need to do something to bring back control of your own schedule and work towards a healthier and happier lifestyle. We know that you are at your best when you look after yourself.
If you’re a manager, perhaps you’ve never realised how much time staff spend creating resources. Perhaps it’s not something you worry about but think about the paragraphs above. If staff are more likely to make themselves ill because they don’t have good quality rest, they are more likely to need to take sick days, more likely to miss deadlines for admin tasks and lose their passion for teaching.
That’s all part of the reason we set up Functional Skills Resources. To enable teachers to have more time either doing things for yourselves or to spend more time on individualisation for your learners. We have 270 resources currently that you don’t have to create because we’ve done it for you. That’s hours of time we are giving back to you.
If any of that has resonated with you, consider whether a subscription to the website would be of benefit to you.
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