Most teachers aren’t overwhelmed because they have too much to do. They’re overwhelmed because they need to do too many different things in a single day.
Finding resources, answering emails, attending meetings, supporting students, helping out colleagues, sitting on committees, organizing events… And somewhere in between, you’re also expected to design meaningful learning experiences before entering the classroom.
By definition we are generalists, but it’s very easy for it to backfire. When trying to do all of this at once, it can push us too far or lead us to do things much less efficiently than what we’re capable of.
Each switch comes with a small cost: refocusing, remembering where you stopped last time, adjusting your tone or intent, shifting expectations. Multiply that by dozens of tasks per day, plus the efforts required in actually teaching your classes, and you end up exhausted.
And this is where I found batching to be extremely valuable as a teacher. Batching is the ability to group similar tasks together, so your brain can stay in the same “mode” for longer. Not only will this make you more productive; it may help you in ways you may not have thought of.
What you can batch as a teacher
Emails at set times
Instead of responding to e-mails as soon as you have a minute between classes, try to dedicate time for this only once or twice a day (in the morning, or at the end of the day for example). This will not only reduce context-switching and mental overload, but can actually push you to be more focused on things you’d normally consider rushing through, leading to improved practices in other areas of your work.
Here is one example. When I was teaching at university, my inbox would get hectic just before major deadlines for my students. I was of course sometimes tempted to reply with the all-mighty “it’s in the syllabus”, but when I took the time to batch-respond to all of these e-mails over an hour or two at the end of the day, patterns emerged. Questions repeated themselves. I realized I could reuse parts of previous answers, and build a spreadsheet of recurring replies / feedback points. This, in turn, helped me adapt how I would explain things in class, anticipate the questions I would get, and down the line make life easier for myself… and my students.
Lesson design in large blocks
It may seem counterintuitive, but if your schedule allows it, it may be worth having large blocks of time to create multiple teaching sequences at once, rather than to split the prep time into smaller units (i.e. before every class or by subject).
The reason for this is that lesson design should be one of the most creative parts of the job. And like anything creative, it is a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, it is very hard to really get into it. Constantly entering and leaving that creative mode is exhausting – and often pushes us toward quick fixes that look good on paper but fail in class. Who hasn’t used an online worksheet or a handbook excerpt that felt perfect at first glance but failed miserably in class, only to realize an extra 10-minute online search or some minor tweak would have done the trick?
On the other hand, the longer you allow yourself to dive into lesson planning, the more inspiring, effective, and enjoyable it will become.
It may even give you enough time to discover meaningful links to synergize your different classes together (activities that can in fact work well in both beginner and intermediate language classes for example, or scenarios for group projects in different business or project management courses).
In that creative mindset, you become more open to new ideas and potential learning opportunities for your students.
Pre-and post-meeting work
Meetings, especially among teachers for some reason, can be extremely draining. There is only so much you can control in the planning and outcomes of your different meetings, of course, but I found the organization of my work just before and after each event to be crucial.
A good meeting should normally require participants to come sufficiently prepared, and for them to leave with a good idea of what to do next. You can directly influence the first step by always dedicating a small chunk of preparation work just before the meeting takes place. Sometimes, even 10 uninterrupted minutes can do wonders in getting a good idea of what questions you need to ask, where you would like said project to go next, or what you would like your role to be. Not only will this make your work much easier – and probably smoother – down the line. You will also avoid wasting everyone’s time by asking questions on things that have been communicated earlier.
The same tip applies to right after the meeting. Leave some breathing space (more on that in another post soon) not only to take good notes of your next steps, – possibly already initiating them – but also to talk formally and informally to any other colleague, dean or support services that can make your life easier down the line.
Batch your grading process
The goal of batching is not to do more. It is to reduce friction. And if there is one part of our job where we want to have the least friction of possible, it’s when grading.
I’ve explained elsewhere my strategies for grading long, complex written assignments, for which you usually need to consider each student individually (How to grade hundreds of essays). But for other tasks involving a more repetitive grading processes (MCQs, quizzes, short open questions, etc.) your appraoch should be the following: batch grade your copies not by student, but by exercise. Some of you may already apply this, others will surely know a colleague or two telling you how great it is, without ever explaining it fully. But many still overlook how doing this will allow you to:
- Enter into a “flow state” after a few copies, thus allowing you to remember, anticipate, sort through, and correct your students’ answers extremely quickly and reliably.
- Identify recurring mistakes by students and consider more quickly the different marks or feedback points you’ll need to give.
- Develop a coherent set of annotations that is the most adequate for each exercise (distinguishing content vs form, incorrect vs partially correct, etc.).
- And more importantly: spot more quickly if there are issues in your evaluation’s instructions, guidelines, content, or expected answers (i.e. grey areas or errors).
You may not be in control of your teaching schedule, but…
It never hurts to be mindful of its impact on your workflow, and to try to push it in the direction whenever you can.
If your school gives you the opportunity to express your schedule “wishes” for the next school, consider all the tips above and ask yourself how and when you work most efficiently.
Are you the most creative in the morning? Then maybe consider teaching a bit later than you normally would so that you have productive time in the morning for working on your lessons or extracurricular projects.
Same for those dreaded “gaps” between different classes. Why not make the most of them by dedicating it fully to taking care of all your pending e-mails, or grading just one exercise from your latest evaluation,? Or maybe you have other mandates in your institution that typically require two or three hours a week that could be dealt in a single gap before your late afternoon class?
If you do have family commitments like picking up your kids after school, then of course those will be prioritized. But the next most important thing should be your own work productivity.
Final tip: don’t overestimate the time you need
There is one caveat to the whole batching process: the more time you give a task, the more tie it will take. This is commonly called Parkinson’s Law, when works expands to fill the time available.
So the risk with batching is that if indeed you give yourself an hour a day for e-mails, then they may really take that amount of time. But the reverse is also true, as I explained in my other post. If you allow yourself 20 minutes for a task that you know can sometimes take longer, then you’re more likely to prioritize things better and stick to those twenty minutes.
So my final tip when you consider batching your workload as a teacher: set pretty small blocks of tie at first, and adjust accordingly over time. This will help you focus on what really matters.
This is why batching didn’t just save me time. It improved my teaching.