The WorkGroup

Throughout my career organization has been my weakest point, and that’s not good, although fairly typical for a teacher. What papers go where? What goes to the office and when? Who did I have to send a test to detention for? Who was I going to give detention to? How do we manage all these tasks?

I have a long history with the to-do list, and it’s been a very helpful thing. When I was in high school working in my father’s hardware store, Dad would spend the first half hour before the store opened making the to do list for the day, and who was in charge of doing them. My list was pretty much the same every day, since I was the stock boy and janitor. I checked the list religiously though, and always got great satisfaction from crossing a prodigious number of things off.

When I got into teaching though, organization took on a whole new meaning, and the task lists, although small, were daunting and never finished. I worked all day and well into the night my first year of teaching, yet I never felt the sense of accomplishment remembered from my hardware days. These lists were shorter and simpler, but nothing got done.

This would be a typical to do list:
Plan lessons
Grade tests
Fill out recommendation forms

Frustrated, I sought the help of my college advisor, who always had a thing or two to say about to-do lists that I never bothered to listen to. I explained to him that I did indeed make to do lists, but they seemed more like life sentences than tasks to be completed. He asked me to list off the items on my to do list for the day, which took all of five seconds.

His reply wasn’t what I expected.

“It’s too short” he said flatly, before walking me through the list. My problem was that I was “chunking” my tasks instead of listing them specifically. When one looks at tasks in big chunks, they can appear deceivingly overwhelming, particularly when the end of the day comes and there’s only two or three things crossed off the list.

So I got creative with my to do list.
• Plan Lessons
turned into
• Plan Global I lesson
• Plan Global II lesson
• Plan Business Law lesson
• Copy stuff for lessons

• Grade tests
turned into
• Grade Global I pre-test
• Grade Global II unit test
• Record grades on computer
And, as I looked at the list, I realized I’d better be more realistic, and decided instead to give myself a break…
• Grade half business law essays

I’d like to say that the next day at school I got everything done on my to do list. Far from it. But I was able to cross out well over half the things on the list by the time my school day was over. My sense of accomplishment was far greater when I looked over the things I’d done for the day. Eventually, it got to the point where I even made my lists almost realistically.

Now I sometimes take the “to do” sense of accomplishment thing a little further. When assessing the list at mid day, if I’d done something that wasn’t on the list, I’d write it down on the list just to see it crossed off. I was confessing this to my friend Leah, and she admitted she did the same thing.

One of my biggest problems with to do list though, was keeping track of it. I’d seldom make it through the day without losing it. I tried keeping it in my grade book, but that only worked until I took it out. I’d end up doing at least two a day.

In the past two years, technology has transformed the to do list and come to my rescue once again. Since our school issued us laptops three years ago, I worked my way slowly into using Microsoft Outlook, and it’s added a whole new dimension to my to do list. I can list off the tasks, and then watch them disappear one by one during my planning period, and see a fairly empty list, or, I can digitally cross them out, to be deleted later. Tasks left on the list are a subtle reminder that they’ll still be there tomorrow.

Take charge of your to do list. Give yourself credit for the many things you do, and accept, at the end of a long day’s work, that you can’t do it all, and that tomorrow’s another day.