Are You Using Your Time Wisely?
By Sandra Feldman

As the weather warms up and the school year winds down, a teacher's days are hardly carefree. Chances are that you feel pressure to cover an impossible amount of material by the year's end. On top of that, your students may behave as if every day is Friday afternoon. What these dilemmas have in common is time and how to use your (and your students') time well.

Most of us think of time in terms of quantity – how much, or how little, of it we have. That's certainly important. But how we use time is equally, if not more, critical. Education researchers look at time both in terms of quantity and quality and classify time into three categories.

Time is on my side
Allocated time is also referred to as "opportunity to learn" time. This is the time within the school day apportioned to certain subjects. In recent years, allocated time has been tied to the standards movement as states have mandated set amounts of time for certain topics.

The next category is time on task. This is when students are actively engaged in a learning activity. Time on task sometimes suffers as the school year comes to a close and vacation beckons.

The third is academic learning time – the time when students are actually learning. This is when students are engaged in an assignment at an appropriate level of difficulty. Whereas allocated time and time on task refer to quantities of time, academic learning time pertains to the quality of time. Since there are never enough hours in a teacher's day, let's focus on a few key ways to make every minute in your classroom count.

Setting the tone
In many ways, maximizing learning opportunities comes down to setting – and keeping – effective rules and routines. This is why the classroom management routines you establish at the beginning of the year are so important – they set the tone for the rest of the year. Establishing, teaching, enforcing and reinforcing classroom rules set clear expectations for student behavior and reduces student disruptions and other forms of off-task behavior.

There are as many opportunities for students to get off-task as there are minutes in the day, but you can keep these diversions to a minimum. Having set procedures for entering and leaving the room, turning in and handing out assignments, etc., reduces the amount of time needed for transitions. Reinforcing these steps to the point where they become automatic helps make such routines quick, quiet and smooth.

Buying time
Even the right room arrangement can buy you time. An effective set-up helps with the orderly flow of "traffic" throughout the room, enhances teacher-student eye contact and reduces opportunities for student disruptions.

A teacher's goal is not only to maximize instructional time, but also to use it well. To make sure your and your students' time is well-spent, it's important to determine the appropriate level of difficulty for your students. You can do this by using ongoing assessments, such as spot checks of homework, monitoring students as they work independently and using pre- and post-tests to check student comprehension.

Expecting students to be on-task 100 percent of the time is unrealistic. And eliminating the downtime that students need can actually cause a loss of engaged time, since students are likely to become bored or disruptive. But you can keep lost learning time in check. Over time, the small changes you make can mean much more learning for your students.

Sandra Feldman is the President of the American Federation of Teachers.

May 2003, Vol.33, No.8