Real Talk About Time Management: 35 Best Practices for Educators(Corwin Teaching Essentials)

Gain time in each day, reduce stress, and improve your classroom learning environment with 35 practical, teacher-proven strategies for managing time and setting personal boundaries.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments About the Authors Introduction Part I: Time Management Mindset Strategy #1: Ask Yourself Questions Strategy #2: Be Tuned in to the Advice Other Teachers Give You About Time Management Strategy #3: You Have So Much to Do . . . Why? Strategy #4: Be a Hunter: Track Down Controllable Factors That Add to Your Workload Strategy #5: Change Your Language Around Your Workload Strategy #6: Am I Scraping the Right Car? Strategy #7: Watch Your Water Cooler Strategy #8: Get Unstuck When You Feel Paralyzed by Too Much to Do Strategy #9: Organize and Unclutter Strategy #10: Prep Where It Counts Before the Start of School Part II: Planning Strategy #11 Cut Down Your Grading Time Strategy #12: Meetings: Stick to an Agenda to Save Time Strategy #13: What’s Your Right Climate? Strategy #14: Be Proactive, Not Reactive With Tasks Strategy #15: Cell Phones, E-mails, and Social Media . . . Oh My! Strategy #16: Plan Enough Time for Each Student Strategy #17: Peer Mediators to Save Time in Your Classroom Part III: At School Strategy #18: Healthy Habits With Curriculum Strategy #19: Groupwork Strategy #20: When We Have to Be Present Strategy #21: Manage Time in Your Lessons Strategy #22: Technology Strategy #23: Necessary Multitasking Strategy #24: Helping Your Students Manage Their Time Strategy #25: Get a Handle on Paperwork Strategy #26: Manage Time in Parent Conferences/Parent Meetings Strategy #27: Managing Your Time Dealing With Extracurricular Activities Strategy #28: Have a System to Keep Up With E-mails Strategy #29: Know When to Take Little Breaks Throughout the Day Part IV: At Home Strategy #30: Manage Correspondence With Parents and Students Strategy #31: Taking Care of Yourself Strategy #32: Meditation Strategy #33: Enjoy Your Time After School and on the Weekends Strategy #34: Secondary Trauma Strategy #35: Compassion Fatigue An Open Letter to Teachers References Index

About the Author :
Serena Pariser is the best-selling author of several professional books for educators, including Real Talk About Classroom Management: 50 Best Practices That Work and Show You Believe in Your Students (Corwin, 2018) and Real Talk About Time Management: 35 Best Practices for Educators (Corwin, 2020). She is a coauthor of Five to Thrive: Answers to Your Biggest Questions About Creating a Dynamic Classroom (Corwin, 2022) and It Starts in the Classroom: Character Education for a Better Tomorrow (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022).  Serena taught English language arts for many years, primarily in San Diego, California, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has experience working with most grades in a variety of school settings across the spectrum, from underresourced urban public schools to affluent private schools. Serena was honored as Teacher of the Year at Gompers Preparatory Academy, located in San Diego.  She served as assistant director of field experience at the University of San Diego, where she taught graduate and undergraduate classes for teachers in training. In addition, Serena was selected to be a national evaluator for Schools of Character. A Fulbright scholar, Serena coaches educators across the United States and around the globe, from California to Kathmandu. Her passions include progressive classroom management best practices, bringing curriculum to life, time management for teachers, and weaving character education into the curriculum.  In her spare time, Serena travels and loves to experience the world for weeks at a time with just a backpack strapped to her back and a smile on her face.  Serena’s website can be found at www.serenapariser.com, where she writes educational articles that are enjoyed by a large audience of teachers. She is most active on social media on X @SerenaPariser and maintains a blog at www.serenapariser.com, where she writes articles for educators. She can also be directly contacted at serena.pariser@gmail.com. Edward F. DeRoche received a BS degree from the University of Maine, an MEd degree from Easter Connecticut State University, and an MA and PhD from the University of Connecticut. He is currently Professor in the School of Education and Codirector of the International Center for Character Education at the University of San Diego. He has been an elementary and middle school teacher and principal, a public school board member, a member of two private high school boards, and a school of education dean. He is a consultatant, evaluator, author, teacher trainer, and the recipient of several awards. He has published eight books and over 50 articles on educational topics.  

Review :
Pariser and DeRoche draw from their own classroom experiences to provide a practical time management resource for classroom teachers. With thought-provoking questions at the end of each chapter, this text is a great springboard for collaborative conversations. Real Talk About Time Management is a resource I look forward to sharing and utilizing with the teachers in our system! As a middle and high school English teacher, I often felt like there wasn’t enough time in the day to get everything done. This struggle against the clock is one of the practical challenges I try to help the preservice teachers I now work with to prepare for, but considering time management frustrates even seasoned teachers, Real Talk About Time Management is a helpful tool. With assistance from sources as varied as Marie Kondo and YouTube car commercials, Serena and Ed provide accessible and applicable strategies for time management as well as tools for self-reflection and planning. Along with honest reflections and anecdotes, this book includes advice from actual teachers and realistic consideration of how preparation allows for successful teaching. Serena and Ed’s applications are presented alongside a sense of respect for the significant workload and varied demands on teachers’ time, which they also use to provide specific advice for tasks like grading, communication, and considering our workspaces. Two specific pieces of advice I appreciated from the authors were filtering the advice from others to best fit our needs and personalities and distinguishing between being busy and being productive. Ultimately, Real Talk About Time Management will help teachers to reprioritize their tasks and priorities and to optimize their work flow. Real Talk About Time Management is exactly what busy teachers need! Even after nearly two decades of teaching, I found so many tips and strategies to streamline all the busyness of planning, grading, collaborating, interacting with parents, engaging students, and even the layout of the classroom. Ideas for dealing with mountains of paper as well as making sure to connect with colleagues are interspersed with heartwarming and hilarious stories of Ed’s and Serena’s classroom experiences. What a joy to read! Real Talk About Time Management is written in a comforting, practical style complemented with many thought-provoking, meaningful anecdotes and quotes. Offers excellent reminders and tips for K–12 teachers of any subject desiring to better manage their time in order to be more effective, more efficient, and more healthy caretakers. Deftly differentiates being busy from being productive and from tasks being important versus being urgent, and will help the dedicated teacher balance what they can control from what they cannot. The authors offer pragmatic resources, sharing perspectives from both a classroom teacher and a school administrator’s lens. This book is a wonderful reference that will help educators work smarter, not harder. No-nonsense, applicable, and full of great tools and strategies for helping teachers better manage their time so that they can be their best in and out of the classroom. An organized, thorough, and insightful book that captures real-life situations and strategies. A great read for any educator and administrator looking to make an immediate difference in the lives of children. A perfect read on strategies for establishing a work–life balance. Serena Pariser gets right into the guts of our perennial problem: we don’t have enough time! I can’t imagine a more comprehensive or helpful book on time management for teachers. I hope it gets a wide and earnest reading. The daily demands of elementary teachers such as responding to student and parent needs, curriculum preparation, academic reflection, collaboration with colleagues and administrative requirements can seem daunting. How necessary, important and valuable to have Real Talk About Time Management, a resource full of tools and practices to help balance the personal and professional lives of teachers! Great read for someone just beginning their career and those that have been in the profession for years! I’ve been teaching for 22 years and learned so many new time management strategies that I am excited to implement in my classroom. I love how it uses real experiences and real life classroom situations making it relevant to teaching today. Thought provoking. Really gets you to reflect on yourself and how this translates into your teaching style. The strategies in this book can be applied not only in the classroom but also in everyday life.