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Transcript:
Everyone knows administrators are supposed to get into classrooms, but the reality is, it’s rare. It’s hard to spend time in classrooms when you have so much other work on your plate. Whether it’s dealing with parents, or student discipline, or supervision, or operational issues, or reports and other mandates – there’s no such thing as “spare time” in this line of work. We know if we’re going to get into classrooms, we’re going to have to MAKE time.
So in this module, we’re going to talk about how to carve out time for classroom visits on a daily basis. But really, it doesn’t take all that much time. We’re not talking about hours and hours out of your day, or blocking off the whole morning. Just a few minutes here and there is all you need.
In talking with people about their biggest breakthroughs, and how they finally made a habit of getting into classrooms every day – after years or even decades of being administrators – I’ve discovered that it’s not really about time; it’s about something else: mental bandwidth.
The principalship has become an overwhelming job. There’s simply too much to do, and too many people who seem to need you constantly, so you can never really get all of your work done. This is a pretty alarming feeling, because as human beings, we’re wired to want to finish one thing before moving on to something else. And because classroom visits are always less urgent than most of your other work, they seem to always get pushed to the back burner. But we know they’re important, and with the right strategies, we can create the mental bandwidth we need to get into classrooms every day with confidence.
The key is to make a subtle shift in how we think about all that work that isn’t finished yet. It’s not going to work to say “I’ll get into classrooms when I get caught up on everything else,” because the truth is, we’ll never get caught up. There will always be more work coming in that we don’t have time for.
So instead, I want to propose a shift. Instead of feeling like it’s safe to get into classrooms only when you’re totally done with all your other work, I want you to set a different bar for yourself: getting current.
When you’re current, you haven’t DONE all of your work, but you’ve at least taken a look at it and done some prioritization. Once you’ve triaged and organized your work a bit, you can make the decision to step away from it and spend a few minutes in classrooms, knowing that the world isn’t going to fall apart while you’re out of the office. The work will still be there when you return, and because you’ve put systems in place to organize that work, you’ll be able to jump right back into it – perhaps even more efficiently than if you’d just kept working nonstop.
Here’s why getting current is so powerful. Think about your voicemail. That little red blinking light on your phone could represent a message from a telemarketer that you can delete immediately, or it could be a message from your boss about a serious issue that needs your attention right now.
The uncertainty about what that blinking voicemail light means is what consumes our mental bandwidth and makes it hard to get into classrooms. It fills us with anxiety about whether we’re doing the right thing to step away from the office, even if it’s just for a few minutes.
Now, add an overflowing email inbox, with hundreds or thousands of messages, and a desk that’s covered in stacks of paper, and it’s easy to see why so many administrators don’t feel like they can carve out time to get into classrooms. It’s the mental overwhelm that’s keeping us chained to our desks.
But when we put systems in place to get current on our work, so it’s been triaged and organized, we can eliminate that anxiety. We can’t make the work go away, but we can take back control of our time so we’re the ones deciding where to focus our energy and attention.
So in the next section, I’m going to share an approach to using backlogs to organize all the work that you aren’t doing yet, but still need to keep track of.
Here’s your action task for this section: I’d like you to think about all the kinds of work that tend to pile up and consume your mental energy, and identify the biggest culprits. What kinds of work make you feel overwhelmed, and keep you out of classrooms? Is it your email, or the paperwork cluttering your desk? Or maybe it’s interruptions from staff members or parents, or perhaps it’s student discipline issues. Identify the biggest drains on your mental bandwidth, and when you’re ready, move on to the next section.
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