Using Summer Productively
I have been struggling to find a balance during my summer between downtime and preparing for the school year. Our school year this year extended into June, June 11th to be exact, and then I taught eight days of summer school before spending four days at a leadership conference. As a result, my summer didn't start until June 28th; sometimes it felt like it would never come.
This left me with a shortened break from school during which to relax and accomplish all the tasks I want to for next school year. I knew I had to create a schedule to get everything for school done without spending most of my rejuvenation time sitting among a pile of textbooks and binders.
This is where my smart phone and Google Calendar come in handy. I created two repeating events for every week between now and the last week of August when PD starts.
This first one is a reminder to work on lesson and unit plans and the rest of my extensive list of items I want to do over the summer.
This is where my smart phone and Google Calendar come in handy. I created two repeating events for every week between now and the last week of August when PD starts.
This first one is a reminder to work on lesson and unit plans and the rest of my extensive list of items I want to do over the summer.
Every week at 2 PM on Wednesday my phone reminds me to put in an hour of school time. This way I am not trying to do everything at once and working for hours. In addition, I don't get sidetracked by my pool and accomplish nothing. If I have other plans, I can simply snooze the event until I have time.
In addition to my own classroom work, I am a building technology coordinator. It sounds fancy, but it really means I am the first stop for technology problems in our building. I also run our district Power School system and do some PD on our technology products including website and Google. As a result, I have tech responsibilities in the summer. I am free to work my own schedule out, but I also try to this in little bits, so I created a repeat reminder for technology stuff too.
When each of these reminders goes off, I set my phone timer for an hour (this actually goes for most jobs I need to do such as grading and cleaning the basement). When the timer goes off, I let myself be done. This method really keeps me from working too hard or not enough.
How do you keep your summers rejuvenating and productive at the same time?
