“It is more than probable that the average man could, with no injury to his health, increase his efficiency 50%.” Walter Scott
Time – there is never enough in the world of teaching. By the end of the day, drained and exhausted, you wonder…how did this stack on
my desk get even higher? With the realization that every day will bring with it new challenges and opportunities, I pass on a bit of wisdom from my mother. Mom is an elementary school teacher who guides her class of Kindergarten-2nd grade special education students through a myriad of adventures each day. Pop into her class on a given day and you will find students engaged in Zoo-phonics as they move their little bodies to learn the alphabet, baking a healthy treat as they learn nutrition and life skills, or working to develop social skills in the greenhouse. “How do you do it all?” I asked her one day. “I continually ask myself one question,” she replied, “Could a student do this?”
Each day as she plans her class assignments, instead of spending hours cutting out shapes, sorting colors, filing papers, or moving materials, she asks herself, “Could a student do this?” If the answer is yes, she incorporates that step into her lesson. She looks at every step of lesson preparation as an opportunity for students to develop skills, and as a result, has streamlined her daily preparation process to an efficient machine. By empowering students to be involved in daily classroom tasks, she allows more time to focus on the conceptual areas of her teaching plan.
As you get ready for this next week, and you begin to sort, file, stack and organize – ask yourself, “Could a student do this?”