T2 Strategies for Teacher (T) and Time (T) Management
Abstract
The time management and the positive effect of utilizing time properly have given many benefits in the past history. Many of the scholar from there experience have told that "Time is Money" and so on. The paper, describes various methods and techniques for managing the time related to academician especially in case new recruited academic teacher to the institution or the university, casing a wide range of areas and field. It includes recommendation, students research proposals, development projects, consultancy, area of reference, tips, emailing, to writing research/grant proposals and teaching, assignment, services and other helping the faculty to develop and grow professionally with better utilization of the time.
Introduction
Major aim of the any academic member in the university or teaching institution is concerns more about teaching and research. The teaching member has to teach, prepare proposals, supervise students, attend conferences, give talks, write papers, interact with the industry, serve on departmental/ various committees, organize projects, conduct research, consultancy and other so many activity. How can it be possible to find time to do all this? The time management of teacher is so formed that he will be involved in all the activity. Overall he also has to spend time with his/her family member. He is also required to attend some get-together useful for establishing professional relationship, network and undertaking combined projects, proposals etc.
By systematic managing the time and having the planned schedule for the day, week and month the teacher can make it possible to meet all the ends. This paper, describes some of the methods and techniques for time management. This methods and technique have been used by various teachers and learned during the experiences in teaching as professors, and developing the way to find some time for various work and arranging the regular work for some urgent need really important things in our life.
Exchange of ideas and association
Most of the significant time we have to spend in teaching, advising and doing the regular preparations which require time and effort. The major work in term of the teacher is exchanging the ideas, knowledge and experience to the students and fellow research associate and other member of the institution helping and contributing for the development. In addition, we often spend time for the association with colleagues from various other institutions, department, industry and related field for the research and other purpose acting as the major advantage of the job. Knowing large number of people will help a teacher to develop and understand the practical life for e.g. the teacher related to finance; management can understand and develop the cases for the students with the help of the association. At the same time he/she can contribute to the business with consultancy with the knowledge, experience and skills.
Regularly, the students, colleagues and visitors requested some time for meeting regarding some issues like grades, research, personal discussion, departmental chores such as participating in committees or organizing events, approvals, discussion various issue related to the duties and jobs etc. Most of the time these requests come through mobile, e-mail, regular visits, and surprise visits. Most of the time attending these requests is not always easy and we do not know if we have time or want to fulfill the request, and we certainly do not have time now to think about what we should do.
Arrangement of agenda based Meetings
Scheduling meetings with students, department meeting related to academics, students, research and getting contact with other faculty are important part of the work and our calendar often fill with regular discussions and meetings. Sometime, these discussions which will lead to loose our time based on issues talking about electricity problem, water problem, transportation service etc. The author suggests few guidelines that will help the academic member to plan meeting and discussion giving much time to the faculty to concentrate of other productive activity.
To manage our time being a teacher we have to regularly schedule every bit of our moment which includes the class schedule, research agenda, discussion with other faculty, concentrating on the new academic outputs and so on. Without having a daily time schedule it is sure that we are going to waste our time which will not be productive. Timely and accurate plan for each hour should be scheduled every day. The tasks which are taken into calendar should be properly arranged as per the relevance and priority. Arranging task according to the time and relevance or scheduling time does not mean that you have to spending some time to discuss about the issues related to the department. The first priority of an academic teacher is the teaching and research. Each faculty member has to spend some time for the addition to his knowledge and teaching. It will be very important to a newly recruited academic faculty to spend more time to gain knowledge and learn related to his/ her specialization helping them to sustain in between other experienced teacher with same specialization and coordinate for the research.
Sometimes, we have to rearrange and allocate time for crop up meetings. Schedule your regular meetings, and arranging slot to assign to non-regular meetings. Whenever anybody ask you the time for some meeting like to have orientation to the staff, students you will have a chance to rearrange the time schedule and give him non regular meeting time.
Schedule the time by the use of the mind to form thoughts (thinking) i.e. doing some productive activity or to develop some important things. It is often happen that we give first preference to those who are waiting to meet us or requesting for meeting. It should not happen that we spent all our time in meetings and have no time left to form thoughts (no, you cannot put you maximum efforts at night after a day in which you two to three class, attended three meetings within department and visitors and arranging the other activities ). Schedule the time for use of the mind to form thoughts in your busy calendar to. That way, you will be less tending to bestow it.
Arrange the time schedule in such a way that you should get a day more from your regular meeting of your weekdays. This day or two in your schedule with no regular meetings will helps you schedule valuable, uninterrupted research time in that day. Never arrange any schedule meeting without a clear agenda and goals, and without a clear ending time. Meetings with no agenda and goals are the biggest waste of time. For the awareness of the time, arrange a clock in such a way that you can look at without your visitor noticing. To avoid overtime meetings without having to look at your watch during the meeting, hang a clock right above the visitor's head. This will help you to plan the remainder of the meeting. The arrangement of any meeting from any body should be pre decided unless or otherwise some emergency comes. The arrangement of the meeting should be planned including the time period and the agenda. Make note in your diary of the major points in the meeting and the activities which you took the responsibility for fulfillment including the deadline which help to undertake and fulfill the responsibility without failure. Being a good professional the responsibility should be fulfilled in time which represents some of your qualities.
Plan your time for discussion with the research, advice and other regular class students. Arrange and allocate time of the meeting and schedule, before a week by posting it or put on the organizational website where every student can have an access. Ask your students to arrange their entire discussion problem in a notepad and bring the items during the discussion time allocated and issues they want to discuss with you. That should be the same note pad every time. Explain to them that this way they have all your meetings transcribed, they get the best out of your (and their) time, and they have all the material available when they need to put together a paper outline. Always set a plan of action with goals for the next meeting. Plan and allocate regular time for body and health exercise. Body exercise is very essential to keep you healthy and mentally fit helping you to think and act wisely. Without the fit and health body you cannot act properly or even think properly.
Avoid gratuitous events
Your have to categories the useful task which is equally important. Avoid unnecessary and unwanted events which may lead to spend sometime for an unfruitful action. You might have tasks that should be there at the end of the day, week, month, year and you will not have been able to get to them despite all your good intentions, this is majorly involvement in unnecessary events which waste time and will stop the teacher to be fruitful.
Develop the habit of prioritizing the works. The list activities should be recorded with respect to the deadline and the responsibilities. It includes information, assignments, task description, people involved and the stage period. By specifying and knowing the tasks based on the priority at every given period of time helps you not to get involve in new task which you cannot fulfill and you cannot spend the time keeping you from over-committing your time. The valid reason can be given to the peers group looking you to get involved to new project, task and research. Readily producing the reasons for not getting involved in the said activity will be looked as a positive quality of your being a professional which will get you admiration. Based on the deadline, improvement, commitment, time involvement etc you can prioritize all your tasks. Much priority should be given to the tasks which are important and fruitful and lead to development (e.g. seminar paper, conference research presentation, research projects etc) and more time should be given in the task list rather than to non-important.
Try to avoid administrative function rather than delegate to your administrative assistant. Assign as many administrative tasks as possible to your assistant like printing, ordering materials for the department and research, sending files, searching the items on internet
etc. Keep the entire documents which you want to go through, save it and take few times for reading it per week. Administrative staff should be oriented about the activity and requirement of the task to be done any time during the appointment. The admin staff should take care of the post received except personal in your table and send it across with your signature for the action by preparing letter and other activity consulting you with a telephonic discussion for the arrangement. Spend time on important and urgent issues. Your time schedule of the week should fix schedule for project meetings involving several people, but on an on-demand schedule. The suppleness to selectively focus on different topics over a few weeks, while still making balanced progress on bigger projects.
Updating yourself
Accessing the internet, reading newspaper, journals, business issues, research papers and other secondary sources should be regularly done for updating yourself with the latest and getting aware for the information. Reading your E-mail is the way where you will get new information and also the contact point where other will ask you for your time. It also acts as a destroyer of your time management. Unless you keep a firm hands over your time calendar. Here is some advice for getting informed and email management:
Assign some time for reading. With the morning tea time or while taking your breakfast you can read newspaper for the getting updated about business, economy, politics, international news, new upcoming etc. Reading journal and other can be taken when you are traveling in the taxi, train or other vehicle to your office.
Assign specific time for reading e-mail. Two times a day is more than enough. It is recommended to look once every morning and second when day ends.
Try to read the electronic research papers and other material during allotted time and recommendable to be in print form.
Keep blockage to all unnecessary notification, popup, other links, noise, advertisement, music etc. which will distract you concentration.
Delete or transfer the appropriate the message to the appropriate folder to read later. Many of us found that the empty inbox is a huge stress reliever. This way you will never keep the read message in inbox.
Install a good spam and low-priority message filter, to reduce the filtering time needed for you to process your inbox.
Transformed into a task and transferred to the task list and/or the calendar
Being "A TEACHER"
