So sorry that it's been so long since I posted, but starting this new position has been quite the experience for me. As I stated in my last post I was not doing a great job at scheduling my time throughout the day and had been totally overbooking myself. It took me a while to figure out how to manage my time better.
However, I think I am getting the hang of it and I am able to schedule in coaching, modeling, and observing...FINALLY! :)
The secret I finally discovered was to narrow down the focus of who to work with for a month and then send those specific teachers a link to a Google Form where they could fill out information for me. This streamlined all of the emails and info I was getting about schedules and requested support so that I can see everyone all at once in order to better manage my time.
Here's what the form that I sent to teachers looks like for the month of December:
I love that I can customize what is on the form and can require certain questions to be completed before submitting to me. I can change the format of the response (i.e. multiple choice, checkboxes, text, etc.) which helps me to personalize the form even more.
The best part is what the responses look like on my end. All of the responses are automatically put into a Google Sheet, which is essentially the Google version of Excel. In fact, you can download the Sheet into Excel (or other options) which makes it super convenient for when I don't have internet access.
**names have been removed from the response sheet to protect privacy**
I can then take the information from the form and schedule my time in my calendars. This is another area that I just revamped in order to manage my time better. I carry and use daily the Time & To Do Planner from the wonderful Ms. Houser, which I absolutely love!
Where I was wasting time was with the calendar I need to share and post with the staff. I was spending at least 30 extra minutes retyping my schedule into a word document to print and post. It dawned on me that I already had a Google account created and just tweaked it to make it suit my needs now that I know what exactly those expectations are and my 30 minutes spent on this went down to approximately 10 minutes!! Woo hoo!!
The Coach Log that I have due every other Tuesday is another area where I needed to learn how to manage my time better. This was taking me at least an hour to complete every other week because it needs to be completed in hours spent on each component daily. By using Google Calendar I created a calendar for each of the components I need to complete and can quickly look to see how many hours I spent on each task by looking at the colors assigned to that.
I love finding ways to make my life easier and not waste time. What have you found works for you? Do you often find yourself tweaking things to make your life easier?
