Time Management

I believe that one of the most critical characteristics of an Effective Teacher is time management. A successful physical education teacher will properly plan their lessons for age and skill level appropriate activities and content for their students. They will ensure 80% of class time will be ALT-PE and their students will understand that PE is not recess, but an important class where they will learn how to be healthy, as well as being very active to become healthy. As we all know, we are subjected to a very short amount of time with our students, and that is a key element that makes our time management very critical.

Have you ever timed the different parts of your lessons? How long does it take for your students to enter the gymnasium? How long is your introduction? The most important question is how long do your students have to be active in class? Are you preparing your classes for maximum activity time for your students? If your not, then you need to reconsider your preparation and review the objectives for your classes.

Students need to move and learn at the same time. I like to combine my activities with important information that I want my students to learn during class. I only have my students sitting for no longer than a minute or two, and it is usually in between activities to take a little break and catch their breaths. I like to call my teaching strategies: Learning on the Move.

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Time management is also very important outside of teaching your classes. Giving yourself plenty of time to research and plan for your lessons is very significant. This strictly relates to your student learning and maximizing your students potential. Teaching full time and coming back to school here at Springfield has proven to be quite the task, but with good time management it can successfully be done. Planning ahead of time when you need to study and do your work is critical, especially when you want to keep a social life on the weekends. Lastly, we all need time to ourselves. It is very easy to get run down, and exhausted with everything that is going on in our lives, that is why we need to find time for leisure and pleasure so we can keep our sanity in these very busy times of our lives!