Assafir 24 /Ayoub Fekhar
Without doubt, time management is one of the most crucial issues in almost every domain of work. And the field of teaching is no exception. For many teachers, time management is so important to be aware of and to handle. But is this really an easy task to accomplish if we take into account the constraints of working conditions?
To begin with, most teachers find it hard to be good time managers and this is due to many factors. For novice teachers, time management is a challenge because working under the pressure of the syllabus and the paper work of the administration is quite a difficult job. The main worry they have is the coverage of the syllabus as proposed by the administration staff. In doing so, they have to rush and move things up at the level of the teaching points to make it on time. Another issue is not being organized as it’s their first time to work in a professional environment. In this case, it’s hard therefore to be concerned about the learnability of the students when things are done quickly for the sake of finishing what is required.
The trouble with time management is that even teachers who have been for years in the in-service training may complain about it. They almost are in the same boat. Their major concern is to meet up with the time of the marks’ delivery to the administration in that any delay shows incompetence in terms of time management. Added to this, the long holidays in certain countries can be a huge problem. Therefore, to draw a schedule to which you can stick can be far beyond realization. Thus what happens is that teachers are disorganized and no longer have the notion of time in mind while practicing the job of teaching.
However though, it’s not fair to leave things as they are and be contented to mismanagement of time. One way to be a good time manager is to prepare the lesson plans ahead to always account for an extra time to benefit from by the end. Next of importance, the allotted time to each section in the lesson plans should be rational. Sometimes, the time of certain activities tend to be too long. Another crucial thing to do is to be aware of time-wasters inside the classroom. There should be no problems at the level of the class management because this may only squander time in any way. Eventually, the best way to manage time is to be time-oriented, whatever you do should be counted according to time. It’s like an obsession but it really works as far as time management is concerned.
