4/11: Reflection - PRT Meeting Focussing on Stress & Time Management

Reflection: PRT Meeting Focussing on Stress & Time Management

4th November 2016

On Monday we had a PRT (Provisional Registered Teachers) meeting, with this weeks focus on Stress & Time Management. Julie lead the discussion, asking questions in which we were all able to share our answers and ideas. Below are some of the notes and key points we spoke about:

When have you found yourself stressed throughout the year? What makes you stressed?

·      Reports

·      Co-curricular

·      Marking

What are strategies that you can use to help with this stress?

·      Reports

o   Aiming to complete so many per day

o   Make comments throughout the term before comments are due(a couple of sentences) e.g. about classwork or behaviour

o   Mentor reports – students creating parts of their own comment and then being able to quote students or filling in an 8 question list (Keith Rowley)

·      Co-curricular

o   Putting a cap on how many activities you commit to

·      Marking

o   Certain time limit per paper

o   Giving yourself a break, especially if needed rather than pushing through

·      Mental Awareness

o   Knowing it’s going to end

o   Having something to look forward too

·      Planning

o   Don’t spend more than 50% of time of the lesson on planning for it

o   “Planning for tomorrow today”

·      Remember to try and not be a perfectionist

·      Trying not to take work home

What helps to relieve stress?

·      Collegiality - having support from staff members

·      Being organized – knowing what you are doing tomorrow or an overview of the week

·      Planning

·      Meeting deadlines

·      Understanding the vocational job of a teacher

·      Interests outside of work - although in some cases it can create more stress

·      Not over committing to co-curricular

To help with wellbeing:

·      Exercise

·      Eating and Hydration

·      Mixing up your routine - changing where you sit and do work or what you eat etc.

·      Sleep

·      Making sure you still have down time - whether it is by yourself or with family and friends

I believe this is an important topic to cover  as we all need to find our own effective ways of managing our time and relieving stress, as what may work for one person may not work for another. It was helpful to actually take the time to sit down and reflect and talk about your own strategies. Through sharing I hope that others may have taken away some new strategies to try just like I have. Although, I feel like there were both pros and cons about having this conversation so late in the year. 

Pros: 

• I was able to reflect back on my year with a clear head now that most of my stress has been relieved
• I gained some new ideas to help me with my time management and to help relieve stress later on

Cons:

• As it is near the end of the year, most of the Senior classes have gone and with them a lot of stress. I feel like this may have been more useful earlier on in the year where I may have been able to try other strategies that we discussed