Early Failure…

I preface this post offering that it is decidedly written in a vein of stram-of-conscoiusness.

Six weeks into the new year and my biggest failure is easily and readily identifiable. I get hopelessly behind on the paperwork and administrivia. Seemingly, since I began working in the district, there are billions of forms and papers that must filled out and turned into different people. Normally, I am pretty good with scheduling and organizing, but this year it is a no-go.

Every day I check my mailbox with fear and trembling. It started with textbook forms. The assistant principal gets those. Next came the inventory and fixed assets. There is more. Teachers were required to complete interest inventories for the children and submit them. Data sheets have to be submitted to the instructional coach.

Because the district is in trouble academically, there are extra forms that always need to be submitted so that the administration covers its hindquarters. These forms show up in various forms and guises and always need to be submitted to different people on different days by certain times. It seems simple enough, right? The commonsense solution would be to make a chart or spreadsheet or find some innocuous Google application to take care it. Alas, we get to the core of the problem. Time management.

I cannot make heads or tails of anything on most days. My grade-level chair calls me up and asks if have a sheet that was due last Tuesday. Problem is four days have passed since that Tuesday. And if I didn’t submit the sheet to the grade-level chair on Tuesday, chances are I haven’t done it yet. I rush home to complete or fill out some sheet only to remember I left it at work in the other folder or that the tools requisite to complete the data I needed to get from another teacher.

I get better. I have a box of manila folders ready to be labelled and categorized. I use different colors and brightly-colored permanent markers to label it all. By filing, I realize the loads and stacks (there are stacks) of paper are more manageable and less intense.

Also, I discover that saying to myself when something is do over and over again is a trend worth keeping. It gets the desired results. I am almost at the point where if things are not always on time, they are returned the very next day, and, even better, sometimes a few hours after they are due.

In sum, the best way to prevent time-consuming paperwork is to get it done as soon as it is given. Putting it to the side so that one can focus more on planning and direct instruction is noble but altogether pointless. Eventually, one loses in the end, as a whole day must be set aside to neglect planning and work exclusively on paperwork. This post is the hope and dream of the man who can’t quite get it together desperately hoping to get it together.