Reply to comment

If you want to get things done, you will occasionally need to use some dynamite. But before using dynamite, one must understand the difference between necessary work and important work. Necessary work is work that people tell you to do. In teaching, the necessary work is the following:

Turning in grades
Contacting parents of failing students at the end of each quarter
Responding within 24 hours of getting an email or phone call from a parent
Showing up to meetings
Performing lunch duty
Assigning detentions
Turning in lesson plans
Turning in seating charts

As a student, the necessary work is the following:

Going to school
Going to class
Taking notes
Completing your homework
Turning in your homework
Tucking in your shirt

I have a terrible habit of not being very concerned about “necessary work”. Of course, you occasionally need to do the necessary work (to some extent), but that is not my focus. I miss meetings. I turn in my seating charts late. I don’t always respond within 24 hours of receiving parent emails. Well, how in the world can I be so disruptive and still be employable? Because I focus on important work. And you will soon find out that if you are doing important work that is helping other people, your tardiness to meetings stops being such a significant factor of your performance review.

What is the important work in teaching?

Making good lesson plans
Constructing cohesive units
Constructing valid and comprehensive assessments
Accurately and consistently grading these assessments
Providing immediate feedback to students
Treating your students like human beings
Listening to the input of the best teachers in the building
Communicating with your principal about what you see in the school
Taking initiative to fix problems before they become a crisis

What is the important work as a student?

Showing up ready to work
Using your brain to think
Ask questions
Study
Listen to the teachers you trust
Ignore the teachers you don’t trust
Become a better person

Here is the problem with focusing on necessary work: it continually adds up and can potentially consume all of your time if you allow it to do so. Focusing on the necessary work will create a situation that is similar to a log jam on a stream. Just as the logs get backed up further and further, so to will the work be backed up further and further. The problem is that no progress is being made at the front end of the stream. If you are not moving things along, every additional task will add up, and you become overwhelmed with all the work that you “need” to do. At this point, you don’t “need” to do more work. What you really NEED is a stick of dynamite to blow things up and to get things going. This stick of dynamite is “neglecting necessary work so that the important work may be done.”

If you have a lack of time, something will not get completed. You can either complete the necessary work or the important work. Choose the important work (92% of the time, at least). Sure, there will be some consequences. Somebody might give you a “talking to”. A parent might get mad. Oh well. That is the result of the dynamite. In the end, you can sleep softly knowing you did work that made a difference instead of work that keeps other people from harassing you.

Get out a stick of dynamite, throw it on the log jam in your work, and deal with the consequences. In a few weeks, things will be running much smoother.