The Start of a New School Year (Part I)
Good preparation leads to quality work
Although some teachers, school pedagogical department and headteachers already begin preparing in July, before going on annual leave, especially when it comes to planning more complex projects, e.g. Erasmus+ partnerships or introducing new, innovative teaching strategies, in Croatian schools preparation for the new school year begins in August.
In the last two weeks of August, new curricula are prepared, ideas for new project partnerships are developed, the delivery of dissemination activities is re-planned, quality teams identify the needs that require focus and work out an action plan aimed at improving the quality of work, final cleaning and preparation of classrooms and offices takes place, along with clearing out the paperwork, which is no small task (!), i.e. working documentation is revised, and on 31 August, when the current school year officially ends, locked cabinets and drawers full of marked tests are cleared out. That’s just a brief glimpse of what August preparations look like, in which the remaining pile of tasks is not mentioned. That’s for another article.
September is considered the hardest month in teaching circles, because the new school year kicks off and there’s an incredible volume of urgent deadlines and obligations that need to be met ad hoc, since all of them are equally important alongside actually delivering lessons, of course. Mistakes happen, but the “small,” administrative ones that are fixable, and real attention is paid to clear, accurate execution, because this is delicate work in which a large number of decisions and conclusions are made within a small window of time, e.g. within a single morning, depending on the pace of work and any sudden problems that arise.
At the start of October, once the school curriculum is adopted, a moment of relief follows in the staff rooms. The new school year has truly begun.
But soon after, an expected dip follows.
Due to an intensely long period of exposure – more than usual – to the stress of deadlines, obligations and fulfilling a large workload within short timeframes, all while trying not to disrupt the classroom atmosphere, the most essential outcome – namely teachers’ – working motivation, as the school year continues, is on a downward trajectory.
The biggest cause of the drop in efficiency and quality of work is a lack of motivation. What efficiency means in the context of teachers’ work, and what determines the quality of teachers’ work, is a complex issue that this text cannot fully address, as it requires much more space for analysis and conclusions. This is an extremely important topic that we need to address methodically, and one that involves all stakeholders in the education system.
There are various factors that cause a lack of motivation, among them workforce burnout.
I began this text with summer “high-altitude” preparations. Joking aside, that’s actually where the key to the solution lies. Motivation is built up and sustained through a thoroughly prepared plan made in advance. The dip is expected, normal and unavoidable. It should be anticipated, and we shouldn’t ignore the fact that it exists. So we need a solution that will take us back to August and September, when our working motivation and energy were at a high level. One such solution is a detailed plan of activities and goals that the teacher wants to achieve.
The first cardinal mistake that often happens is when we fail to stick to our own plan, i.e. to the execution of the curricula planned in August, and instead get pulled into other people’s plans – mainly because those plans weren’t well thought out to begin with – which then overloads our own capacity, draining our working energy and, in turn, automatically reducing our working motivation. Let’s think carefully about what we want. In which direction do we want to develop? What do we want to achieve in our work with students? How can we contribute to the work of the school/institution we work in? How can we help our colleagues?
The second biggest mistake is when August motivation overwhelms us and we don’t know when to stop planning. We, then, plan an excessive number of activities to carry out within a single school year, when in practice most of them can only realistically be carried out within a single academic (teaching) year, not the full school year. Working efficiency and quality of work cannot be high if we take on too many activities at once. It’s impossible to deliver quality lessons, extracurricular activities, lead one school project and more than one international project, carry out our own activities within those projects, and finally properly disseminate their results and impact.
Motivation drops very low, and that’s when sloppy execution and superficiality creep in – something that should never be allowed in a school setting. Let’s apply the same way of thinking when defining learning outcomes for a single lesson. We shouldn’t overdo it with the number of outcomes, because realistically, one or two outcomes can be achieved with quality, visibly and measurably in a single lesson – depending, of course, on the goals we want to achieve through that lesson plan.
The third mistake we don’t think about much is planning collaboration with colleagues whose sense of work responsibility and quality doesn’t match our own. Caught up and entangled in the inevitable problems of poorly established collaboration-where clear rules of working conduct are missing and should have been defined before the collaboration was even planned-we become demotivated and mentally drained, not only for continuing that collaboration but also for the primary teaching process we still have to carry out with quality.
The school year may seem short, but it isn’t. It’s marathon-tough, and that pace has to be endured.
There are two key plans: one relating to regular teaching, and one relating to extracurricular activities, project implementation, and contribution to one’s teaching community.
The “journey” through the points of those plans, quite literally from point A – B – C, keeps working motivation at the level needed to carry out all tasks with quality.
Since reflection is usually how we arrive at possible solutions, here are a few basic questions worth thinking about before the new school year begins:
- How good are your work plans and strategy?
- How thoroughly do you think about teamwork and collaboration?
- How often does your working motivation drop?
- What affects your level of motivation?
- What are your priorities for the coming school year?
If you’d like a multi-day professional development course on this topic, join us for the “Teachers’ Lasting Motivation & Personal Growth” course for teachers, school pedagogical department and headteachers: https://linaedu.eu/erasmus-course-goal-setting-for-motivation/.
Written by:
Ivana Bokavšek, teacher expert, Lina Edu lead educator