We’ve been orienting our new and returning colleagues over the last ten days. The mood is optimistic and energetic, as it always is at this time of year, and we’ve been thinking about tackling some issues that just seemed too hard towards the end of last term. It’s going to be a great year ahead! Nothing remarkable there really; we’re all fresher after a break, of course.
But I’ve been wondering how we can maintain not just the positivity, but also the increased capacity that we have now; and not just for staff but for students too. How can we all maintain functioning at our most capable, and be managing to do our best work we are tired?
This is a big issue – if a rather obvious one – because the difference in schools between the start and end of term is vast. And it’s difficult because we also want to excel; to somehow maximise the experiences and learning that we can have in any given term – so we cannot just ever take it easy; we need to squeeze the juice from each minute. For teachers, the pressure is managing 100 students each week, being alive to each individual, responsive to all parents, remaining caring and inspirational, in and out of the classroom. For students it means managing many difficult subjects, each with their own methods, courseworks, pressures as well as College applications, sports, drama, music, dance, and adolescent social life. Small wonder there is weariness, and even burnout as the term goes on.
So what can we do? How do we approach this mid-term, when the break is a long way off and folk are tired? This is not a question unique to schools – all organisations face it, as we increasingly find that working/studying lives are complex and intense – so much so that stress has been called the health epidemic of the 21st century by the World Health Organization.
There’s some truth in the old work smarter not harder mantra – but the trouble is, if we knew how to work smarter, we would surely do it! And even then, this approach seems to me to be a potential band-aid at best; for teachers teaching, and for students learning, there is always more that can be done – so working smarter can simply mean seeking to get more done in a given amount of time, which does not avoid the overload issue (I think that’s what IT has generally done – we are far, far more productive than we ever have been, but we do far, far more with the time – that is to say, we work so much faster, with consequent overload. Additionally, IT has opened up so many new possibilities that we are in fact even more aware of all the things we could be doing, and feel even worse that we are not doing them).
So with all this in mind it was fascinating to read the World Economic Forum article about a NZ businesses that experimented with a four day week for employees, with no change of pay. It turns out that each employee got through just as much work, with an extra day of leisure each week, and was much happier. An unmitigated success, no less. The article notes that it may be a case of Parkinson’s law which states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Or to put that a slightly different way, workers will become more efficient if there is less time to complete a task.
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There seem to be many competing and sometimes contradictory answers here; involving balance, boundaries, storytelling. |
So can we free up extra time in schools, with no loss of productivity (learning)? I am not sure. The idea of getting through more material fits a factory metaphor but the factory metaphors may not be the best one: if we think of education as flowering (which seems right for students, at least some of the time), then we know that sometimes, things have to happen at their own pace. But it is certainly worth looking at simply using less time; could we shorten the deadlines for some assessments with no loss whatsoever? The notion that giving students less time to complete some tasks would relieve pressure is counter-intuitive, but worth considering. Of course, if we did this, we would need to avoid the temptation to simply fill the space created with other things!
1 Response
Thanks Nick -perhaps one of the most crucial issues of our day. Our Mission, in fact. While I admit an individual approach is attractive, an institutional one may be imperative given our Values? If we really Care then it might be difficult to justify standing by and watching while our students and staff take unhealthy choices. If we consider 'opportunities' as the same as other desires – food, alcohol, sex, luxuries, etc – then the current sating of our appetites for as many of them as possible could be considered greedy / self-indulgent /immature as well as self-destructive (your Marriage analogy resonates with this). It also comes at a huge ecological cost as the Energy/Resources needed for these is rarely just mental. I have made this argument for the College some years back and have repeated (Link for UWCSEA readers – https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8-HIidY_74VLUxjbVhzNUtZZGc/view?usp=sharing. (page 2)) :
The situation may seem new but we knew about "Affluenza" as a rising epidemic in the 20th century. The dilemma (and wellbeing) for the individual is the same for the institution , the country and the planet – growth of 'stuff' without end is not possible for a sustainable future…however difficult and unappealing it is to stop. [Ignore the argument that says we have reached 'peak stuff' so we do not have to worry as we turn to experiences to replace materialism; after Relativity we know it's all stuff anyway]. Hence also my previous argument to you that we cannot rely on technology to get us out of the growth dilemma… as you've shown above, it's part of the problem. We've asked the hard questions already I think. What we are lacking is a commitment and courage to finding the possible answers. My hunch is that they really will boil down to being satisfied with less.