Appearing Busy - How to Succeed as a teacher

4. Appearing busy.
Notice I said ‘appearing‘ and not ‘being‘ busy.
As someone who had been featured in major business magazines for ‘effeciency work’ I noticed it was bad form to not appear overwhelmed by work. The teachers that tended to be rewarded and recognized for their efforts were those who stayed until 6 o’clock at night and came in on weekends to get their jobs done. So those who would be promoted were rewarded because they were the most inefficient at their jobs! Once these people moved up, their would spread their inefficient methods!

Schools value time at work over performance at work. I worked with the most ineffecient person who had to stay so late and come in on weekends all the time. For some reason, I was able to get more work done in less time. However, school administrators viewed this guy as one of the hardest working people in the school. It was hilarious to watch him work and to see how he duplicated, triplicated, and quadrupled his workload.

The flip side to this is - He was never asked to join any committees - which typically are notorious time wasting devices worse than meetings.

Solution - do more of your home tasks at work (online banking, shopping) and do your school marking at the school. If you are physically present at the school, you must be dedicated and hard working.

This one is of particular importance to teachers who are looking to be promoted to administration!