Busy

I have to admit,as I entered this year with a newly created position, I was worried about staying busy.  Would I sit in my office alone all day?  Would people come to me for help?  Would they want me to come to their classrooms and co-teach with them?  The future was not very certain.

In short, no, yes and they are starting to ask.

I have a pretty constant stream of people coming in my office asking for help.  Their queries range from how to speed up their grading using our LMS to how to create canned responses in GMail.  I have some regular customers that come by every day and some that come once a week.  My job title says I work with the secondary school, but I get elementary staff dropping in from time to time as well and that helps keep things interesting.

This week our Technology and Media committee began meeting with the task of reworking our technology philosophy for the school.   We had a great start to the process as we highlighted what we liked about our existing statement and reviewed technology visions from schools around the world.  There were some pretty fantastic ones out there and I’m greatly appreciative of my PLN for sharing them with me as I sent out the call for help.

I’ve made my way to every department meeting in the middle school so far and now I’ve got my eye on the high school.  They don’t have as regular a meeting schedule as the middle school, but I think I’ve got a plan.  I’m hoping to catch up with them after our October break.

I’m about to head out for an afternoon class of graphing in a high school science class.  I’ve worked with one section already and it was a lot of fun.  I don’t understand everything they’re talking about, but I’m still able to help them figure out how to graph the information they’re collecting.  At the same time, I’m learning a little science.  Best of both worlds there.

I’m collecting some data as I go along and figured I’d share.  As I look this over, I think I’d estimate that about a quarter of my time is spent providing direct services to our community.  I didn’t collect a full month’s data in August and October just started.  This does not count planning time, researching and responding to emails.  I don’t know if there’s an industry standard here or not.  Of course, I’d like these numbers to go up and I’m curious to hear your thoughts or if you’ve collected any similar data on your own time.

The charts give an idea of how the time is being spent over all.  I’ve worked the most with middle school staff, which does not surprise me as I’m housed in their building and ManageBac continues to be a major part of my days.