How School Leaders Can Help Teachers Free Up Time for Planning and Breaks

It’s a 21st-century refrain heard ‘round the world: “Why couldn’t this be an email?”

Teachers know it well. So do school leaders, who are acutely aware that their staffers would prefer almost anything other than a 4 p.m. meeting on a Thursday.

Of course, there are highly necessary meetings—a thriving school depends on ongoing communication and collaboration. Otherwise, it’s nearly impossible for newer educators to get acquainted with their jobs, for veteran educators to stay involved and continue growing, and for school leaders to wrap their heads around wider conversations and concerns.

The tricky part is finding a balance. In addition to classes and staff and professional learning community (PLC) meetings, teachers need planning time. How to squeeze all that into busy days? And what happens when teachers need a sick day or have to attend to personal matters? Are there systems and supports in place so they can take a beat?

School leaders are uniquely positioned to help with time management issues. I recently spoke with three leaders who’ve thought carefully about how to free up time for educators: Erika Garcia-Niles, principal at Green Trails Elementary School in Missouri, who has previously written about giving teachers more time and penned a book about keeping them happy; Sonya Rinehart, an award-winning principal at John A. Holmes High School in North Carolina; and Paul Gebel, an award-winning principal at Denver Middle School in Iowa. They relayed some of their favorite tips and pieces of advice.

Find Creative Ways to Fill In and Provide Mini-Breaks

All three principals brought up the importance of remembering what it’s like to be a teacher. “If I’m not in there trying to understand what these teachers are going through, I’m failing at my job,” Garcia-Niles said.

You can’t fully empathize with educators, or understand their schedules, unless you put yourself in their shoes, Gebel said. One way to do that is to teach regularly; Gebel, Rinehart, and Garcia-Niles step in to cover for staff as needed. Gebel is especially mindful of freeing up extra planning time for his staff prior to big events, such as parent-teacher conferences.

Rinehart and her administrative team keep an eye out for teachers who need a breather or are dealing with scheduling conflicts around their personal lives. “I have a lot of staff that have young children at our elementary and middle schools, and I want them to go see their assemblies, their plays, their awards, their performances, their athletic events—they only have that opportunity one time,” Rinehart said. She fills in for those teachers so they don’t have to request a full-day substitute. She also fills in around lunchtime and sometimes pays for teachers to grab a bite away from school.

“Other professionals get to go to lunch or run to the drugstore during their lunch break,” Rinehart said. “I try to find ways to treat teachers as professionals just like in the private sector and outside of education.”

Garcia-Niles instituted a program at her school called “Teacher Takeover,” where she puts out a sign-up list that spans two weeks at a time. Each teacher can grab a 30-minute time slot; when it’s their assigned day and time, either Garcia-Niles or an assistant principal covers for the teacher. Garcia-Niles likes to use her teaching time for social and emotional learning—talking to kids about why they need to treat the lunchroom with care, for instance.

Garcia-Niles evened out her staff’s opportunities for planning time, too. She noted that her third graders have orchestra practice, which is a built-in one-hour break for third-grade teachers, so she added extra library time each week for students in kindergarten through second grade. Separately, she covers younger students’ recesses once a week.

“We’re just trying to be creative with the schedule so that things are as even as they can be in regards to plan time,” Garcia-Niles said. “That is something that teachers feel deeply.”

Make Sure Sick Days Are a Viable Option

Teachers can be disinclined to take sick days, but attempting to push through ailments or personal life issues has its own consequences and can make it more difficult to maintain an appropriately paced schedule.

Some of Rinehart’s staff have elderly families who occasionally need assistance during school days. “Staffers have come to me and said, ‘I hate to miss these days.’ I’m like, ‘Please go do what you need to do; school will be here when you get back, and we will make things work,’” she said.

Rinehart feels strongly that school leaders should get to know their teachers outside of school. She gives her whole staff her personal cell phone number, and she regularly texts teachers to see if they’re doing OK. She believes this level of communication helps teachers feel more comfortable about sending up a flare when they need time off.

Garcia-Niles has adopted a similar philosophy: “I would rather you take a day in October than not return in August” is how she frames sick days to teachers. To alleviate some of the logistics around getting a substitute up to speed, Garcia-Niles created a schoolwide template for “sub binders.” (Click here for an editable copy of the template.) The template is easy for teachers to quickly fill in and includes essential contact information and tips. It’s a primer and easy-to-update lesson plan in one.

Streamline Staff and PLC Meetings

At the beginning of the year, Garcia-Niles creates a document that’s jokingly (but seriously!) called “It Should Have Been an Email.” It links to many of the subjects that come up in traditional back-to-school meetings, like grade-level schedules, discipline plans, lunch and recess procedures, and the student handbook. Garcia-Niles has found that this is a more effective way of communicating vital information than standing in front of staff and verbally delivering updates. It saves her staff time and enables them to focus on collaborative transition meetings: introducing themselves to counselors, special education teachers, or the school nurse.

Garcia-Niles is willing to cancel staff meetings if teachers send along thoughtful feedback instead. She’ll sometimes explain to staff what she’s looking for, and that she needs a certain amount of responses by a certain day. “If I can accomplish the end result without meeting, which is really getting the feedback, I’m OK with not meeting,” she said.

Garcia-Niles also decided to combine monthly committee meetings and professional development meetings, rather than have those on two different days. “We do a bite-sized professional development for 10 minutes, and then they go and they work into their action teams,” she said.

Rinehart said that when she was a teacher, she was guilty of complaining about whether a meeting could have been an email. She’s reaffirmed to her staff that when she schedules a faculty meeting, they really need to be there. In exchange, she does everything in her power to keep meetings short, sweet, and “exceptionally pertinent,” she said. She doesn’t ask teachers to gather after 4 p.m., and she sets aside Mondays as the designated meeting day at the beginning of the school year. If she feels that a meeting isn’t necessary, she doesn’t hesitate to cancel it.

Gebel also said he “will only schedule staff meetings if they’re necessary.” Prior to meetings, Gebel creates an agenda, shares it with staffers, and encourages them to contact him if they’d like to add something to it.

Canceling a staff meeting is one thing. PLCs are vital enough that Gebel’s district supports teachers’ participation in a different way: early dismissal every Wednesday to allow for an hour and a half of PLC meeting time. “This approach has served our district very well,” Gebel said, citing schoolwide academic growth.

Like Gebel, Rinehart is a “firm believer in PLCs,” she said, and dedicates 45 minutes of planning time toward them every Wednesday. She sometimes saves updates that would normally happen in a faculty meeting for PLCs, an easy way to convey important information that doesn’t add more interruptions to the calendar.

So that teachers get the most out of the PLCs—and don’t view them as coming at the expense of individual planning time—Rinehart mixes in small group work, cross-curricular work, and instructional rounds. She said her administrative staff makes sure that everything is “purposeful and differentiated for teachers’ needs—and we always ask for their feedback,” she said.

Responses from school leaders have been edited for length and clarity.