Work-Life Balance & Email

What did schools do before email? I started teaching in 2006 and already email was widely used. I was familiar with that, as email had been a common form of communication at university. However, it was not used at all when I myself was a student at school (pre-2002). It is not uncommon for teachers to get 30 to 40 emails day, and when I was a head of year, 60 or 70 emails a day was entirely possible.

I remember when I started at my new school (September 2016), that there was a brief discussion in a meeting... "Remember no emails after 6pm, or at the weekend, SLT need to be leading on that.". I recall thinking, that sounds like a good idea, but not fully appreciating how much of a difference it makes.

Teaching is all consuming; you can work every hour in the day, and still not get everything done. Likewise, your email inbox is rarely completely empty. There is a great temptation to sit down in an evening and try and 'clear a few' - although even this acknowledges that it may be impossible to ever conquer. These might be your working hours, but they are not the same for everyone. Some teachers will get up early and be working from 5am, some will stay late in school, others will up until 2am. I'm not suggesting you should work at any of these times, but some people choose to, especially if they want to spend time with their partner or children. There is a certain flexibility with working hours.

One issue is the fact that many teachers have email set up on their phone. This can be hugely advantageous, especially during the working day. I know if I send something urgent to our SLT, someone will respond near on instantly. I can also clear a number of emails on the train to and from work. However, the problem is if you have notifications set up (I don't on my phone - only on my iPad), you will be constantly distracted. If there are no guidelines on when emails can be sent, this can then become part of your evening, weekend and even holidays.

I set up a few Twitter polls recently:

Many staff have work email on phones. Do you send / receive over weekends? Are responses expected?

— Andy Lewis (@AndyLewis_RE) October 1, 2017

I find it incredibly worrying that 5% of respondents send email over the weekend and expect a response. Also that 56% send, but don't expect a response - but is there a consideration about how those receiving the email feel or react?

Can they really just ignore it? Do they feel they have to 'just quickly reply'? They may do this while they are out for dinner with their partner, sat in the park with their child, or enjoying a hobby with a friend? Regardless of policy, if emails are being sent, some people will feel they need to reply. Having now experienced no emails outside of reasonable working hours for well over a year, I think far more schools should 'ban' email from 6pm to 7am, weekends and school holidays if they are serious about staff well-being.

I followed this up after half term:

How many work emails have you got over half term?

— Andy Lewis (@AndyLewis_RE) 29 October 2017

It is clear that emails slowed down... but didn't stop. Nearly a quarter of teachers were getting 11 or more emails over their week "off". There is obviously complexity behind this data - some emails don't need responding to, some are from students, some might be from mailing lists.

Since tweeting these out, I received a number of DMs from colleagues on Twitter. These are some of the examples of emails sent in schools:

• Information requests for students sent out at 2am in the morning
• Staff meeting agendas sent out at 10pm on a Saturday night
• SLT requests for information send out at 9am on a Sunday morning
• Department data requests sent out during the holidays
• Deadlines of 24 hours on emails sent at 8pm on a Friday

This is on top of all the 'general information' and 'all staff' (when they don't need to be 'all staff'!) emails sent during the evenings and weekends. 

How can anyone justify this?

This has a huge detrimental effect on work life balance. Teachers can never switch off, and even if they don't have their email direct to their phone or iPad - if they know these emails are being sent - and it seems part of their school culture -  they feel they need to check. When and why did we become this kind of profession? Instant replies are wanted for things which really could wait...

This can have a huge affect on the stress and anxiety levels of staff; it can make them feel guilty or inadequate when they spend time with family, friends, or on holiday. It also seems to be a competitive 'who is working the hardest?' culture - a dangerous feature of modern teaching.  

There is another way.

Your working hours may be late at night, or at weekends. That's fine; there is an element of flexible working in teaching in this respect. I also think it is not enough for SLT to just say "well don't check it". Most staff want to do their job well; they want to be efficient.

Delay Delivery

My old school used to have email setup through Outlook; it was very easy to 'Delay Delivery'. I used to frequently do this and set up for 8am arrival in inboxes, as I knew many staff checked their email around this time before going off to briefing or to register their form.

Boomerang

For Gmail, this is the ideal solution. It is a simple  add in for Chrome that allows you to send delayed messages (it does have a limit). This also has another new great function of pausing your email while you work on something important - see below for more on this. There is also now a new Boomerang app for your phone, so you can simply write emails in this to send later - even if you don't use as your main email app. 

Other options

Write it, leave it in your Draft folder, and then send when you get in in the morning (after 7am!).

This is important.

I did some reading around email, well being and work life balance while writing this blog. The first shocking statistic is that can take 20 minutes on average to refocus after being disrupted by an email. If you are marking and hear a 'ping', it may take you a considerable length of time to get back to concentration level you had before. If that email is received outside of school and triggers stress or anxiety, then it's impact may last a lot longer than 20 minutes.

It has been proven to be far more efficient to 'cluster' tasks, and so setting aside 2 or 3 occasions during the day to check and respond to emails is a much better work habit. However, the nature of schools doesn't always work this way - but perhaps the trial of slightly better habits may work? It doesn't help when you are stopped in the corridor and someone says, "I've just sent you an email..." - if you send it by email, it can obviously be replied to later in the day when I am not trying to prepare to teach my next lesson, discipline this student, mark this book, or just make a cup of tea!

Would you write better / politer / more useful responses if you were sat at a PC with time dedicated to emails, rather than rushing between a Year 9 and a Year 11 lesson on your phone? You may also not need to send that 'all staff' email about a lost mug, the whereabouts of a child who missed your lunchtime detention or the jammed photocopier if you wait until later in the day - those issues may have all resolved themselves! 

Another key bit of research is that people, even those with busy working lives, who checked their emails less (regardless of volume of email), were less stressed. Flipping between tasks (teaching and email responding) makes you less efficient at both, and naturally more stressed doing both - this has got to be a concern. Teachers, or other staff, who bombard colleagues with emails during the day are potentially effecting their performance in the classroom.

Finally, an incredible statistic from the NY Times found 6% of workers (not teacher specifically), checked their work email while they, or their partner, was in labour! 

Actions

• Don't email after 6pm, before 7am, at weekends or holidays - it can wait. Even if it is not school policy, you may produce a butterfly effect. If your working hours mean you catch up on emails during this time, use technology to delay it's arrival.
• Try small changes to your email habits - turn off notifications on your device, close your email browser window when marking, deactivate during holidays, 'cluster' your time.
• Consider the implications of your email on the recipient - you don't always know the interruption, stress, guilt or anxiety your 'quick email' may be having.
• Always think before you hit send - Do I need to make it an 'all staff' email? Do I need to send that email at all? What happens if someone forwards this email on? Have I conveyed my tone? Have I used the CC correctly? 
• Would it just be better if I went to see the person face to face instead? 

Further reading:

• https://hbr.org/2014/07/the-cost-of-continuously-checking-email
• https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/opinion/sunday/stop-checking-email-so-often.html
• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563214005810
• https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2012/10/10/ttkitthunks-pkainsworth/
• https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2015/11/19/emailprotocol/

The Internet In Your Pocket

Image courtesy of The Huffington Post

For Y7 to Y11, phones must be switched off and locked in lockers. If they are seen, they are confiscated, if they are heard they are confiscated with an additional detention. Repeated offenders have their items confiscated for longer periods of time. Sixth Form can use their phones for research purposes, within the Sixth Form block. These are our schools' rules and they work reasonably well.

However, there is always very little noise at 3.30pm each day as students are leaving. The reason being that at this point, students can reclaim their phones, switch them on and check their social media networks. Students frequently bump into one another, or walls, as they are singularly focused on their phones. One student got clipped by a bus a few years ago as she had music on, checking her phone.

Twitter became polarized (for a change!) this weekend as a report was launched highlighting some research which indicated: "phone-free schools performed better in GCSE exams, especially those in bottom 60% of KS2 tests." (although only marginally when you read the actual stats behind headlines, see <here>) as well as David Didau's visit to Michaela School: "If a teacher sees or hears a phone at Michaela it’s confiscated until the following term. It doesn’t matter whether the phone accidentally slipped out of a pocket, and it doesn’t matter whether the parent is going into hospital and really really needs to ring their child. There are no excuses." (see <here>)

Advocates of BYOD and the use of mobile phones in the classroom chipped in with their dismay of this seemingly neo-traditional way of thinking. This is debate best left to others for the time being...

However it directly linked to the CP (Citizenship and PHSE) lesson I am planning for Y10 this week inspired by the idea of internet addiction. I think this video is a good start point about technology, with a nod to history and philosophy, but wit a clear demonstration of the potential dangers with some interesting stats:

Inner Drive recently published "6 Reasons to Put Your Phone Away" (see <here>) with some links to research about the dangers of using phones. The putting up of these posters on the form notice boards for my Y10 students will hopefully get them thinking...

I always think that maybe I need a Digital Sabbath as much as some of the students... the fact that I think I would struggle to do it is maybe the reason to try. It is easily to get addicted to the internet when it is in your pocket, and when you get non-stop notifications. Twitter, Facebook, emails... do we all need to switch off a little more?

Anyway, here is the lesson...

Poor Old PowerPoint

Image courtesy of Microsoft

Like so many things on Twitter, the use of PowerPoint has become a little polarised of late. Is it the worst tool used in school or is the best? Much of the recent discussion has been about the former. I've heard "Death by PowerPoint" many times, and to some degree absolutely accept it as a problem. Does that mean we ban it though? 

An article by Bent Meier Sørensen from the university of Copenhagen was tweeted LOTS in the last few weeks, Let’s ban PowerPoint in lectures – it makes students more stupid and professors more boring (see <here>) which argued that universities should not be using in lectures at all. Ross McGill aka TeacherToolkit also suggested in order to test resilience we should abandon PowerPoint for a day (see <here>). Yet it is important to state, that I too have written blogs about 'No Tech Day' (see <here> )

PowerPoint began life as a presentation tool for the world of business. Since then it has been adopted by all. Schools, with the adoption of IWBs and projectors have particularly taken to it's easy to use format. Lessons can easily be put together with far less hassle than the previous tools of OHTs/OHPs and even the chalkboard. Why would they not use PowerPoint?

I think personally, the big problem with PowerPoint is that it is often used badly. The five things that I think make a BAD PowerPoint that has no place in the modern classroom:

1. Too Long - A lesson PowerPoint should have 6/7 slides maximum.
2. Too Much Text - If you have a lot of text, use a textbook or print it out. It gets too small and too hard to read.
3. Bad Colours - I am colourblind (green/yellow) but this is only a small part of the issue of garish colours too frequently seen on PPTs. Did you drop some acid before making it?
4. Image / Text / Layout - Think carefully about what needs to go where. Review it. Look at it in Slide view.
5. Unnecessary Animation - PowerPoint has many features, you don't need to use them all.

 However the 5 reasons that I still use PowerPoint very frequently in my lessons:

1. It saves time - It is a lot quicker and easier to find a PowerPoint in my ordered user area that dig out worksheets, OHTs. It saves me writing things on my white board repeatedly (which is in a very poor condition anyway). I can also get it up quickly when I arrive in the room. 
2. It saves on scarce resources - Photocopying is expensive if done regularly and we can always purchase all the resources we want. PowerPoint 
3. It allows me to devise my own tasks based on existing resources - I often don't like the tasks in textbooks, even if the content is good. I used that as my source material and then devise my own tasks which appear on the board.
4. It's quickly and easily adaptable - When I review lessons, it is very easy to change my tasks, information so that my lessons as the best they possibly can be. 
5. It can incorporate audio / visual - A image or a video can really help enrich a lesson and embedding or linking to these in a PowerPoint can help improve a lesson.  

I feel this 'ban PowerPoint' rhetoric is misleading. It can be a really useful tool for lesson planning and delivery. Bad PowerPoint is obviously detrimental to these very same things. Perhaps it is a wider pedagogical question... good teaching will not be boring nor make students more stupid, bad teaching may well do! 

Other presentation software is available: Apple's Keynote, Google's Slides, Prezzi 

They all have the same advantages and disadvantages... although special mention to Prezzi which does sometimes make me feel a little seasick!

No Tech Day? When PCs Go Wrong.

Image courtesy of Phaidon Club

Today the school network went down. This has happened a few times recently as we install various upgrades to software and hardware, but today was a little different. Usually by Lesson 2 latest they are back on. Signs weren't good when the engineer was scratching his head and requesting backup support. 

Normally I like this excitement injected into the usual routine. Staff glance around at one another, who will be able to cope? Older staff remind younger ones, "This is how it used to be". Some scrabble around in their pencil case, "Do I actually own a white board pen?"

You realise that teachers don't have it the worst as the lady who arranges the cover via SIMS goes into panic mode and the other office admin staff begin to wonder exactly how they will cope with a day filled only with sick children and no emails, letters or any of the other endlessly amazing things they manage to produce in ridiculously small time scales.

"Ah-ha! The photcopier is still working! Although with a long queue. Oh, but the sheet I need is on the PC..."

It does mean the days lesson plans need to go slightly 'off-piste', but that can be fun. Sometimes my best lessons come from such 'emergencies'.

Y9, first up. We're about to start a unit on the Gospels. I wanted to refresh their Bible skills... I know I have a great fun animal quiz (of course featuring the Talking Donkey) that my Y7 class have already done. Grab one of their exercise books, grab some prizes... here goes!

The result is a great fun lesson that involves an activity filled, high energy lesson with students getting themselves genuinely excited about refreshing their Bible skills. We have some great discussion about various parts of the Bible. We look up some of the students names that come from the Old Testament. We learn the story of Balaam and the Talking Donkey. We agree to check out the RE blog when we get home and follow the Twitter account. The students leave saying how great it was and I smile. 

Y11. Ah textbooks. The saviour. Glad we didn't bin them all like some schools did years ago. Everything on a tablet? That would have been useless.

It was possibly one of the most tranquil and peaceful lessons in a long time as students discovered what we mean by 'The Church': priests, bishops, deacons ("My mum likes them!" "I think that's Deacon Blue...") and the laity. Brilliantly detailed A3 spider-diagrams produced as I sat in the middle of the room, on a spare students chair, answering questions and discussing the work. The discussion lead to the Synod in Rome, something I was pleasantly surprised about their knowledge about. Ironically on a non-tech day, they had seen my tweets.

Why am I usually at the front or simply patrolling? This works. [Note: I do sit down amoung the students quite a bit, but not enough]

Head of Y10 hat on. Guest speaker? With a PowerPoint. Will he understand? 

Thankfully I came up with a solution as we got a standalone laptop connected to the projector. If you are a pastoral leader, I urge you to get Paul Hannaford in to speak to your students. He gives a hard-hitting, graphic account of his life of drugs and gangs. He tells his audience about the dangers of these and about the decisions young people need to make; he is also the dad to a girl who was in my form last year, their reconciliation bringing a tear to even the hardened eye.. He is based in Romford but travels all over the UK, find him <here>.

The afternoon. Still no PCs. Lots of little jobs to follow up on. I need to see these people, about these issues... time for a walk.

I can see how email has saved us so much time. I get around 40 emails a day with around 60-70% being pastoral-role related. I am forever emailing around with some information about a student, or requesting information. Today I realised that to deal with incidents in person, face to face, takes far longer. However, in each conversation I had today, I found out far more information than I would have done via email, most of it positive about the girls in my year group. Maybe this is how it used to be? Yet sadly, there is physically not time to do it. Something has been lost.

I was then sat in a department meeting and my school email came through to my iPhone. Phew. Maybe.

I then sat waiting in the barber's sending and receiving all my emails, ready for tomorrow when we go back to normal. 

I love technology and I fully embrace it. I couldn't live without my devices. If it can be done by tech, I often do. Yet there is a slightly mischievous, playful part of me that loves it when it all goes wrong. I had some amazing, lovely lessons today... students learnt just as much too. I had fun; perhaps the adrenalin/fear?  

Dear computer network,
Next time you are going to fail, please give me at least 1 hours notice? I can then get myself psyched and ready. Plus print off that worksheet.
Thanks

Although one of Assistant Heads (who incidentally doesn't teach) joked to me today, "You've heard of no pens day, this is it, no computers day!". I think he was on to something...

Maybe the ICT department will veto.