WAP Teacher Administrative Tasks

October 31,2019

Using teacher administrative tasks can help to be more organized in the field of education. Alan November says, " Building stronger collaborative ties between educators, students, and their families requires a communication infrastructure that links every teacher and every family to the internet(23)." This helps as you can put the calendar on to a teacher blog of events to inform parents of events that are going on in the classroom. In this blog assignment, I focused more on how to be organized as a teacher with time management.

My philosophy is teachers need to be organized to do their job well and be successful in the field of making a difference in a child's life. If the teacher isn't organized they can feel overwhelmed.
Using an organization app can help to make life easier for a teacher. I decided to learn how to use the Family Shared Calendar app, also called the FamCal app. I looked up ways organization apps could help me. It is very important as an educator to organize time management and schedule. Teachers have the stress of lesson plans, meetings, parent communication, workshops, second jobs and all the life responsibilities outside of the classroom, along with self-care of finding time to exercise. My classroom problem is staying organized as a busy teacher.

 For my personal use, I feel I need to work on time management and organization to not be so overwhelmed with tasks, juggling a second job and graduate school.  The app I tried to use was FamCal.

Here is the visual of the FamCal app in my phone.

Using applications for organizing calendars, to do lists and plugging in times to do certain tasks is good for Administrators and teachers to use to stay organized with their teaching load or personal tasks. The teacher could also use this app to write a separate calendar for curriculum themes. Students could use the calendar apps to balance their homework time and sports activities.  


The apps can help with organizing with coworkers what tasks need to be done in the teaching setting or just being more organized can help a teacher to be less stressed about all they need to juggle in all aspects of life. My boss at the Beverly YMCA Kids club uses the app Sling that keeps track of filling in coverage for staffing. My boss at the Jewish Community Center uses outlook from her email to stay organized. Another teacher friend says she uses her phone calendar and planning book. The school principal she works for used google calendar.  A past childcare boss uses the basic calendar app on her phone. My coworker at the Jewish Community Center told me about the FamCal app as she says it helps to collaborate for her, her husband and her children’s schedules to stay organized. Some of the other apps I tried out are Google Calendar, Remember the Milk and TimeTree. I think the one that I prefer the best is FamCal.

While using the FamCal app, I felt the whole visual calendar was good to put the events that I need to do daily and monthly. This app helps me to have everything on my phone instead of using a paper calendar.

The app can give you an overview of the weekly schedule.

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The daily agenda is good to see the events visually by day and time.

The memos part of the app is good if you need to remember to do a task.

The To- Do List on the FamCal app reminds you to do tasks. For example, my focus is on making lesson plans or grad school work, but if time allows, it is important to add in chores or errands or time to relax.

The shopping list can remind you to buy supplies for your classroom or regular grocery shopping for a teacher's personal needs.

I am going to use the FamCal app to try to organize what I need to do daily, weekly and monthly to not be as overwhelmed with time management. This type of technology can be helpful for a teacher. I tried the Remember the Milk app and thought it was good at first for lists, but then I decided the FamCal app looked easier to use.

The Timetree app I felt needed more than just the calendar and I could not figure out the rest of the ways to use it.

Here is the screen shot of how I can keep track of my YMCA kids club schedule while using the Sling app, but I can also plug in my work schedule for both the YMCA and the Jewish Community Center into the FamCal app.

I may want to explore Microsoft Outlook or the Calm app in the future. We discussed both in class for help with some more organization skills and ways to be calmer as a teacher in the classroom.