Cognitive Load for a Stressed out Teacher
I remember some time ago, when Dan was trying to get us thinking about the Cognitive Workload idea. Now it is one of the Collaborative Projects. Some of use saw a presentation by that project’s team and enjoyed seeing Gus Tulla teaching a lesson with a smartboard full of images and animations cluttering the real information on it. I’m sure we can all see the benefits of considering the cognitive workload theory; we can understand how teachers sometimes make it difficult for ourselves to get the message across to our students, and how this makes it difficult for students to retain the information we want them to retain. But what about us? Is there a teacher centred cognitive load theory? It’s probably the same theory but, what are the implications for us? Who’s cluttering out smartboards?
Teachers are not seating in front a Smartboard listening to someone giving us information we need (not usually, anyway). However, we do have different channels through which communication is given to us, such as emails. I don’t know any member of staff who has said to me they are comfortable with the amount of emails they receive daily. “We need to send less emails and talk to each other more in person, face to face”. This has been a conversation going on for years and it is still valid today. Sure, there are things more easily communicated through email than face to face; Colin cannot just tell us all our timetables during the Monday morning briefing. Even during times when a timetable gets sent to us every other day, email is the best channel of communication for this information. If another key chain gets lost, the most effective way to ask everyone is not looking for every member of staff personally and asking them. However, I have to admit not reading every single email sent to me. I don’t know how much this can hurt my career right now, but honestly, I don’t.
Some emails I receive I think I already know what they are about, so I just archive them. Some, I see the subject and prefer to look for the sender and talk to them instead. Some people might be really effective going through their emails, even if they have an uncomfortable load of emails to go through. Maybe I am just not very effective, but I promise you, if I receive 40 emails in one day and I have to teach 6 periods and have a Department Meeting at the end of the day, I am not going to get through those 40 in two periods. On the other hand, if I actually manage to do so, then that means that I am not planning lessons or marking tests or having a quiet lunch, etc. My email inbox sometimes feels like a smartboard; there is a lot of useful information in it, but it might be cluttered so I don’t access all the important information at the relevant times.
Another experience I have had this year where I felt the “cluttered smartboard effect” is by taking on so many jobs at the same time. This one seems like an obvious one, but whether unconsciously or just by not managing my time efficiently, these small side quests have sneaked up on me all together at the same time. I started this year as the new National Programme Coordinator. I have to look after a senior year programme for less than 40 students (whereas Guinnie has to manage almost 300 students right now). I was also carrying on from last year en extended essay in mathematics, which back then seemed like a very interesting and rare opportunity since there are not a lot of EEs in mathematics historically at Markham. At the end of last year I was offered to lead a collaborative project this year and at the time it seemed like a manageable and very interesting thing to do. During the first bimester I also acted as Head of House before Liam Steele took over because, well, because apparently I can do anything and everything. It’s not like I was not able to foresee an accumulation of work, or that I was not given the chances to drop one or two, but looking back it is easy to say I regret not taking those chances and leaving some side quests for a different time.
Like Carl Honore says in his book (yes, after the talk I read it, it’s pretty cool), when we do everything Fast we end up doing too many things half way through and not too well. I feel this is what happened to me. I felt pressure to do all the things that came my way and ended up taking too up too many things. As predicted by Mr. Honore, I feel my work in all these jobs I am doing is at 50% and I feel frustrated because I know it could be better if I had just said “no” and had taken it a little bit more Slow.
My timetable sometimes feels like a cluttered smartboard too. There are lots of things I really want to do but if I do them all at the same time, then I might not enjoy or do very well at any of them. A cluttered timetable might be my worst enemy. I want time to prepare a lesson without staying up until 9 pm working at home because I also want to spend time going to see a movie on a Tuesday when it’s half price off instead of the Saturday when everyone seems to go to the movies. After all, what’s the point of being a teacher if I can’t use the comfortable working hours like that? I want time to just sit and stare the the wall for five minutes because my P6 double lesson after the first break was so difficult to manage. I want time to write this blog carefully and send it to Dan on time for once. If I keep saying “yes” to every side quest I might end up burning out before my time.
Maybe these experiences are not what cognitive load theory is exactly about, but I guess it goes in the same direction. I want to recognise when I am cluttering too much the “smartboards” in my world and stop and say “no”. I was recently offered to supervise another mathematics extended essay with a little bit of physics in it, just the thing I like. What do you think I said?