Time Management and Negotiation and Collaborative Practice

I feel I can completely sympathise with others about time management. I must admit it wasn't so much about not managing the activities so much as being overly ambitious about what I could achieve. Really, this is very like my life as a teacher librarian.

The teacher librarian role as Herring stated is multi-faceted and if I tried to do all areas all the time, I'd sink. I have to keep reminding myself to, 'prioritise roles according to the current needs of the students, staff' (Herring, 2007, p. 31). Cooper and Bray also refer to the importance of being able to prioritise. They talk about the reality that 'there will be some tasks that just don't get cone, others that are done only minimally . . . [and that ] efforts remain on things that most directly involve instruction' (Cooper & Bray, 2011, p.53). While this is certainly my focus as I collaboratively taught 3 1/2 days out of 4 last year, it is frustrating and demoralising to see some things not being done or taking forever. It is all very well to state that it is important to negotiate - and yes I have done this because teachers now take their own borrowing and I have a 1/2 day stretch of admin time - it is far easier said than done. Money is really one key factor - but so is my desire to improve the learning outcomes of students. A library is really not any good if it looks wonderfully organised and 'pretty', but it is not used by teachers and students. I guess what I am trying to say is . . .
1. 'Don't sweat the small stuff'.
2. Work out what is most important and focus on that - use time efficiently and focus on one thing at a time.
3. If you don't ask, you never get - so don't be afraid to ask.
4. Accept help when it is offered - particularly for making signs, or shelving books etc. This may mean that sometimes things are not done exactly how you would like, but they are done.
5. Make step by step notes, records so that if you have to ask someone else to do something, you know that they will follow the procedures and do it properly - particularly important when cataloguing or doing things with the library system
6. Be kind to yourself and remember work-life balance.

(All great things in theory, but not always easy in practice!)