A Study Report On

Submitted to fulfillment of Master Degree in Education, M.A (Edu.)

Registration No: 240397/207023090473

Submitted By: Neelam Chaudhary Submitted To: Vinayaka Missions University Tamilnadu

PREFACE
To survive in a competitive environment, theoretical knowledge must be supplemented with practical knowledge. Being a literature student, study report an essential part of our course and bridges the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge. Experts predict that over the next ten years the International Education Industry will need 2.2 to 2.4 million teachers. That means there will be 15, 00,000 to 25,00,000 openings for teachers in the elementary and secondary schools. The needs are also great in curricular areas such as special education, mathematics, science, bilingual education, and English as a second language.

Time management is an important factor especially for the pre service teacher. Self consciousness and self awareness about the pre planning and time schedule make a teacher perfect in the respected field. For this purpose it is very importantly, pre service teachers must attend the preparatory briefing sessions to collect paperwork and understand professional experience expectations. In addition, they must read the documentation, much of which will be provided on-line. This inspired us to take up this study on self consciousness of pre teachers in relation of their Time Management competence as an important fact for judgment. The study includes a detailed meaning of consciousness and time management. We have tried to put in best of our efforts to understand the self consciousness and time management of pre service teachers. Errors and mistakes are part of human life and some errors might have crept in the report. Any queries with respect to this report are most welcomed.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We would like to express our deepest gratitude to all those who made this report possible. Firstly, we would like to thank all the other staff members of our department for standing by our side whenever we were in need of their help. Last, but not the least, we would like to thank our parents, friends and all those who have directly or indirectly helped us to accomplish this report, and without whose assistance, guidance and motivation this report would never had been possible.

Neelam Chaudhary

TABLE OF CONTENT
Sr. No. I. II. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Particulars Preface Acknowledgement Index Introduction Self-Consciousness: Some Distinctions Is Self-Consciousness Possible? Epistemic Peculiarities of Self-Consciousness Semantic Peculiarities of Self-Consciousness - 5.1 Immunities to Error through Misidentification -5.2 Essential Indexical and De Se Thoughts Conclusion: A General Theory of Self-Consciousness? Teachers Professional Self-consciousness Time Management Tips for Teachers Behavior Management Strategies Time Management for Teachers Bibliography Page No. 1 2 3 4 6 10 15 19 19 26 30 33 37 45 49 66

1. Introduction
Throughout our waking life, we are conscious of a variety of things. We are often conscious of other people, of cars, trees, beetles, and other objects around us. We are conscious of their features: their colours, their shapes, and the sound they make. We are conscious of events involving them: car accidents, tree blooming, and so forth. Sometimes we are also conscious of ourselves, our features, and the events that take place within us. Thus, we may become conscious, in a certain situation, of the fact that we are nervous or uncomfortable. We may become conscious of a rising anxiety, or of a sudden cheerfulness. Sometimes we are conscious of simpler things: that we are seeing red, or that we are thinking of tomorrows errands. In addition, we sometimes have the sense that we are continuously conscious of ourselves going about our business in the world. Thus William James, who was very influential in the early days of experimental, systematic psychology (in addition to being the brother of novelist Henry James and a gifted writer himself), remarked once that whatever I may be thinking of, I am always at the same time more or less aware of myself, of my personal existence (James 1961: 42). These forms of self-consciousnessconsciousness of ourselves and our personal existence, of our character traits and standing features, and of the thoughts that occur to us and the feelings that we experienceare philosophically fascinating, inasmuch as they are at once quite mysterious and closest to home. Our scientific theories of astrophysical objects that are incredibly distant from us in both space and time, or of the smallest particles that make up the sub-atomic layer of reality, are mature, sophisticated, and impressive. By contrast, we barely have anything worth the name scientific theory for self-consciousness and its various manifestations, in spite of self-consciousness being so much more familiar a phenomenonindeed the most familiar phenomenon of all.

Here, as elsewhere, the immaturity of our scientific understanding of self-consciousness invites philosophical reflection on the topic, and is anyway partly due precisely to deep philosophical puzzles about the nature of self-consciousness. Many philosophers have thought that self-consciousness exhibits certain peculiarities not to be found in consciousness of things other than ourselves, and indeed possibly not to be found anywhere else in nature. Philosophical work on self-consciousness has thus mostly focused on the identification and articulation of these peculiarities. More specifically, it has sought some epistemic and semantic peculiarities of self-consciousness, that is, peculiarities as regards how we know, and more generally how we represent, ourselves and our internal lives. (In philosophical jargon, epistemology is the theory of knowledge and semantics is more or lessthe theory of representation.) This entry will accordingly focus on these peculiarities. After drawing certain fundamental distinctions, and considering the conditions for the very possibility of self-consciousness, we will discuss first the nature of the relevant epistemic peculiarities and then (more extensively) the semantic ones.

2. Self-Consciousness: Some Distinctions

The first important distinction is between self-consciousness as a property of whole individuals and self-consciousness as a property of particular mental states. Thus, when we say My thought that p is self-conscious and I am self-conscious, the property we ascribe is in all likelihood different. My being self-conscious involves my being conscious of my self. But my thoughts being self-conscious does not involve my thoughts being conscious of its self, since (i) it does not have a self, and (ii) thoughts are not the kind of thing that can be conscious of anything. We may call the property that I have creature self-consciousness and the property that my thought has state selfconsciousness. Another distinction is between consciousness of oneself (ones self) and consciousness of a particular event or state that occurs within oneself. Compare I am self-conscious of myself thinking that p to I am self-conscious of my thought that p. The latter involves

awareness of a particular thought of mine, but need not involve awareness of self or selfhood. It is a form of self-consciousness in the sense that it is directed inward, and takes as its object an internal state of mine. But it is not a form of self-consciousness in the stronger sense of involving consciousness of self. I will refer to the stronger variety as strong self-consciousness and the weaker as weak self-consciousness. State selfconsciousness is consciousness of what happens within oneself, whereas creature selfconsciousness is consciousness of oneself proper. (Note, however, that a mental state may be both creature- and state-self-conscious. Thus, if I am conscious of my thought that p as my thought, as a thought of mine, then I am conscious both of my thought and of myself.) Another traditional distinction, which dates back to Kant, is between consciousness of oneself qua object and consciousness of oneself qua subject. Suppose I am conscious of Budapest (or of Budapest and its odors). I am the subject of the thought, its object is Budapest. But suppose now that I am conscious of myself (or of myself and my feelings). Now I am both the subject and the object of the thought. But although the subject and the object of the thought happen to be the same thing, there is still a conceptual distinction to be made between myself in my capacity as object of thought and myself in my capacity as subject of thought. That is to say, even though there is one entity here, there are two separate concepts for this entity, the self-as-subject concept and the self-as-object concept. To mark this difference, William James (1890) introduced a technical distinction between the I and the me. In its technical use, I (and its Mentalese correlate) refers to the self-as-subject, whereas me (and its Mentalese correlate) refers to the self-as-object. By Mentalese correlate, I mean the expression that would mean the same as I and me in something like the so-called language of thought (Fodor 1975) or Mentalese.) Corresponding to these two concepts, or conceptions, of self, there would presumably be two distinct modes of presentation under which a person may be conscious of herself. She may be conscious of herself under the I description or under the me description. Thus, my state of self-consciousness may employ either the I mode of presentation or the me mode of presentation. (We could capture the difference, using James technical terminology, by distinguishing I am self-conscious that I think that p and I am selfconscious that methinks that p.) In the latter case, there is a sort of conceptual distance 7

between the thing that does the thinking and the thing being thought about. Although I am thinking of myself, I am not thinking of myself as the thing that does the thinking. By contrast, in the former case, I am thinking of myself precisely as the thing that is therewith doing the thinking. Through Kants influence on Husserl, philosophers in the phenomenological tradition have long held that something like consciousness of self-as-subject is a distinct, irreducible, and central aspect of our mental life. Philosophers in the analytic tradition have been more suspicious of it (for exceptions to this rule, see for instance Van Gulick 1988 and Strawson 1997). But the distinction between consciousness of self-as-subject and consciousness of self-as-object might be captured using analytic tools, through a distinction between transitive and intransitive self-consciousness (Kriegel 2003, 2004a). Compare I am self-conscious of thinking that p and I am self-consciously thinking that p. In the former, transitive form, self-consciousness is construed as a relation between me and my thinking. In the latter, intransitive form, it is construed as a modification of my thinking. That is, in the latter the self-consciousness term (if you will) does not denote a state of standing in a relation to my thought (or my thinking) that p. Rather, it designates the way I am having my thought (or doing my thinking). In transitive selfconsciousness, the thought and the state of self-consciousness are treated as two numerically distinct mental states. By contrast, in intransitive self-consciousness, there is no numerical distinction between the thought and the state of self-consciousness: the thought is the state of self-consciousness. The adverb self-consciously denotes a way I am having my thought that p. No extra act of self-consciousness takes place after the thought that p occurs. Rather, self-consciously is how the thought that p occurs. I have been speaking of the self-as-subject in terms of the thing that does the thinking, and correspondingly of consciousness of oneself as subject in terms of consciousness of oneself as the thing that does the thinking. But recent work in philosophical psychopathology counsels caution here. Schizophrenics suffering from thought insertion and alien voices delusions report that they are not in control of their thoughts. Indeed, they often envisage a particular individual who, they claim, is doing the thinking for them, or implants thoughts in their mind. Note that although they do not 8

experience themselves as doing the thinking, they do experience the thinking as happening, in some sense, in them. To account for the experiential difference between doing the thinking and merely hosting the thinking, between authorship of ones thoughts and mere ownership of them (respectively), some philosophers have drawn a distinction between consciousness of oneself as agent and consciousness of oneself as subject (Campbell 1999, Graham and Stephens 2000). The distinction between self-as-agent and self-as-subject is orthogonal, however, to the distinction between self-as-object and selfas-subject. To avoid confusion, let us suggest a different terminology, that of self-asauthor versus self-as-owner, and correspondingly, of consciousness of oneself as author of ones thoughts and consciousness of oneself as owner of ones thoughts. To be sure, in the normal go of things, ownership and authorship are inseparable. But the pathological cases show that there is daylight between the two notions. Another important distinction is between propositional self-consciousness and nonpropositional self-consciousness. There is no doubt that there is such a thing as propositional self-consciousness: consciousness that some self-related proposition obtains. Presumably, such self-consciousness has conceptual content. But a strong case can be made that there is a form of self-consciousness that is sub-propositional, as it were, and has non-conceptual content (Bermdez 1998). When a report of selfconsciousness uses a that clause, as we just did, it necessarily denotes propositional self-consciousness. But when it does not, as is the case, for instance, with I am selfconscious of thinking that p, it is left open whether it is propositional or nonpropositional self-consciousness that is denoted. That is, I am self-conscious of thinking that p is compatible with, but does not entail, I am self-conscious that I am thinking that p. In any case, the terminology leaves it opens whether there is a non-propositional or non-conceptual form of self-consciousness. Other distinctions can certainly be drawn. I have restricted myself to those that will play a role in the discussion to follow. They are five:

As I warned at the opening, these distinctions are meant as conceptual ones. This is doubly significant. First, the fact that there is a distinction between two concepts does not entail that there is a difference between the putative properties picked out by these concepts. Second, the existence of a concept does not entail the existence of the property putatively picked out by that concept. In fact, philosophers have questioned the very existence of self-consciousness.

3. (How) Is Self-Consciousness Possible?

Perhaps the best known philosophical threat to the very possibility of self-consciousness hails from Humes remarks in the Treatise of Human Nature (I, IV, VI): For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other I never can catch myself without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception. This passage makes two separate claims, of different degrees of scepticism. The modest claim is:

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(MC) Upon turning into oneself, one cannot catch oneself without a particular mental state. MC rules out the possibility of a mental state whose sole object is the self. But though it disallows catching oneself without a perception, it does not disallow catching oneself with a perception. Hume makes the latter, stronger, immodest claim next, however: (IC) Upon turning into oneself, one cannot catch anything but particular mental states. IC rules out the possibility of any consciousness of ones self. That is, it rules out the possibility of creature self-consciousness, allowing only for state self-consciousness. In assessing Humes claims, particularly the immodest one, we must ask, first, what did Hume expect to catch? And second, what sort of catching did he have in mind? One way to deny the possibility of consciousness of oneself is to reject the existence of a self of which one might be conscious. But the inexistence of a self is not a sufficient condition for the impossibility of self-consciousness: there could still be thoroughly and systematically illusory experience of selfhood that gives rise to a form of (illusory) selfconsciousness. Nor is such rejection a necessary condition for the impossibility of selfconsciousness. Hume himself not only countenanced the self, he offered a theory of it, namely, the bundle theory. What Hume rejected was the existence of a substantial self, a self that is more than just a stream of consciousness and a sum of experiences. What he rejected is the reifying conception of the self according to which the self is an object among others in the world, a substrate that supports the internal goings-on unfolding therein but is distinct from, and somehow stands above, these proceedings. This rejection is shared today by several philosophers (see, for example, Dennett 1991). This suggests an answer to our first question, concerning what Hume had expected to catch upon turning into him. What he expected to catch is a self-substance (if you please). It is unclear; however, why Hume thought that consciousness of oneself, even nonillusory consciousness of oneself, required the existence of a substantial self. Consider

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how self-consciousness might play out within the framework of Humes own bundle theory. Upon turning into herself, a person might become conscious of a particular mental state, say an inexplicable cheerfulness, but become conscious of it as belonging to a larger bundle of mental states, perhaps a bundle that has a certain internal cohesion to it at and across time. In that case, we would be well justified to conceive of this person as conscious of her self. As for the second question, concerning what sort of catching Hume had in mind, it appears that Hume envisioned a quasi-perceptual form of catching. He expected selfconsciousness to involve some sort of direct encounter with the self. There is no question that one can believe (or otherwise think purely intellectually) that one is inexplicably cheerful. One can surely entertain purely intellectually the proposition I am inexplicably cheerful. But Hume wanted more than that. He wanted to be confronted with his self, by turning inward his minds eye, as he would with a chair upon directing his outward gaze in the right direction. In other words, Hume was working with an introspective model of self-consciousness, according to which self-consciousness involves the employment of an inner sense: an internal mechanism whose operation is analogous in essential respects to the operation of the external senses. This inner sense conception was clearly articulated in Locke: The other fountain [of] ideas is the perception of the operations of our own minds within us And though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects; yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense (Essay Concerning Human Understanding II, i, 4). The plausibility of the introspective model is very much in contention. Thus, Rosenthal (1986) claims that for self-consciousness to be genuinely analogous with perceptual consciousness the former would have to exhibit the sort of qualitative character the latter does; but since it does not, it is essentially non-perceptual. On this basis, Rosenthal (2004) proceeds to develop an account of self-consciousness in terms of purely intellectual thoughts about oneself (more specifically, thoughts that are entertained in the presence of their object or referent).

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On the other hand, self-consciousness can sometimes have a quality of immediacy about it (and its way of putting us in contact with its objects) that seems to parallel perceptual consciousness. At the same time, philosophers have sometimes charged that selfconsciousness is in fact too immediate, indeed unmediated, to be thought of as quasiperceptual. Thus, Shoemaker (1996) argues that the quasi-perceptual model falters in construing self-consciousness along the lines of the act-object analysis that befits perceptual consciousness. When one is perceptually conscious of a butterflys meandering, a distinction is always called for between the act of perceptual consciousness and the meandering butterfly it takes as an object. But when one is conscious of ones cheerfulness, a parallel distinction between the act of self-consciousness and ones cheerfulness, supposedly thereby taken as object, is misleading, according to Shoemaker. One way to interpret Shoemakers claim here is that while Humes argument may be effective against transitive self-consciousness, it is not against intransitive selfconsciousness. Recall that transitive self-consciousness requires a duality of mental states, the state of self-consciousness and the state of (for example) cheerfulness. But in intransitive self-consciousness there is no such duality: there is not a distinction between an act of self-consciousness and a separate object taken by it. On this interpretation, Shoemakers claim is that being self-conscious of being cheerful may well be impossible, but it is nonetheless possible to be self-consciously cheerful. We might combine Rosenthals and Shoemakers perspectives and suggest the view that self-consciousness can come in two varieties: intellectual transitive self-consciousness and intransitive selfconsciousness. Both varieties escape the clutches of Humes threat: one can catch oneself (with a particular mental state) if the catching is intellectual rather than quasi-perceptual, or if the catching is somehow fused into the particular mental state thereby caught. What Hume showed is that quasi-perceptual transitive self-consciousness is impossible; but this leaves untouched the possibility of intellectual transitive self-consciousness and of intransitive self-consciousness. In summary, it is quite likely that self-consciousness is indeed possible. But reflecting on the conditions of its possibility puts non-trivial constraints on our conception of selfconsciousness. In this respect, contending with Humes challenge still proves immensely 13

fruitful. If anything, it wakes us from our dogmatic slumber about self-consciousness and brings up the question of the nature of self-consciousness. One question regarding the nature of self-consciousness that arises immediately is what is to count as having self-consciousness. Many contemporary cognitive scientists have operationalized the notion of self-consciousness in terms of experiments on mirror selfrecognition and the so-called mark test. In these experiments, a creatures forehead is marked with a visible stain. When placed in front of a mirror, some creatures try to wipe off the stain, which suggests that they recognize themselves in the mirror, while others do not (see mainly Gallup 1970, 1977). Successes with the mark test are few and far between. Among primates, it is passed with any consistency only by humans, chimpanzees, and orangutans, but not by gorillas or gibbons (Suarez and Gallup 1981); and even humans do not typically pass it before the age of a year and a half (Amsterdam 1972) and chimpanzees not before three years of age nor after sixteen years of age (Povinelli et al. 1993). Outside the group of primates, it is passed only by bottlenose dolphins (Reiss and Marino 2001) and Asian elephants (Plotnik et al. 2006). However, this operational treatment of self-consciousness is problematic at a number of levels. Most importantly, it is not entirely clear what the true relationship between mirror selfrecognition and self-consciousness is. One would need a principled account of the latter in order to clarify that matter. Mirror self-recognition experiments thus cannot take precedence over the search for an independent understanding of self-consciousness. To that end, let us consider the ways in which self-consciousness has been claimed to be different, special, and sometimes privileged, relative to consciousness of things other than oneself. Early modern philosophers, from Descartes on, have often claimed certain epistemic privileges on behalf of self-consciousness. More recently, twentieth century analytic philosophers have attempted to identify certain semantic peculiarities of selfconsciousness. We take those up in turns.

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4. Epistemic Peculiarities of Self-Consciousness

In what follows, we will consider, somewhat hastily, about a dozen epistemic peculiarities sometimes attributed to self-consciousness. Traditionally, the most discussed special feature claimed on behalf of self-consciousness is infallibility. According to the doctrine of infallibility, ones consciousness of oneself is always veridical and accurate. We may say that whenever I am self-conscious of thinking that p, I am indeed thinking that p. It is important to note, however, that to the extent that self-conscious of is a success verb, this claim would be trivially true, whereas the point of the doctrine under consideration is that it is true even if self-conscious of is not a success verb (or also for any non-success uses of the verb). To bypass this technicality, let us insert parenthetically the qualifier seemingly into our formulation of the claim. We may formulate the doctrine of infallibility as follows: (DIF) If I am (seemingly) self-conscious of thinking that p, then I am thinking that p. Thus, whenever I believe something about myself and my mental life, the belief is true: things are in fact the way I believe them to be. The doctrine of infallibility ensures that my beliefs about my mental life are true. A parallel doctrine ensures that such beliefs are (epistemically) justified. We may, without too much injustice to traditional terminology, call this the doctrine of incorrigibility. The traditional notion of incorrigibility is the notion that the subject cannot possibly be corrected by anyone else, which suggests that the subject is in possession of (and makes correct use of) all the relevant evidence. We may thus formulate the doctrine of incorrigibility as follows: (DIC) If I am (seemingly) self-conscious of thinking that p, then I am justifiably (seemingly) self-conscious of thinking that p. Whereas according to DIF, whenever I believe something about my mental life, my belief is true, according to DIC, whenever I believe something about my mental life, my belief is justified. 15

Against the background of the tripartite analysis of knowledge, the conjunction of DIC and DIF would entail a doctrine about self-knowledge in general, namely: (DIK) If I am (seemingly) self-conscious that I am thinking that p, then I know that I am thinking that p. That is, if I am in a state of self-consciousness whose content is I am thinking that p, then my state of self-consciousness will necessarily qualify as knowledge. Note, however, that the thesis is entailed by DIF and DIC only against the background of the tripartite analysisthough it may be independently true. (If the tripartite analysis is incorrect, as it probably is, then the thesis does not follow from the conjunction of DIC and DIF. But it can still be formulated.) The three doctrines we have considered claim strong privileges on behalf of selfconsciousness. But there are stronger ones. Consider the converse of the doctrine of infallibility. DIF ensures that when I am (seemingly) self-conscious of thinking that p, then I am in fact thinking that p. Its converse is a stronger thesis: whenever I think that p, I am self-conscious of doing so. That is, nothing can pass through the mind without the mind taking notice of it. Having a thought entails being self-conscious of having it. Thoughts are, in this sense, self-intimating. We may formulate the doctrine of selfintimation as follows: (DSI) If I am thinking that p, then I am self-conscious of thinking that p. Thus, whenever I think something, I inevitably come to believe (or be aware) that I am. Note that DSI entails DIF, because if I am indeed thinking that p, then my selfconsciousness of thinking that p must be true or veridical. A distinction is sometimes made between weak self-intimation and strong self-intimation (Shoemaker 1996). What we have just considered is the weak variety. The strong variety ensures not only that when I think something, I am aware that I think it, but also that when I do not think something, I am aware that I do not think it. Let us formulate the doctrine of strong self-intimation as follows:

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(DSSI) If I am thinking that p, then I am self-conscious of thinking that p; and if I am not thinking that p, then I am self-conscious of not thinking that p. Strong self-intimation renders the mind in some traditional sense transparent to itself. But the term transparency has had such wide currency in recent philosophy of mind that it would be better not to use it in the present context. Consider now the converse of the doctrine of incorrigibility. It is the thesis that if I think that p, then I am justifiably self-conscious of thinking that p. It also entails DIF, as well as DSI. Again, a strong version can be formulated: If I think that p, then I am justifiably self-conscious of thinking that p; and if I do not think that p, then I am justifiably selfconscious of not thinking that p. Finally, a parallel thesis could be formulated regarding knowledge: If I think that p, then I know that I think that p. The strong version would be: (OSC) If I think that p, then I know that I think that p, and if I do not think that p, then I know that I do not think that p. This last feature is probably the strongest epistemic privilege that could be claimed on behalf of self-consciousness. We may call the associated doctrine the Omniscience of Self-Consciousness. For it is the thesis that one knows everything that happens within ones mind, and everything that does not. Freuds work on the unconscious has all but refuted the above doctrines (see especially Freud 1915). Thus few if any philosophers would defend them today. But many may consider restricted versions of them. The above doctrines are formulated in terms of thoughts, understood as mental states in general. But some theses can be formulated that would restrict the epistemic privileges to a special subset of mental states, such as sensations and feelings, or phenomenally conscious states, or some such. A thus restricted self-intimation thesis might read: if I have a sensation S, then I am self-conscious of having S; or, if I have a phenomenally conscious state S, then I am self-conscious of having S.

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Counter-examples to even such appropriately restricted theses have been offered in the literature. Staying with self-intimation, it has been suggested that there are sensations and conscious states that occur without their subjects awareness. Arguably, I may have a sensationindeed, a phenomenally conscious sensationof the refrigerators hum without becoming self-conscious of it, let alone of myself hearing it. Consider now a restricted version of the infallibility doctrine: If I am (seemingly) selfconscious of having sensation S, then I do have sensation S. An alleged counter-example is the fraternity initiation story. Suppose that, blindfolded, I am told that a particular spot on my neck is about to be cut with a razor (this is part of my fraternity initiation); then an ice cube is placed on that spot. At the very first instant, I am likely to be under the impression that I am having a pain sensation, while in reality I am having a coldness sensation. That is, at that instant, I am (seemingly) self-conscious of having a pain sensation but do not in fact have a pain sensation, or so the argument goes (see Horgan and Kriegel 2007). Another way to restrict the above doctrines is by making their claims weaker. Consider the following variation on self-intimation: If I am thinking that p, then I am selfconscious of thinking. Whereas DSI claims that when I have the thought that p, I am selfconscious not just of having a thought, but of having specifically the thought that p, this variation claims only that I am self-conscious of having a thoughtsome thought. We can apply strictures of this type to any of the above doctrines, and some of the resulting theses may be quite plausible. Thus, consider the following thesis: If I am (seemingly) self-conscious of being in a phenomenally conscious state S, then I am in some phenomenally conscious state. It is difficult to conceive of a situation in which one is aware of oneself as being in some conscious state when in fact one is in no conscious state (and hence is unconscious). In particular, the fraternity initiation tale does not tell against this thesis: although in the story I am not in fact in a pain state, I am nonetheless in some conscious state.

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Such nuanced theses may thus survive modern critiques of the traditional doctrines of epistemic privilege. Their exploration in the literature is, in any case, far from complete. But let us move on to the semantic privileges sometimes imputed on self-consciousness.

5. Semantic Peculiarities of Self-Consciousness

5.1 Immunities to Error through Misidentification
On the two extremes, the first-person pronoun I has been claimed by some to be entirely non-referential (Anscombe 1975) and by others to be the only true form of reference (Chisholm 1976 Ch. 3, and in a more nuanced way, Lewis 1979). Presumably, analogous statements could be made about the concept we use in thought in order to think about ourselves in the first person. For convenience, I will call the relevant concept the Mentalese first-person pronoun, or just the Mentalese I. Plausibly, the special features of linguistic self-reference (the way I refers) derive from, or at least parallel, corresponding features of self-consciousness, and more specifically mental self-reference (the way the Mentalese I refers). In the present context, it is the latter that interest us. Our discussion will focus on two main features. In the next section, we will consider the alleged essential indexicality of self-consciousness (Perry 1979) and irreducibility of de se thoughts (Castaeda 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969). (These terms will be explicated in due course.) The present section considers a semantic peculiarity pointed out by Sydney Shoemaker (1968) under the name immunity to error through misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun and related peculiarities discussed by Anscombe (1975), Evans (1982), and others. When I think about things other than myself, there are two ways in which my thoughts may turn out to be false. Suppose I think that my next-door neighbor is a nice person. I may be wrong about either (i) whether he is a nice person or (ii) who my next-door neighbor is. The first error is one of mispredication, if you will, whereas the second is one of misidentification. Thus, if I mistake my neighbors tendency to smile for kindness, when in fact it serves a cynical ploy to lure me into signing an unjust petition against the superintendent, then I make a mistake of the first kind. By contrast, if I mistake the

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mailman for my next-door neighbor, and think that it is my next-door neighbor who is a nice person, when in fact it is the mailman who is, then I make a mistake of the second kind. In this sense, my thought that my next-door neighbor is a nice person displays a composite structure, involving identification and predication. We may represent this by saying that my thought has the internal structure my next-door neighbor is the person smiling at me every morning & the person smiling at me every morning is a nice person, or more generally my next-door neighbor is the & the is a nice person. This is not to say that when I think that my next-door neighbor is a nice person I am thinking this as a conjunction, or that my thought takes a conjunctive proposition as its object. The above conjunctive representation of my thought is meant just as a device to bring out the fact that my thought has a composite structure. The point is just that my thought has two separable components, an identificational component and a predicational component. Correspondingly, we can envisage three sorts of semantic peculiarity or privilege. (1) There could be a kind of thought K1, such that if a thought T is of that kind, then T can only be false due to misidentification; thoughts of kind K1 are thus immune to error through misidentification. (2) There could be a kind of thought K2, such that if T is of that kind, then T can only be false due to mispredication; thoughts of kind K2 are thus immune to error through mispredication. (3) There could be a kind of thought K3, such that if T is of that kind, then T can be false due to neither mispredication nor misidentification; thoughts of kind K3 are thus immune to error tout court. The above are just definitions of privileges. It remains to be seen whether any of these definitions is actually satisfied. Shoemakers claim is that the first definition is indeed satisfied by a certain subset of thoughts about oneself. Note that the third peculiarity, immunity to error tout court, is basically infallibility. This way of conceiving of immunity to error through misidentification brings out its relation to the more traditional doctrine of infallibility. Unlike the latter, the doctrine of immunity to error through misidentification does not claim blanket immunity. But it does restrict in a principled manner the ways in which the relevant thoughts may turn out to be false. If I

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think that I feel angry, then I can be wrong about whether that is a feeling I really have, but I cannot be wrong about whom it is that is allegedly angry. We said that according to Shoemaker, a certain subset of thoughts about oneself is immune to error through misidentification. What subset? One can think about oneself under any number of descriptions. And some descriptions one may not be aware of as applying to one. Thus, I may think that my mothers nieceless brothers only nephew is brown-eyed, without being aware that I am my mothers nieceless brothers only nephew. In that case, I think about myself, but not as myself. We might say that I have a thought about myself, but not a self-aware thought about myself. Let us call self-aware thoughts about one-self I-thought. According to Shoemaker, some I-thoughts are immune to error through misidentification, namely, those I-thoughts that are directed to ones mind and mental life, as opposed to ones body and corporeal life. (To take an example from Wittgenstein, suppose I see in the mirror a tangle of arms and I mistakenly take the nicest one to be mine. I may think to myself I have a nice arm. In that case, I may not only be wrong about whether my arm is nice, but also about whom it is that has a nice arm. Such an I-thought, being about my body, is not immune to error through misidentification. But my thoughts about my mind are so immune, claims Shoemaker.) More accurately, as we will see later on, Shoemaker holds that absolute, as opposed to circumstantial, immunity to error through misidentification applies only to mental I-thoughts. We should distinguish two versions of the doctrine of immunity. According to the first, the relevant I-thoughts cannot be false through misidentification because the identifications they involve are always and necessarily correct; call this the infallible identification (II) version of the doctrine of immunity. According to the second version, the relevant I-thoughts cannot be false through misidentification because they do not involve identification in the first place; call this the identification less reference (IR) version of the doctrine of immunity. (Brook [2001] speaks of ascription less reference, which may also be a good label for the specific feature under consideration.) Both versions claim a certain distinction on behalf of the relevant I-thoughts, but the distinction is very different. The first version claims the distinction of infallible identification, whereas the second one claims the distinction of dispensable identification. 21

Shoemaker appears to hold the IR version (see, for example, Shoemaker 1968: 558). In some respects this is the more radical version. On the II version, I-thoughts have the same composite structure as other thoughts. When I think that I am amused, the content of my thought has the structure I am the & the is amused. It is just that there is something special about the identificational component in the relevant I-thoughts that makes it impervious to error. Whenever I think that I am the , I am. The IR version is more radical. It claims that the relevant I-thoughts do not have the same composite structure as other thoughtsthat they are structurally different. More specifically, they lack any identificational component. My thought that I am amused hooks onto me in some direct, identification-free way. The distinction between these two versions is important, because the burden of argument is very different in each case. To make the case for II, one would have to argue that the relevant self-identifications are infallible. To make the case for IR, by contrast, one would have to argue that the relevant I-thoughts are identification-free. There is also a corresponding difference in explanatory burden. II must explain how is it that certain acts of identification are impervious to error, whereas IR must explain how is it that some acts of reference can dispense with identification altogether (How do they hook onto the right referent without identifying it?). Shoemakers (1968) argument for IR, in its barest outlines, proceeds as follows. Suppose (for reductio) that every self-reference required self-identification. Then every thought with content I am F would have the internal structure I am the & the is F. That is, ascertaining that one is F would require that one identify oneself as the and then establish that the is F. But this would entail that the same would apply to I am the : it would have to have the internal structure I am the & the is the . That is, in order to ascertain that one is the , one would have to first identify oneself as the and then establish that the is the . And so on ad infinitum. To avert infinite regress, at least some self-reference must be identification-free. To claim that immunity to error through misidentification is a peculiarity of selfconsciousness is to claim that it is a feature peculiar to self-consciousness. One can deny

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this claim in two ways: (i) by arguing that it is not a feature of self-consciousness, and (ii) by arguing that it is not peculiar to self-consciousness (that is, although it is a feature of self-consciousness, it is also a feature of other forms of consciousness). Several philosophers have pursued (i). Perhaps the most widely discussed argument is the following, due to Gareth Evans (1982: 108). On the basis of seeing in a mirror a large number of hands, one of which is touching a piece of cloth, and a certain feeling I have in my hand, as of touching a piece of cloth, I come to think that I am feeling a piece of cloth. But this is false, and false due to misidentification: I am not the one who is feeling the piece of cloth. Therefore, there are states of self-consciousness that are not immune to error through misidentification; so such immunity is not a feature of self-consciousness as such. Arguably, however, this is not a pure case of self-consciousness. The thought in question involves self-consciousness, but it is also partly consciousness of something external, and it is the latter part of it that leads to the error. Consider the difference between the thought I am feeling a piece of cloth and the thought I am having a feeling as of a piece of cloth, or even more perspicuously, I am having a cloth-ish feeling. It is clear that if it turns out to be erroneous that I am having a cloth-ish feeling, it is not because I have misidentified myself in the mirror. Indeed, what I see in the mirror is entirely irrelevant to the truth of my thought that I am having a cloth-ish feeling. More often, philosophers have pursued (ii), arguing that immunity to error through misidentification is not peculiar to self-consciousness. Evans (1982) himself, for instance, argued that thoughts about ones body, and even certain perceptions and perception-based judgments, can be equally immune to error through misidentification, indeed be identification-free. When I think that my legs are crossed, my thought seems to be immune to error through misidentification: it cannot turn out that someones legs are indeed crossed, but not mine. One response would be to claim that thoughts about ones own body are a genuine form of self-consciousness, albeit bodily self-consciousness. But another would be to draw

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finer distinctions between kinds of immunity and attach a specific sort of immunity to self-consciousness. Shoemaker (1968) distinguished between absolute and circumstantial immunity to error through misidentification, claiming that only the relevant I-thoughts exhibit the absolute variety. In the same vein, McGinn (1983) distinguishes between derivative and non-derivative immunity to error through misidentification, and Pryor (1999) between de re misidentification and which-object misidentification, both claiming that only the relevant I-thoughts exhibit the latter. However, Stanley (1998) erects a considerable challenge to all these attempts. The issue of whether some kind of immunity to error through misidentification is a peculiarity of self-consciousness is still very much debated. Let us end this section with a few general points. First, immunity to error through misidentification is at bottom a semantic, not an epistemic, peculiarity. It concerns the special way the Mentalese I hooks onto its referent. Thus, immunity to error through misidentification is not to be confused with immunity to error through unjustified identification, immunity to unjustifiedness through misidentification, or immunity to unjustifiedness through unjustified identificationall of which would be epistemic peculiarities. Second, immunity to error through misidentification is a semantic peculiarity of strong self-consciousness, not weak self-consciousness, since it involves essentially consciousness of oneself, not just consciousness of a particular thought of one. So, if I am (seemingly) self-conscious of thinking that p, it may be that I am not thinking that p, but only because it is not thinking that p that I am doingnot because it is not I who is doing the thinking. Third, Shoemakers discovery of immunity preceded the Kripkean revolution in philosophy of language and more generally the theory of reference. A question therefore arises concerning the relation between his claim that self-reference is identification-free and Kripkes claim that many kinds of reference are direct or rigid. Direct reference which is commonly thought to characterize proper names, natural kind terms, and indexicalsis reference that is sense-free, if you will: it does not employ a sense, or

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mode of presentation, in hooking onto the referent. What is the relation, then, between sense-free reference and identification-free reference? A natural thought is that some (perhaps all) senses are identifications, and so identification-freedom is simply one special case of sense-freedom. If so, Shoemakers discovery may be just a foreshadowing of the Kripkean revolution: it is the discovery of the possibility of sense-free reference, but with an overly restrictive assessment of its scope (where Kripke claimed that all sorts of representational devices are sense-free, Shoemaker thought that only I is). But there is also another view of the matter. Kripkes directly referential terms do not employ senses, but they do employ reference-fixers. When I think that Tom is generous, there is something that fixes the reference of my Mentalese concept for Tomfor example, the fact that Tom is the salient person called Tom. This reference-fixing fact is not necessarily something I am aware of, which is why it does not qualify as a sense. But it is nonetheless operative in the reference-fixing. When thinking that Tom is generous, I am performing an identification of Tom, albeit an implicit identification, one of which I am not explicitly aware. One way to interpret Shoemakers claim is that selfreference does not even employ a reference-fixer. It is not only sense-free, but also reference-fixer-free. It is not only that the relevant I-thoughts hook onto oneself without the subject performing an explicit identification, but they hook onto oneself without the subject performing any identification, explicit or implicit. If so, Shoemakers claim is more radical than Kripkean direct reference: identification-free reference is not just direct, it is entirely unmediated. A similar point can be made with respect to Elizabeth Anscombes claim that, unlike all other expressions, I cannot fail to refer. So I-thoughts are secure from referencefailure (Anscombe 1975: 149). That is, such I-thoughts as I am feeling hungry are, in effect, immune to error through reference-failure. What is the relation between immunity to error through misidentification and immunity to error through reference-failure? One view would be that there is no differencethe two are the same. But this would make Shoemakers ultimate claim that the relevant I-thoughts enjoy identification-freedom the

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same as Anscombes ultimate claim that they enjoy reference-freedom. Shoemaker states explicitly that I does refer, though in some identification-free manner. One way to make sense of this is by appeal, again, to freedom from reference-fixing. Here identification-free reference is construed as reference-fixer-free reference. On this view, the Mentalese I is referential, but it has the peculiarity that its reference is unmediated by any reference-fixing mechanism. A crucial issue that remains unaddressed is how reference-fixer-free reference is possible. How can a representational item find its referent without any mechanism ensuring a connection between them? Any general theory of self-consciousness that embraces Shoemakers IR version of the doctrine of immunity must explain the possibility of reference unfixed. To my knowledge, this challenge remains to be broached in the literature.

5.2 Essential Indexical and De Se Thoughts

In the last section we saw that, when one employs the Mentalese I in thought, ones thought probably acquires certain unusual features. In this section, we will see that in certain thoughts one cannot avoid employing the Mentalese I. This, too, is a semantic peculiarity, albeit of a different order. In a well-known story, John Perry tells of his experience following a trail of sugar in a supermarket and thinking to himself The shopper with the torn bag of sugar is making a mess. Upon realizing that he is the person with the torn bag, he forms a new thought, I am making a mess. This thought is new: its functional role is different from the one of the original thought. Perrys subsequent actions can be explained by ascribing to him this I-thought in a way they cannot by ascribing to him the I-free thought. Perry calls beliefs such as I am making a mess locating beliefs, and argues that such beliefs cannot avoid employing Mentalese indexicals. There is no way to think the same thought without employing the Mentalese I. Such a thought thus contains an essential indexical, or more accurately, essentially contains an indexical reference. In this sense, these thoughts are irreducible to any other, non-indexical kind of thought.

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It should be emphasized that the point here is not that such I-thoughts cannot be reported by anyone other than the subject, or that such first-person reports cannot be matched by third-person reports. In direct speech (oratio recta), one might report Perrys I-thought as follows: (1) Perry thinks I am making a mess. The same report could be made more naturally in indirect speech (oratio obliqua). In order to do so, however, one would need to employ what linguists call an indirect reflexive. Some languages apparently contain unique words for the indirect reflexives. English does not. But fortunately, the English indirect reflexives were discerned in the late 1960s by Hector-Neri Castaeda (curiously perhaps, not himself a native speaker). Castaeda showed that (1) is equivalent to: (2) Perry thinks that he himself is making a mess. At least this is so for paradigmatic uses of he himself. (There are also uses of he that function in this way, but these are more rare. And there are probablysomewhat unusual uses of he himself that do not function this way. Castaeda introduced the term he* as a term that behaves as an indirect reflexive in all its uses.) Castaeda called reports of this sort de se (that is, of oneself) and claimed that de se reports cannot be paraphrased into any de dicto or de re reports, and are thus semantically unique and irreducible. Correlatively, the mental states reported in de se reports, to which we may refer as de se thoughts, are irreducible to mental states reported in de dicto and de re reports. In a material mode of speech, this means that states of self-consciousness form an irreducible class of mental states. Note, in any case, that Castaedas thesis is a generalization from Perrys thesis about reports of ones own self-conscious states (that is, first-person reports) to all reports of self-conscious states, including reports of others self-conscious states (third-person reports). According to Castaedas thesis, self-reference is irreducible to either de dicto or de re reference to what is in fact oneself. Castaeda argues for this by showing that the indirect reflexives he himself, she herself, and so forth, have special logical features. 27

Thus (2) cannot be paraphrased into any (indirect-speech) report that does not employ he himself. Consider the following de dicto report: (3) Perry thinks that the author of The Essential Indexical is making a mess. The truth conditions of (3) and (2) are different, since the latter does not entail the former: Perry may be unaware that it is he who is the author of The Essential Indexical (that is, that he himself is the author of The Essential Indexical). So (3) and (2) are not equivalent. Presumably, the same goes for any other description the that picks out Perry uniquelyit could always be that Perry is unaware that he himself is the . Consider next a de dicto report with a proper name instead of a definite description: (4) Perry thinks that Perry is making a mess. Again, Perry may be unaware that it is he who is Perry. Therefore, the truth conditions of (2) and (4) are different, and the two are not equivalent. What about the de re versions of (3) and (4)? These can be obtained, in fact, by reading the author of The Essential Indexical and Perry in (3) and (4) as used, in Donnellans (1966) terms, referentially rather than attributively. But the de re versions are more perspicuously put as follows: (5) Perry thinks, of the author of The Essential Indexical, that he is making a mess. (6) Perry thinks, of Perry, that he is making a mess. Bor and Lycan (1980), for instance, claim that (2) is equivalent to (6). But Castaeda argued that it is not. The argument proceeded as follows. The conjunction of (4) and Perry exists entails (6), and likewise, the conjunction of (3) and The author of The Essential Indexical exists entails (5). But neither the conjunction of (4) and Perry exists, nor the conjunction of (3) and The author of The Essential Indexical exists, entails (2). Thus, Perry thinks that Perry is making a mess and Perry exists do not entail Perry thinks that he himself is making a mess. Therefore, (2) has a different logical force from, and is thus not equivalent to, either (6) or (5). There is perhaps only one approach that may plausibly succeed in reducing de se reports to de dicto ones. It is 28

the approach Eddy Zemach (1985) refers to as neo-Cartesian, and according to which the thought I am making a mess is equivalent to: (7) The thinker of this very thought is making a mess. On this approach, (2) is equivalent to: (8) Perry thinks that the thinker of that very thought is making a mess. In terms of the distinction drawn in 1, the idea here is that self-consciousness is essentially indexical and irreducibly de se inasmuch as it is consciousness of self-assubject. On this approach, ones self-conscious thought refers to oneself by referring to itself. In other words, ones self-reference is mediated by the self-reference of ones thought. The emerging view is quite natural. Just as an utterance of the word I refers to whoever betokened that very utterance, so a deployment of the Mentalese I refers to whoever betokened that very deployment, that is, the thinker of that very I-thought. It may be that I is not synonymous with the utterer of this very word, but surely the latter functions as the reference-fixer of the former. Likewise, even if the Mentalese I is not synonymous with a Mentalese the thinker of this very thought, the latter still functions as the reference-fixer of the former. One problem with the neo-Cartesian approach, however, is that it replaces one sort of indexical self-reference with another. It replaces the thinkers self-reference with the selfreference of his or her thought. We are thus left with an unexplained essential and irreducible indexical self-reference. Castaeda actually discussed the neo-Cartesian approach before it was expounded by Zemach, and found a different fault in it. According to Castaeda, what dooms the approach is the fact, which philosophers (especially Hume and Kant) have known all along, that there is no object of experience that one could perceive as the self that is doing the perceiving (Castaeda 1966: 64). Whether or not it reflects Humes or Kants

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thinking on self-consciousness, the idea is that the subject of thought cannot be thought about as such. Castaeda is effectively denying here the possibility of consciousness of oneself-as-subject. When I think about myself and my mental life, what I am thinking of thereby becomes the object of my thought. I cannot think of myself qua the subject of thought, that is, the thing that does the thinking. The self-as-subject is in this way elusive. As Ryle (1949) put it, trying to think of the self-as-subject is like trying to hop on ones own shadow: every time you take a step back in order to observe your self-as-subject, your self-as-subject takes a step back with you, as it were. This objection may apply with more force to what we called in 1 transitive selfconsciousness than to what we called intransitive self-consciousness. Even if I cannot become self-conscious of thinking that the thinker of this very thought is cheerful, it does not follow that I cannot self-consciously think that the thinker of this very thought is cheerful. This is because, as pointed out in 1, self-consciously thinking that p, unlike being self-conscious of thinking that p, does not involve two separate states, such that the second one takes the first one as its object. That is, intransitive self-consciousness does not involve taking a step back, which is required for Ryles regress to get going. We cannot pursue this issue here with any seriousness. It seems clear, however, that if de se thoughts are not irreducible to de dicto thoughts, it would probably be because the Mentalese I can be somehow understood in terms of reference to the subject of the very act of referring. Either way, there is almost certainly some semantic peculiarity to be reckoned with here. The question is merely how best to characterize that peculiarity.

6. Conclusion: A General Theory of Self-Consciousness?

Discussions of the peculiarities of self-consciousness, both epistemic and semantic, mostly focus on whether a given alleged peculiarity in fact obtains or is merely alleged. But as Brook (2001) stresses, these peculiarities must also be explained, or accounted for, in the context of a general theory of self-consciousness. With a handful of exceptions (for example, Bermdez 1998) current work on self-consciousness does not appear to address the need for a general theory thereof. Instead, it rests content with a piecemeal treatment

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of each alleged peculiarity in separation from the rest. Sooner or later, however, this will have to be rectified by a reorientation or reorganization of research in this area. The alleged peculiarities of self-consciousness will then come in handy. For they are useful in providing explananda for any putative theory of self-consciousness, or data against which to test such a theory (this is indeed how Bermdez 1998 proceeds). This is not to say that they must be the only explananda. Such empirical data as are gleaned from mirror self-recognition experiments and other studies of animal metacognition should also be accommodated by a philosophical theory of self-consciousness. My suggestion is that a general theory of self-consciousness could be configured in two steps. The first would be to determine which of the alleged epistemic and semantic peculiarities of self-consciousness in fact obtain. The second would be to devise an account of the metaphysical structure, as well as of the cognitive mechanisms underlying the formation, of states of self-consciousness, such that the relevant account would explain, by predicting or retrodicting (as C. S. Peirce puts it), the obtaining of just those peculiarities. The peculiarities discerned in the second half of the last century are so subtle that we should be open to the idea that there may be further peculiarities which have yet to be discovered. There may also be familiar peculiarities that have not been recognized as such. Thus, some recent authors have drawn a new connection between selfconsciousness and Moores paradox, which presents the challenge of understanding the logical impropriety of beliefs or thoughts of the form p & I do not believe that p (see Moran 2001, Kriegel 2004b, and Fernndez 2006). Thus it may well be that Moores Paradox is at bottom another peculiarity of self-consciousness. All this suggests that, as far as philosophical research on self-consciousness is concerned, the hardest, but in a way the most interesting, challenges are yet to be faced. At present, the philosophical literature on self-consciousness is quite disparate in the respects mentioned above. But it invites unification under a systematic framework for a general

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theory of self-consciousness. The most philosophically rewarding work on selfconsciousness is still ahead of us.

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7. Teachers Professional Self-consciousness

Professional self-consciousness of teachers refers to a series of emotional experience, planning expectation, self-cognition and self-evaluation, which correlate with their profession and form during their career. Teachers' professional self-consciousness is an internal motivation in teachers' professional development. Only making self-cognition and self-evaluation clear could teachers position themselves well and keep their own cognitive activities in a positive, self-monitoring and regulation. Zen Habits gives this list that I thought was so awesome for my own personal life but I think it really relates to how we can be more effective in our teaching if we find more free time for ourselves too. I have taken the list and put a little education spin to most of the items and hope as the school year is going to begin, that you can use some of these suggestions in order to have a more successful year. 1. Take a time out. Sometimes it is so easy to get caught up in our classroom that we forget about real life. We need to make sure we have an outlet for our creativity outside the classroom or we will get burned out. 2. Find your essentials. Find out what is really working in your class. Make a list of 45 positive things and make sure you focus on them each day. 3. Find your time-wasters. Ask yourself if you are wasting too much time giving negative attention to students who dont deserve the attention. Are you spending too much time gossiping or encouraging negative attitudes when you get with other teachers? Do you spend too much time complaining about things you cannot change? 4. Schedule the time. It has really helped me if I make a list of all the things that I have to get done that day. Then once I can visualize the tasks, I am able to prioritize them and then mark them off when they are done. Not only do I get more things done this way but I 33

also feel better about myself. 5. Consolidate. Sometimes you can see things on your list and notice that someone may have already done something like this already. If so, check with them and ask if you could look at what they have done and adapt it to your needs. Why reinvent the wheel? Sometimes I tell other teachers about a topic or idea I want to introduce in my classroom and usually they are willing to offer suggestions, help, or even some of their own work they have done. 6. Cut out meetings. Use email as much as possible. Make a wiki for exchanging ideas. This can be done with colleagues or parents. I contact parents very often so they dont feel a need to have a face to face meeting which is harder for me to schedule. 7. Declutter your schedule. If there are things you are doing that are not essential to what needs to be done, stop doing it. Many times I would make too many unnecessary trips to the library and office instead of consolidating all my errands. This freed up 30 minutes of my time. 8. Re-think your routine. Think about when you do things and why you do it. Is this the best time to do them? I used to check my email at the end of the day and found out that it really overwhelmed me. If I checked it at lunch time and at the end of the day, I usually didnt have so many emails to respond to all at once. 9. Cut back on email. I learned to make folders in my email and then make a rule to send emails to different folders. Then I could concentrate on only the important ones first and when I had time, I could check and respond to the others. This rule also sent junk mail to one folder and I didnt even have to waste time sorting through them. 10. Learn to say no. Learn to say no. Sometimes we want to impress others or feel like we cant say no to our friends. Practice different statements so that you can feel comfortable saying them face to face. Statements that worked for me are: I would love to help but Im overextended right now. Maybe next time. Or I have already

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committed myself to some other projects and I wouldnt be able to give this my best. I dont want to let you down so maybe next time. Or Ive already committed to spending my free time with my family and I keep my promises to them so I wont be able to help you this time. It is really hard to tell your administrator these things but many administrators will respect you more if you stand up for your priorities. 11. Keep your list to 3. I have started to make myself write down three goals each day. These are the most important things I want to accomplish this day. By writing them down, I find it easier to keep them in focus and usually accomplish them if at all possible. I would try to find one for each category: what I want my students to do in school today, what I want to do with my teaching today, and what I want to do for myself today. 12. Do your Biggest Rock first. If at all possible, pick the task of your To do list that you hate the most and get it out of the way. Once you do that, the rest of tasks should be a downhill prospect and be easier to get done. Again, I use my colleagues as a sounding board if necessary so they can support and encourage me if possible. Once I verbalize the task, I feel even more obligated to get it done. 13. Delegate. If at all possible, let your students help you. They love to help the teacher, no matter what age they are. Teens feel trusted and worthy if the teacher asks them for help. 14. Cut out distractions. Many times I have been deep into work when another teacher has stopped to chat and never want to leave. Even though I want to be a good colleague, I know I have to get this work done and then I begin to feel anxious. I have learned to listen for a few minutes (it wont hurt to take a few minutes break and it is worth it to keep a good relationship with a colleague) but then explain that you would love to hear more, but can you do it at another time because you have a lot of work to do. They may feel a little embarrassed but it is better than feeling resentful and not getting any work done. I have also learned to lock my door and put a note on the door that you are working on a serious project, please disturb only if absolutely necessary. I dont use this often so

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when I do, everyone respects it and lets me get my work done. 15. Disconnect. Sometimes you have to physically move yourself away from things that distract you. I have taken my work to a corner of the library where no one expects me to be and I get my work done. I have turned off the overhead lights and moved to a corner of the classroom away from the window on the door so no one can see me. 16. Make use of your mornings. Mornings are the best time to plan. Just like going to the doctors office, he is usually on schedule early in the day but as things get off schedule, by the end of the day, he is very backed up. Try to plan and prioritize early in the day so that when things get backed up, you wont feel so anxious. 17. The Golden Right-after-work Time. Take time after the school day is over to regroup. A good way to do that is to keep a blog and write your reflections in it while things are still fresh in your mind. 18. Your evenings. Spend evenings doing things for yourself and dont let your teaching consume your life. This is a good way to get burned out quickly. There is more to life than teaching and after you retire from teaching (yes, it will happen), you will need something in your life to turn to. 19. Lunch breaks. Do not work consistently through lunch time. I have a friend who never stops for lunch and uses this time to do class stuff. I think if she used her time more wisely, she would have time for lunch. Not only does your body need nutrition, but your brain needs a break too!

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8. Time Management Tips for Teachers

What's the number-one time management problem for most teachers? You guessed it dealing with paperwork. That includes all the reports, tests, attendance forms, graphs, letters, memos, mail, announcements, materials, and requests that consume not only our time but our desk space as well.

Expert Opinion
One efficiency expert estimated that of all the pieces of paper that go into our filing cabinets every year, fully 95 percent of it will never come out againor only come out to go into the trash can! It's obvious that we're paper packrats. We hate to throw away anything, and we hoard paper, save paper, move paper from one place (on our desks) to another and file, catalog, and store paper until the proverbial molehill becomes an actual mountain. Are you buried under mountains of forms? Did you finally discover a 4-week-old missing sandwich under a pile of papers? Do you spend most of your day shuffling, arranging, or filing 81 211 sheets of paper? Welcome to the club! There are ways of gaining control over the Mt. Everest of paperwork you must deal with every day. Try these suggestions:

Use colored file folders to file papers. Select a different color for each subject or for each period of the day. If you haven't looked at a piece of paper in more than a year, throw it away. It's not that important. Business management experts coach you to handle a piece of paper only once. It's tough to follow, particularly for teachers, but try to keep it in mind the next time you stuff your briefcase with papers.

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Use a Rolodex file for phone numbers, addresses, PINs, e-mail addresses, and other frequently used information. A Rolodex file takes up less room than a pile of papers.

Like most teachers, you probably have lots of books. These may be professional books, old textbooks, or resource books. If you haven't looked at a book in 2 years, donate it to your local library or community fund drive.

Designate 1 day every month (for example, the third Tuesday of the month) as filing day. Use it to file all the papers that have accumulated on your desk during the month.

Designate 1 day every 6 months as purging day. Use it to get rid of all the files and papers you haven't used in the last 12 months. Use your computer as a filing system. Use your word processing program to organize frequently used forms, exams, and records. Designate a special file drawer for each subject you teach. Organize it with colored files:
o o o o o o

Red: Lesson plans Green: Tests, quizzes, and exams Blue: Handouts and worksheets Yellow: Transparencies and PowerPoint disks Black: Unit plans Gray: Supplemental resources and websites

Purchase two file baskets from a local office supply store. Label one To and from the School Office; the other To and from Home. Place them on your desk, and keep the papers you typically handle moving in and out of them daily.

Photocopy your class roster and laminate it. Use it for multiple purposes: to record incoming homework, parent permission slips, lunch money, etc. Use a wax crayon to mark each task, and then erase it when the task is complete.

Many efficiency experts suggest that you establish time limits on how long you'll keep various types of paperwork. Here are a few suggestions:
o o

Memos: 1 week Minutes of meetings: 4 weeks

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o o o o o

Letters to parents: 3 months Attendance records: 1 year Professional articles: 2 years Lesson plans: 2 years Grade books: 3 years

Date each piece of paper you receive. When its expiration date arrives, get rid of it. Sort all incoming paperwork into three piles. The A pile gets your attention right away; the B pile gets your attention within the next 48 hours; and the C pile can wait until sometime in the future.

Maximize Your Instructional Time

As a classroom teacher, you want to engage your students in productive learning time. This is time when your students are engaged in meaningful and appropriate work. The more productive learning time you have, the more your students will learn. The challenge, of course, is in creating a classroom that maximizes that time.

Keep Things Flowing

Flow refers to the way in which learning activities move smoothly and briskly. There's no stop-and-start rhythm to the class, but rather one activity leads naturally into another activity. You can maintain that flow through an awareness of the following:

Ignore minor behaviors that have nothing to do with the lesson. For example, a student is twisting a strand of her hair. It's not necessary to stop the lesson and point out that behavior to the student. Move over to the student, put a hand on her back, nod, and keep the lesson going.

Some teachers jump back and forth between activities. They start one activity or lesson, go back and make a comment about a previous lesson or activity, and then return to the new activity. Keep your lessons flowing in a forward direction.

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Often teachers will continue to explain a point or concept until, as students would say, Its been beaten into the ground. The trick is to know when students understand and then stop at that point.

Teach Transitions
Transitions are those times during the day when you move from one activity to the next. Because students work at different paces and different levels, some may be able to make the transitions faster than others. Thus, transition time often leaves openings for misbehavior and disruptions. To avoid this, consider the following:

Let students know when (in 2 minutes, for example) an activity will end: We'll have a whole-class review of triangles in two minutes. Let students know what they can expect in any subsequent or follow-up activity: After lunch, we're going to continue looking at the structure of onion cells. Be sure your lessons have clear beginnings and endings. Review the lesson objectives before the lesson begins and again at the conclusion of the lesson. Verbal cues are also valuable: It's time for science to begin. I hope you're ready for the adventure.

Establish clearly outlined routines for transition times. Provide opportunities for students to practice those routines: When you come in, be sure you complete your `Fabulous Five' chores before you sit down.

Be Clear, Be Close
Students achieve when they know exactly what is expected of them. Incomplete assignments are often the result of incomplete directions. As a result, time is wasted. It's equally important that students know you are available at all times. The amount of learning that takes place in a classroom is often related to the distance you maintain with your students. Time is saved when you are readily available. Here are two considerations for you:

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Always provide clear, precise, and thorough directions to any assignment. If students are asking lots of questions about what they're supposed to do, the directions were not clear and precise.

Closely monitor student progress by circulating throughout the room and maintaining a physical presence with the students. Your desk should just be a place to put papers, not a sanctuary from students.

Get a Handle on Pull-Outs

Pull-outs are those students who must leave the classroom and may include students who have appointments with the guidance counselor, lessons with the reading specialist or music teacher, or instruction for gifted students. With so many comings and goings, it's often difficult to keep track of everyone, much less teach a complete lesson to every student. Here are some suggestions:

Laminate a personal schedule for each pull-out student and tape it to the corner of her or his desk. Teach the student how to exit the classroom with no disruption to the class. Make each student responsible for her or his own schedule. This is not something you have to monitor all the time.

Work closely with the teachers your students are leaving class to see. Try to arrive at a schedule that will cause the least disruption to your classroom. Check with the administration or other teachers about any procedures for students needing to make up missed classroom work. Initiate a study buddy program in your classroom so that each time a student leaves, she or he has a buddy who is responsible for obtaining the necessary information and passing it along. If feasible, provide time in class for this exchange to take place.

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Time Management
Teaching takes time. And in school, as elsewhere, there's never enough of it. Like any executive responsible for the efforts of others, you will find that managing time yours and the students' is one of your biggest challenges. Time management is the thread running through almost all aspects of teaching organizing the day, organizing the classroom, deciding how long and how often to teach various subjects, recording student progress, or keeping time-consuming behavior problems to a minimum. Students only have so much time in your classroom. Effective use of school time begins with efficient classroom organization and management and vice versa. Much of the essentials of classroom life involve time management in some way: paring down paperwork; planning; establishing routines that eliminate wasted time and confusion; using learning centers, independent assignments, and seatwork to give you time to work with small groups; and creating classroom environments that allow students and activities to move smoothly from one activity to the next. Increasing Teaching Time You may have less time to teach than you think. Lunch, recess, breaks, down-time between lessons and activities, moving from one classroom to another, interruptions, and other periods of non-instructional time account for at least 27 percent of an elementary school day. In many classrooms, that figure climbs beyond 40 percent. Incredible as those statistics may sound, they have been confirmed by separate studies at the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development, and the former Institute for Research on Teaching at Michigan State University.

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Sure, lunch, recess, and restroom breaks are important, but too much teaching time can be lost to inefficiency. Add to that the time that slips away when students stare out the window or are otherwise disengaged during instruction, and you get the point. Here are some ways beginners and veterans alike can substantially increase teaching time:

Find out which aspects of school time you can control. In some schools, teachers discover they can change the scheduling of class periods, pull-out programs, extracurricular activities planning time, and outside interruptions. Ask your principal to help you control time-wasters such as unexpected visitors and frequent intercom announcements.

Schedule solid blocks of teaching time for each day. You might hang a "Do Not Disturb" sign outside your door during those times. Also, secure your principal's help in scheduling pull-out programs around those blocks and ask parents not to schedule medical of dental appointments then.

Plan for smooth transitions between lessons and always try to have materials ready for each lesson or activity.

Assign homework to extend practice time. Homework should allow students to practice skills they have already learned.

Consider how and when you schedule restroom breaks for maximum efficiency.

Improve student attendance. Attendance has a big effect on teaching and learning time. Impress upon parents the importance of good attendance and teach an actual lesson on how it hurts to miss school. "At the end of each day, I try to tell kids what we will be doing the next day," notes first-grade teacher Susie Davis. "I emphasize the kinds of activities they look forward to, such as hands-on activities. This seems to encourage attendance."

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Delegating Tasks Good classroom managers know how to delegate. Aides, volunteers, and students can handle many classroom tasks and save you enormous amounts of time. Learn to use these valuable helpers.

If you are one of the lucky ones assigned a full- or part-time aide, draw on that person's special strengths and abilities. Aides can work with small groups or tutor individuals. They can make instructional games and resources, keep bulletin boards current, monitor seatwork and learning centers, read stories to the class, and assist you in testing. They can also help with clerical and housekeeping duties (those the children can't do for themselves). And their assistance with field trips, special programs, and class parties is invaluable. Help your aide become increasingly responsible and involved in the classroom. Volunteers are another valuable asset. Volunteers generally can do anything aides do with your supervision and guidance, of course. Volunteer programs not only give teachers much-deserved help, they can also improve home-school relations. Parents, grandparents, businesspersons, and other volunteers become sympathetic to the problems facing schools, and supportive of better budgets and improved opportunities. Also, they learn to play an active role in educating children. It's a winning proposition for everyone!

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9. Behavior Management Strategies

The beginning of each school year is a time for carefully establishing a balance with your students. It is a time for setting clear and consistent limits or boundaries. It is a time to let students know what types of behavior will be accepted and what types will not. It is also a time to set the foundation for a healthy relationship with each student. It is a time for making a connection with each child and his or her family. If you can walk the fine line of setting limits while weaving the first strands of trust, then you and your students can expect to have a successful school year. And you will be building a foundation for the future success of all of your students.

Setting clear and consistent limits or boundaries is a process that is established over time. Some teachers like to generate a class rules list with their group of students. Others make class rules known without any input from the students. However you generate your list of class rules, it is important to be aware that the list in and of itself is meaningless. Displaying a list of class rules is not enough! The important part is how we, as teachers, deal with the rules and their infractions on an ongoing, daily basis. Just as we are getting to know our students, they are getting to know us. Students will test limits. They want to see if we mean what we say and say what we mean. They want to know what the consequences for violating our rules are. They want to know if we are fair and consistent. They want to know if we will discipline with dignity. How we as teachers respond to violations of our rules is very important. If we ignore infractions, we are telling the class that a particular rule is not very meaningful. This will make the students wonder if all the rules are genuine. If we overreact to infractions, we are telling students that the only way to get our attention is through negative behavior. It is imperative to be clear with your students. It is also important that you are honest with yourself. What behaviors will you absolutely not tolerate? When we have meaningful class rules that we fairly and consistently enforce, we are building an emotionally, academically, and socially safe learning environment.

A classroom that is free from teasing, stimulating, and supportive is the setting in which students can reach their maximum potential. It becomes an environment where students 45

feel it is safe to take educational risks without worrying that others will laugh at their efforts. It is a safe place where the focus is on learning - not looking over their shoulder in fear of physical or emotional harms. It is a place where learning is fun. In many classrooms, the group dynamics are such that it is not socially acceptable to show interest in academics. There are also many students who have failed so often that they no longer buy into the educational process. In these situations, the responsibility falls on the classroom teacher to reignite the natural curiosity to learn within all his or her students. This is where the social aspect of the group process is so important and valuable. If they are acting like a classroom community, they will be supportive and helpful to one another. This support will allow them to show interest in academics and learning. It will also help to break down barriers formed by years of failing. It will give students a fresh, new start in their educational development.

There are many ways to build a classroom community. Students can work together as learning partners. They can also work together on a common goal. For example, when all students hand in homework for a designated number of days, a reward will be given to the group. Or when the group gets a certain number of unsolicited compliments from staff for good behavior, the class will get a reward. This encourages the class to work together as a cohesive unit. It also builds a community spirit so that when learning difficulties become apparent within the group, the class is more supportive to each individual. They are used to working together and are therefore more accepting of one another. It makes the classroom environment safe for educational risks.

If an important goal is for our students to treat each other with respect, then the responsibility for modeling respectful communication is on the teacher. Words are very powerful. Be careful how you use them. Be sure that your words focus on the behavior not on the student. There is a very big difference between saying, "You are so lazy!" and, "You haven't done your homework." Teacher remarks should be about behaviors. Students should know you value them even when you have to address areas that need

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improvement. Disciplining with dignity is essential for the emotional well being of each child. It is important to remember that some of our students will test us to see if we can maintain our respectful attitude even after they push our buttons. Never personalize students' remarks or behavior. It is about them and their past school experience. It is not personal. However it does allow us to show them that things can be different in our classrooms. We can break old patterns of behavior. We can treat them and all students with respect even when it is tough. By doing so, we are modeling to the group how to interact in a mature and healing way during difficult times. Always remember that the child who acts like they need approval the least is the one who needs it the most.

While it is very important to set firm and consistent limits at the beginning of the school year, it is also important to shape the desired behavior of the class. Catch them being good. Focus on the positive while redirecting the negative. Reinforce the good behaviors. Class discussions should highlight the good behavior rather that the bad. Some teachers punish students by giving lunch detention for behavioral infractions. Why not reward good behavior instead by inviting those who are on the right track to eat lunch in the classroom with you? This communicates that the good behavior is more valuable to you. Students don't have to act out to get your attention. It also gives you a chance to get to know your students better. Celebrate good behavior in your classroom. This will communicate clearly to your students that good behavior is valued. If we say that good behavior is our goal, yet harp on bad behavior, we are giving the students a mixed message.

We can make curriculum choices that help create a classroom community. Grouping and teaming activities create a bond between students in all subject areas. Bibliotherapy is a wonderful technique that allows students to explore life experiences through fictional characters. There are several excellent books that incorporate the theme of community. Swimmy, by Leo Lioni, shows students why working together as a team is so important. The Goodness Gorillas by Lisa McCourt shows the power that can be generated when a

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group of kids work together towards a common goal Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan portrays the uneasiness, vulnerability, and anxiety experienced by children as they get to know a new and significant adult in their lives. Selecting literature that parallels the building of the classroom community offers children a chance to use fiction to explore the concept in a non-threatening way through story book characters. By studying how fictional characters feel and deal with similar life experiences, students can examine their own personal experience and add to their repertoire of behavioral responses. Making connections with families is also a priority at the beginning of the school year. Families have valuable information about our students. They are our students' first teachers. They know what has worked in the past and what needs to be addressed. They know our students better than we do and we need their input to develop the most successful learning program for our students. When the school and the home are working together, anything is possible. Reach out to the families and let them know they are important. Let your first communication to them be a positive one. Don't wait to call them about a negative experience. Instead, share a funny story. Compliment a well done homework assignment. Let them know that their children are important and that you recognize their efforts.

If we focus on positive behaviors and build a trusting, respectful relationship with our students, we are ensuring a successful school year for our students and for ourselves. We are allowing them an opportunity to grow and made academic accomplishments in a safe environment. We are showing them that schools are a place where anything and everything is possible. This knowledge might make a huge and significant difference in the lives of your students. It might give them hope and perseverance when times are tough in the future. It could encourage your students to take educational risks and to become enthusiastic about learning.

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10. Time Management for Teachers

Whether you are a new or veteran teacher, there is a lot of work to get done every day. Organization and time management will enable you to get more done in a day. Some teachers leave as soon as they are allowed to and never have to do any work at home, while other teachers are being kicked out by the janitors at 8 pm every night and still taking home piles of work. Learn how to organize your work and prioritize your time in order to get more done in a day.

Organize Your Work

The more organized you are, the more you will be able to accomplish in a shorter amount of time. Desk Organizers You can opt to organize papers on your desk, or keep them in a file drawer. Some options for organization include: Papers to be graded, Papers to be copied, Things to do, Things to File, etc. Whatever you find to be common categories for your personal style of working will be useful in organizing your work. Use file folders to keep yourself organized. Use one folder for each lesson plan or unit, and this will enable you to easily know what you need to copy, and what you need to create for the lesson, and easily file the lesson or unit when you are finished teaching it. Use file folders for students' work. If you are saving copies of student work for your own records, keep a file for each student. Inside the file folder, you can write notes about the student, keep notes from parent teacher conferences, and keep copies of other important documents.

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Use file folders for grading. Put each subject in a file folder. For example, math papers to be graded can be kept together in one folder, and language arts papers can be kept in a separate folder to be graded. As you grade each paper, place the papers in either a to be filed folder, or a to be passed back out folder.

Prioritize Your Time

How you spend your time will determine how much you get done in a day. Planning time When possible, spend your planning time at your desk, planning. If you must, take a few minutes to make copies and prepare for the remainder of the day, but try to consider your time before the students arrive in the morning as your opportunity for preparation. Organize your time to include both lesson planning and grading as necessary. Lesson planning should be done on a computer when possible, saving plans in subject specific folders and with topic specific titles to enable easy access and reduced planning time for each subsequent year. Utilize parent volunteers when available for lesson preparation including cutting, organizing, and copying materials. Lunch time Whenever there is not enough time in the day to accomplish everything that must be done, consider using your lunch time to plan or grade papers. Instead of taking the break at school, take the break when you get home to your family. Time at home So, you have worked hard all day, and still brought home a pile of work to be done? Prioritize your time. Figure out what needs to be done for the very next day, and limit the work you bring home to that.

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Organizing your work and prioritizing your time will help you catch up, keep up and even get ahead in your busy life as a teacher.

Effective Time Management for Teachers

- How to manage your workload
Effective time management for teachers is crucial for success and well being in and out of school. Most people would admit their use of time could be better. Zone 1. Structured time in the classroom, scheduled meetings etc. Zone 2. Unstructured work time - all work related tasks Zone 3. Your personal life - everything but work The boundaries between 1 to 2 and 1 to 3 are clear -- bells and buzzers set those for you. The big question is, how do you manage the transition from Zone 2 to Zone 3? When and where does work stop and personal life begin? When you plan, prepare, assess students work, make the classroom displays, organize your paperwork or any of the other jobs do, youre in Zone 2. Zone 2 is all about quantity and quality. It raises two questions 1. How much do you do? 2. How well do you do it?

How much to do in Zone 2

Some Zone 2 activity is clearly defined. Once youve started it, sooner or later you have to finish it. You cant give grades to most of a class -- you have to complete them all, usually to some sort of deadline. Other activities may not be deadline driven, but they still matter to you. Here are two suggestions for Zone 2 success:

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1. Make some time to plan your day -- preferably the day before, but certainly no later than first thing in the morning. Take 10 minutes daily to estimate what Zone 2 time youll get. Doing this really helps you take control -- you decide how you use your time rather than other people.

2. Break it down into chunks of time -- work on tasks that you have to, or want to, do. This means that you move on with large projects and tick off small tasks that you could, for example, batch together in a 30 minute slot. Lets say your classes finish at 3.30pm. You plan to leave school at 5.00pm. (If you create a good reason to do so, it helps). Your Zone 2 time may consist of this 90 minute slot, plus an hour or two during the day. So, you have approximately three hours in Zone 2 (and that time will include interruptions, emergencies and have tos -- plan for two; anything else is a bonus). Aim to work on a role or goal related task for a length of time -- say, 30 minutes. Unless its urgent, move on to another task. If you want to take the task beyond the time slot you allocated it, take a minute to consider the effects of not doing the next task on your list. Can it wait? If so, fine, carry on. One 'solution' to better time management for teachers is to take work home in the evening. This is understandable because it takes some of the pressure off the day, and you spend less time managing interruptions (depending on your circumstances). Its worth remembering two things though

Evenings and weekends have their own Zone 2 times. There is usually less time available than it seems when we say Ill do it tonight. How much time do you have left in an evening after you've done all you need to do?

Planning to work at home means Zone 2 times in school is less valued, so there are more reasons to procrastinate during the day. It's so easy to think 'I've got all evening -- I'll do it later'. You have limited Zone 2 time each day, and it's probably less than you think.

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Know when to be unperfect

When we try to do too much and/or too well, teacher stress is often the result. Of course, quality is important, even essential at times. But developing the ability to know when good enough is good enough is a vital part of effective time management for teachers. Apply the 80-20 rule at work. When I started my teaching career, I came home every day feeling completely wiped out. In part, that was to be expected -- making the transition from student to teacher is a huge challenge. In my desire to prove myself, I was giving everything to everyone. Thankfully, in my first year of teaching, an older and wiser colleague gave me one of the best pieces of advice I ever received:

Choose carefully what you give 100% to. He was right. Recognize what needs 100% and what doesnt. We all get that wrong from time to time. Sometimes we try too hard, even to the point of experiencing teacher burnout as a result. At other times we dont try hard enough. Practice this, and stay aware of it to gradually improve the accuracy of your estimates. So, successful time management for teachers depends on four criteria. You simply have to improve your ability to:

Decide what to do. Start it. Finish it. Accept it.

Get better at the this process and youll save yourself hundreds, even thousands of hours -- hours you can use to do more of what matters to you. If youve made it this far through this article on Time Management for Teachers (well done, by the way!), youll almost certainly improve your time management. Why?

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Because getting to this point suggests youre interested in filling less and using more of your time. That fact alone will put you on the path to a better understanding of the importance of time management and consequently a better application of it than the vast majority of your colleagues achieve. Time Management for Teachers will always be a challenge. Use this page to help you spend less time doing what you have to and more time doing what you want to do.

How Do YOU Manage Your Time?

Do you have time to teach and still have a life outside the classroom? Take a moment to answer any or all of the following questions...

1. What do you think are the biggest challenges facing teachers in terms of time management? 2. What do you feel are common causes of distraction for you as a teacher? 3. Can teachers actually do their job without experiencing excessive stress? If not, why not? If so, how? 4. If you were mentoring a Newly Qualified Teacher, what 3 time management tips would you give them? 5. Could you outline your routine or system that you use to help you manage your time?

Whether you want to write a couple of lines or an in-depth article, start by entering the title of your contribution below and get yourself noticed on the Net!

What does a pre-service teacher need to do?

Being Prepared

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Very importantly, pre service teachers must attend the preparatory briefing sessions to collect paperwork and understand professional experience expectations. In addition, they must read the documentation, much of which will be provided on-line. First year undergraduate pre-service teachers will access this briefing through the unit Education Foundations (4782). Graduate Diploma pre-service teachers will be briefed in ELPC G1 (6705). Pre-service teachers must abide by the requirements for all professional experience placements including (will be discussed in more detail at briefings):

Wearing a UC pre-service teacher badge. An application for a National Criminal History Check. The maintenance of a dedicated portfolio and record of participation (hard copy or electronic) as evidence of activity completed and learning achieved.

Step-by-step procedure for completing Professional Community Days You need to:

Understand the guidelines and procedures by attending briefings and reading documentation. Utilize on-line materials as much as possible as the first point to seek information before requesting assistance from the Professional Experience Office. Plan your own schedule and identify some appropriate settings within the guidelines and timelines provided.

Selecting a PCD host Aim for a maximum variety of experiences. Think laterally so that some hosts are not overwhelmed by UC pre-service teachers.

There are some creative ideas on the PCD website. The website will let you know if places are unavailable, check here first. Continually refer to all the relevant documentation to ensure full understanding. In particular, refer to the appropriate conduct for approaching potential hosts. 55

Download an introductory letter and a proposal/participation form that is taken to the potential host in order to seek an offer.

Contacting a PCD host Find out if there is a dedicated person to contact (check the Professional Experience Office PCD website.)

It is not correct to presume that they are able to accommodate your needs Enquire professionally and work with the possibilities. Submit the signed form with negotiated dates etc to the Professional Experience Office for approval at least 10 days prior to intended date of visit. Faxed offers are acceptable.

NB: Approval must be received before undertaking the visit.

Undertake the Professional Community Day/s, completing the required reflection activities and completion statement (completed proposal/participation form). These are returned to the Professional Experience Office for evaluation and recording.

Collect approved reflection submission from the Professional Experience Office once notified. Note that insufficient or unacceptable submissions will be returned for amendment and/or elaboration before being recorded as complete.

Develop a portfolio as evidence of participation in PCDs. As well as being a journal for reflection, this will provide a mechanism of checking against the records kept by the Professional Experience Office.

NB You must keep a record of your participation in the program. A form for this purpose is available on the website that is suitable for including in your portfolio.

Where the PCDs are unit-based, the pre-service teacher does not have to complete any documentation. A pass in the unit will automatically be registered with the Professional Experience Office. Note If a pre-service teacher fails to follow the procedures or observe the expectations provided in this booklet, there is potential for failure. Be informed. Its worth it!

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Please submit reflections as you complete them. Do not leave them to the end of the semester. For ECP1 and SEC2 PCD reflections must be submitted to the Professional Experience Office by the end of the class free week in the semester that these units are completed. This will enable the efficient management of student results.

Success for you: Observing, participating, reflecting... learning! Visiting the place you have chosen can merely be a nice day out. However, while you are meant to enjoy the experience, it is expected that you will learn a great deal too. Watching people and what they do is informative in itself. To make it valuable for your preparation as a teacher, there are some beginning skills of becoming a reflective practitioner that should be practiced. Your learning will be maximised if you think carefully about how you observe, participate and reflect. Observing others is fundamental to the way we learn. Using our senses, we gather information that we can then process into knowledge, skills, perceptions and attitudes. To really get the most out of observing, there is some thinking to do first. Here are some questions to ponder.

Why do we observe? How can we observe effectively? What are the rules about observing?

Why do we observe? Pre-service teachers will spend a lot of time learning from others (and will continue to do so even after they have graduated). Among other things, observing will help you:

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Understand what educators do and why Consider the individual differences that make each learner unique Understand how learners develop their knowledge, their physical skills and their relationships Consider the types of environments that support learning Ascertain the myriad of factors that make up the professional life of educators Compare one learner with another; one teacher with another.

How can we observe effectively? Deciding what to observe is important in order to give you focus. Do not attempt to observe everything at once. Initially, you might like to look at the big picture and get a sense of the whole environment. Then, selecting a smaller focus, seek detail and establish how this fits into the big picture.

Think about what you are learning in other units at University. There may be something that you particularly want to focus upon e.g. how learners learn.

For example, if visiting with the Education Officer at the National Museum, you may firstly want to obtain a full understanding of the range of things offered by the museum, then focus on the types of special activities that are offered to schools and the public. Very specific observation may be participating in a workshop for the public on Australias migrant history. Here you will be able to look at the kind of activities that people do what they learn and perhaps why they are learning it.

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Another example, if visiting a Preschool, you may firstly look at the whole institution; that is there and what they do. You could then really focus on a couple of children and watch them for part of the day to see what they do and how they work with their teacher and with other children. Yet another example, if visiting a teachers professional development conference, the program for the day, the venue and the people will be your first observations. You might then focus on one particular area of interest and follow that for the day, or compare a couple of different areas.

What are the rules about observing and participating? Remember that you have two eyes, two ears and only one mouth. Your observing should demonstrate that ratio. In other words, listen and watch much more than you speak.

Permission: you have already been invited into the setting. There are many opportunities to learn about things that are able to be observed, recorded or discussed. Ensure that you ask first if there is something you would like to observe. The amount to which you can participate will vary. Always ask if you may join in. Dont assume. Confidentiality: you should not record (in writing or otherwise) names etc that would identify people. If you want to write about someone, make up a name. Any information you learn about others must not be shared with anyone outside the setting. Respect the people and the organisation: be aware that you are a visitor in someone elses workplace or learning place. Be respectful about what they do and how they do it. As a novice educator, you are the learner in the context too.

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Photographs and videos: taking photos can be a good way to remember your visit. However there are many laws about privacy that you must respect. Seek permission and check with someone in authority before attempting to take photos. Duty of care: at no time must you be left in a position of authority for others. Reflecting The powerful learning from embarking on professional community visits is realised when time is taken to reflect. Honest and wholehearted reflection is what makes an excellent teacher. By planning, then doing, then reflecting, teachers manage their practice, improve their teaching, better understand their learners, and know more about learning. For the professional community days, the best way to reflect is to ask yourself questions...then take the time to answer them! There are lots of possible questions, but these are the minimum; the core.

What happened? (In detail in order in time and space) Why did it happen? (You may have to ask a series of questions about why? before you are comfortable that you understand. More likely, you will come up with a range of alternative reasons why. Could there be other explanations?)

How do I feel about what happened? (Does this conflict with, or confirm my expectations? Why is this?) What did I learn? (What do I know now that I didnt know before? How has that changed the way I think? How will that affect what I do/say/think in future?)

Using significant incident analysis Studying specific incidents encourages teachers (and preservice teachers) to identify and articulate what is happening and why. It encourages them to look beyond planning and implementing lessons, to thinking more deeply about why they do things. It is a specific strategy of reflective practice.

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For pre-service teachers, analysing specific incidents in a structured way gives them the opportunity to look at the teaching of others and eventually at their own teaching. You are asked to specifically report on significant incidents for PCDs, but you are encouraged to develop the strategy for all professional experience placements and as part of your tool box as you continue to grow as a teacher. Significant incident analysis is to interpret the importance of an event. How important is it? Why? Significant incidents dont happen in isolation. Not everyone will have the same perception of what is significant. It is in the eye of the observer. You need to identify something of significance from your observations. The tasks and reports required of you for PCDs (on later pages) identify the type of incident that you are seeking eg communication between teacher and learner. Taking the above example, the incident could be something very obvious such as a teacher losing his/her temper with a student who has turned up late yet again for class. It could be much more subtle such as a brief moment of a smile between teacher and student for a job well done. Begin by being aware of the kind of incident you are looking for but dont let it dominate your observations for the day. If you are making regular notes throughout the day, as is suggested in the following section on reporting, you may find that you come back to the notes later to identify an incident for deeper thought. Ask the questions that were suggested above for reflection and perhaps add a few of your own. Most importantly, keep asking 'why'. Share this incident with someone and talk about what happened and what you have learned before constructing your response for the report. This way, you are likely to consider further perspectives. Very importantly, dont make up your mind immediately, or react straight away. Take the time to be open-minded. Quality learning often comes for us as teachers when we are confronted with something that challenges the beliefs and feelings that we hold. After all,

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as teachers, your perception will be one of many from colleagues and students that you may need to consider every day. Recording observations You must submit reflections for each visit. If there are lots of things going on, or you are really involved, it can be difficult to record your observations. Develop a strategy so that you can reflect and summarise after the visit is over. Take a note book. Head the pages with the key questions that you need to answer. Make sure that you write something on these pages at regular intervals throughout the day. When the day is more than half over, review your notes to make sure you have covered everything. Write in dot points or notes. Just get down the information and perhaps some feelings. You can elaborate later. Take a voice recorder. Talk to yourself during the day by answering the questions you have prepared. Dont wait too long to write up your submission on the visit. When the day is over, think about what you have experienced by looking at your notes, asking yourself the reflection questions and add more thoughts. What your report should look like Use the format provided on the website. You can complete the form by referring to the specific questions given later in this booklet for each category of visit. Hand in neat and professionally presented reflections. Your report will be read to ensure that you have addressed all the necessary areas. Reports that do not demonstrate evidence of thinking or are too brief and shallow will be returned for upgrading. Marking criteria

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The report is successful if it demonstrates:

The required format Neat and professional presentation Thoughtful reflection addressing the requirements of the visit Absence of spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.

Professional Conduct while on Professional Community Days

Dress and personal hygiene As you are visiting the professional community contexts as a preservice teacher, you should carefully consider that you present yourself to the standard exhibited by the members of the organisation hosting your visit. You are expected to be clean, neat and tidy at all times. Wear your name badge to identify your affiliation and carry your student card. Also carry your National Criminal History Check card once it is available. Demeanor Approach the visit positively and with enthusiasm. Ensure that you are always on time, polite and focused on what you should be doing. Please turn off your mobile phone or leave it in the car/at home. The hosts are providing you with an opportunity. We expect you to be the Universities ambassador and to leave your host with a positive impression of yourself and the University. Thorough preparation When approaching organisations to seek an offer, do so with professional courtesy and respect.

Before commencing, think through the process, writing down questions beforehand.

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Make an initial phone call to identify a contact person and arrange the details of a potential visit. Arrange a visit to finalize the proposal/participation form or consider a faxed document if the setting is some distance away. Find out information about the organization before your visit e.g. check the website. Devise some plans for the visit and how you might record your day. Ensure that you thank the organization when your activity is completed by sending a quick email or a brief note of thanks to the organizer. This will assist to build stronger relationships for the University and an enhanced professional reputation for you.

Education is the base for economic growth as well as social transformation for any country. Among all the key indicators of socio-economic development like economy's growth rate, literacy rate, birth rate, death rate and infant mortality rate (IMR), the literacy rate of the country is one of the most vital one as the rise and fall of others largely depend upon country's literacy rate. In India, high literacy rate leads to low birth rate as well as low IMR and it also increases life expectancy rate. So, the importance of education industry in India can be understood. The education system in India is much more improved these days and is one of the leading ones in the world. It is also one of the biggest contributors to the economic growth of the nation. Besides various government initiatives, the role of the private institutions in the development of education industry in India cannot be denied. India's private education market was worth $40 billion in 2008, which is expected to reach $68 billion by the year 2012. However, there are also some glooming statistics as well. Despite such rising investment in education industry, 40% of country's population is still illiterate. Only 15% of the students can go to next level to reach high school.

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11. Bibliography
http://ies.ed.gov http://www.canberra.edu.au/faculties/education http://jenniferwagaman.suite101.com http://jenniferwagaman.suite101.com http://www.writetimepub.com/teacher-resource http://www.scholastic.com/teachers http://successfulteaching.blogspot.com/2008/07/time-management http://www.iep.utm.edu http://www.ijese.com/IJESE_v5n1_Arsal.pdf http://www.time-management-success.com

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