Why am I repeating myself..? Why am I repeating myself..? Why am I repeating myself..? Why am I repeating myself..?

I've said it on many occasions but, as teacher, we have more tasks to do than we have time to do them. I would doubt that anyone would dispute this notion. I think anything that will save us some time in the future is worth investing in in the short term.

As a post 16 teacher I teach the same things to the different groups so I end up saying the same thing several times over. There might be some modification in the way that I do things from group to group but often the basic instructions on how to do a task will stay the same. This is especially true with BTEC subsidiary groups when setting them up to do assignment work, it is important that each group gets exactly the same instruction which fits within the BTEC rules so I'm limited on what I'm allowed to say.

I can end up saying the same thing six times in one week and once I realized this I also acknowledged that it is utter madness. You'll set up the assignment to the class and then little Wasim, who is late because he had a dentist appointment will come in and I'll start up and say it all again!

Quite simply put, I don't have time to do anything more than once and that is why I took the step of recording myself giving instructions which I need to give out more than once. I know a lot of people fight shy of voice recording because it is very embarrassing (I don't disagree!) and those who do try it end up spending hours doing take after take to get it exactly right (I've done this too!) Perfection is not necessary, as far as I'm concerned as long as you're not interrupted and you don't swear on the recording then it is more than good enough. You wouldn't practice in front of the mirror if you were going to say something to a group 'live' so why practice when you're going to record yourself saying it?

So you have two options, if you have time, record yourself before hand and then just play it back to the group or alternatively you can record it whilst you say it to the first class and then play it back to class two and three, the late kid, the kid who wasn't paying attention and the kid who forgot what she was supposed to be doing. Then you can do something else whilst they are listening.

The only thing you've now got to do is work out what to do with all that extra time you've bought yourself.