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An argument for mono-tasking as a teacher
A person who doesn’t work in education might think that teaching is easy, at least some of the time. You read to the kids maybe, you go over how to do math, you work on spelling or writing. It can’t be that hard. Yeah, you have to deal with the kid’s behavior, and yea, there is tests to grade, but it’s not as hard as “X” task that someone else has to do.
Educators are “knowledge workers” (a phrase used by Cal Newport), plain and simple. There is a limited physical capacity to what the rank and file educator has to do. We are not putting out fires, building things, or operating heavy machinery. While Newport might coin the term for people in different sectors of the technology or finance industries, I think knowledge worker fits an educator well.
“There’s an enormous cost to cognitive switching”- Tim Ferriss
Being knowledge workers requires a different set of skills- one of those skills is mono-tasking in a field which screams multi-tasking. Answer the emails, call the parents, manage small groups, send in the attendance, plan the field trip, inter-visit with your colleagues, manage the behavior, update the documents for students with IEPs, make sure you are taking data, and of course, have lunch.
