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Indeed, the work of teachers requires many kinds of time, and is highly differentiated. Teachers construct it and use it in ways that match the work in which they are involved. These different aspects of teacher time mesh with each other and, in turn, mesh with the concepts of time held by administrators, the community, and the larger society. Teachers are forever working to manage an already overwhelming variety of tasks. Each task has its own time requirements, and each meshes with the others with varying degrees of ease. New tasks of school management tend to disrupt the delicate ecology of teacher time.
An anecdote taken from the NCREST data highlights how these two problems of time - the need for time for specific tasks, and the ways these types of time are meshed - can bedevil even the most successful of restructuring ventures. Recall that the Delancey Street School SDM group reorganized their school schedule to have time on Wednesday afternoons for student activities, student mentoring, and restructuring meetings. They also added brief meetings at the beginning of school for the whole staff, and they adopted a schedule for instruction that allowed prolonged periods. They initiated staff workshops, a family program, and a new interdisciplinary curricula. Moreover, evaluators found that the team had been successful in involving the whole school in their efforts. In all, they were highly successful in meeting ambitious restructuring goals. But the cost in time had been significant, and they were having severe troubles keeping up with the work their changes engendered. The reporters write:
I have bracketed the different categories of time for teachers that I see at work with this group of able teacher-reformers. We can see that time is needed for each of their activities, but that each requires a different kind of time. Moreover, and most importantly, for these different time needs to mesh compatibly as a group, adequate time must be found, overall. Without some adjustment of either the jobs that teachers take on, or the amount of time that is allocated to those jobs, it is unlikely that teachers will be able to sustain the work of restructuring as it is currently configured.
It complicates matters that, in general, teachers and administrators may actually construct and understand time differently; as a result, each may conceptualize, execute, and evaluate school restructuring differently. Further complications arise when one considers that substantial changes in school structure often imply changes in how schools fit into their communities. The rhythms of schools and communities are interlocked. Changes that extend a school day or year, for instance, will necessarily change family tasks for teachers, parents, and children alike.
A useful metaphor for illuminating the problem of time for teachers is the old-fashioned clock: small gears mesh to form sub-systems, which in turn interlock to form increasingly larger systems. Time for teachers is a group of interconnected gears, and that system of gears is connected to time for administrators, which in itself is a system of interconnected gears. Administrator time is connected to school time, which is woven with the time of the community, and so on. If we are willing to accept this analogy, then it follows that restructuring schools will require that we restructure time itself to some degree, and consequently, many other facets of our lives.
What, then, can be done, short of reinventing Western culture? The question is only par tially facetious, given the complexity of the problem outlined here. Six rules-of-thumb for the would-be school reformer emerge from this discussion and are listed here in no particular order of importance:
First, if teachers are to participate in innovation in schools, they need special time to do it. Innovation time cannot compete with teaching time. The use of retreats and summer work groups appear to help separate out these two types of time and tasks. But extended year schemes seem the most appropriate means for finding this most important time, where portions of intercession periods could be used for innovation time. Currently though, when policymakers and administrators discuss intercession in extended year programs, they seem to see potential only for enrichment or remedial activities for students. Of course these are important activities; but it would be foolish to overlook the needs that teachers have to work at professional research and development of new initiatives and programs.
A second rule-of-thumb is to study the cyclical nature of time in a target school before changing schedules or adding more tasks. It appears crucial to understand how the cycles of time for teachers, administrators, students, and parents are constructed, and the ways the four interact. It is not easy to read the meaning these cycles hold for key players in a school, because the meaning is embedded in the life of the culture. Often, people are not aware of what meanings a certain ritual or routine holds until it is altered by others. Yet, the willing reformer can train him or herself to observe these sociotemporal cycles, if they are willing to take the time.
Third, reformers must not interfere with a teacher's time for teaching. Whatever the amount of time they have, and in whatever scheduled configuration, teachers must know that their teaching time is held sacred by everyone in the school culture. This requires an elimination of meetings held during their scheduled teaching time, and an elimination of non-emergency announcements, visits, socialization, and so on. Teachers should not be put in the position of having to choose between teaching and school governance, or anything else for that matter. Furthermore, administrators and policymakers must differentiate between the kind of teaching time needed in elementary, middle school, and high school settings. These are substantively different constructs, and cannot be treated uniformly.
Fourth, if teachers are to learn new skills and ideas, they need time to do it, and that time must be in excess of the inservice hours that are routinely allotted. Berliner's (1990) concepts of aptitude and perseverance are important in adult learning. Aptitude is the amount of time needed for learning under optimal conditions. Teaching is not an optimal condition for teacher learning unless it is matched with time for reflection, discussion with a mentor, and retesting of a teaching idea. We will never see teachers' true aptitude for learning new skills and ideas if we are unable to provide them with the optimal conditions, that is, the appropriate time. And without that time, there is no reason for a teacher to persevere.
Administrators must examine their own constructs for time, and realize whether they are construing teachers' time from their monochronic standpoint, or from the polychronic framework of teachers. The administrator needs to develop skill at taking the perspective of teachers and experiencing their work through their eyes. Such a perspective will necessarily change the form and pace of reform efforts, as teacher and administrator negotiate the implementation of the reform effort, rather than engage in a power struggle over the effort.
Finally, we must realize that if we add a new subset of gears to the existing mechanism of time for teachers, and do not change the overall design of the mechanism, the mechanism will stop working, in whole or in part. Time for teachers in restructuring cannot and should not be shoe-horned into the existing time structure.
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