Hi there,

I wanted to start out by saying thank you for supporting bestselling Real Talk About Classroom Management (2018) and recently published Real Talk About Time Management (2020). Having two books in the hands of teachers is really surreal.

I wanted to take a second to talk about my second book Real Talk About Time Management: 35 Best Practice for Educators. For this book, I worked in collaboration with Dr. Edward DeRoche. So, who is Ed and why did we decide to collaborate? Let me explain.

Ed is a time management B-O-S-S. He’s been a teacher, a principal, a Dean of the College of Education at University of San Diego, and has won the Sanford Lifetime Achievement Award for Character Education. He is the current Director of the Character Education Resource Center at University of San Diego. He has eight published books and knows time management strategies that have been proven to work over and over again with educators through the test of time. He’s always been on top of his workload and impressively seems to always have time for friends and family while keeping up (even one step ahead) with professional responsibilities. In our book, he and I share what has worked with time management and back it up with the current research, data and humorous anecdotes. The picture above is the two of us at Ed’s monthly Saturday Morning Seminars at USD, where he brings in guest speakers from all around the county for veteran and preservice teachers. Like I said, he’s phenomenal. He brings a well-rounded perspective to our book and for that, I’m thankful and grateful. Most importantly, we get along well. That’s when the real magic of coauthoring can work optimally, similar to coteaching.

Let’s get to know my fabulous coauthor, Dr. Edward DeRoche. I interviewed him last week with six important questions. Enjoy!

[Begin Interview]

[Serena] 1. Can you tell us a little about yourself? 

[Ed] Sports was my focus when I was young. School was always a bore, but it was not the fault of most of my teachers. I actually flunked out of my first year of college. But thankfully I changed. The military and marriage brought me to maturity. I liked teaching middle school and found that I was good at it. I discovered after teaching for 6 years  that my future role would be in school administration.

[Serena] 2. Why did you decide to partner with Serena to write this book? 

[Ed] I really liked reading her first book on classroom management and recommended it to a lot of  teachers. After all—she was a “Teacher of the Year.” If you’re smart, you pay attention to teachers who earn that title. We worked together for five years in our teacher training program.  In course of a conversations with her, I said that if she wrote another “Real Talk” book and needs a co-author I would be pleased to work with her on it. She said yes—we did it!

It was a great experience for me. I like co-authoring—have done so with other books I have written. I like the togetherness, the interactions, the agreements and disagreements, the informal and formal conversations, and the normal give and take between authors when you write a book with somebody.

[Serena] 3. Would you consider yourself good at time management and what contributed most to this?

[Ed] Yes. Why? I’ve always had a lot to do. I had many tasks as a teenager, many tasks in college, even more tasks in marriage, tasks as a teacher and also as an administrator. I’m a great to-do list maker and get lots of pleasure when I can check off items on the list.  

[Serena] 4. What’s the most helpful piece of time management advice you would give teachers right now that find themselves working from home? 

[Ed] Last week, a teacher told me that she was learning one important strategy– reduce the workload for herself and for her students.

[Serena] 5. Are there any specific time management best practices that you’d like to point out?

[Ed] Our book has many suggestions that teachers will find helpful right now in each of the four sections.  For example, Part 1 touches on the difference between busy and productive. Part  2 describes how to plan and work smarter, not harder. Part 3 touches on managing time in your lessons and also helping help students manage their time. We also cover  ways for you and them to keep up with online information, knowing when to take breaks throughout the day. Part 4 is just as important as we go we into taking care of yourself, meditation, and even handling and preventing compassion fatigue.

[Serena] 6. As you were writing and researching Real Talk About Time Management, did you learn anything that you could have used when you were a teacher? 

[Ed] Yes—It’s on pages 18 & 19. This simple list could have helped me:

1. Be prepared
2. Be in control
3. Be collaborative
4. Be positive
5. Be purposeful
6. Be a problem solver
7. Know the difference between busy and productive

[Ed] In my first three years of teaching I could have been better at being prepared, being in control, being more collaborative, being more positive, being a better problem solver. My teacher colleagues helped me by sharing their experiences, offered me advice that I was open to and used, they observed me and they were upfront with me. They told me when they thought I was wrong, and praised me when I was right.

So, what I could have used in my first three years of teaching I got from my fellow teachers, from some students, from several parents, and, of course, from the principal’s observation and yearly evaluation.

[End interview]

To connect directly with Ed you can email him at character@sandiego.edu for questions, comments, or sign up for his monthly blog: News You Can Use. You are welcome to attend Ed’s Saturday Morning Seminars at University of San Diego. Just reach out via email for tickets.

Interested in grabbing a copy of Real Talk About Time Management for yourself or a colleague? http://bit.ly/3dzQoGg or Amazon http://amzn.to/2xXiT1J

Happy Reading!