Tick it off: the power of checklists.

The first time I've encountered checklists as a tool for work rather than just simple to do list or a grocery shopping list was a good few months back when I listened to a podcast with Atul Gawande. He is a surgeon and an author of The Checklist Manifesto. His ideas are in many ways so simple that I'm seriously surprised why I didn't come up with it myself. In essence, if you have a high-pressure job, to ease some of the stress and ensure you don't make silly, but high-cost mistakes, you should create a checklist of tasks that need to be complete. Simple, right?

Here's an example of a surgical safety checklist. Some of the items on that list seem so obvious. Like marking surgical area. Or confirming what sort of procedure needs to be performed. Or that test results for the correct patient are at hand.

Source: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0810119

Now let's teleport ourselves from a surgical theatre to my classroom. It's an incredibly stressful environment. Risk of fatal injuries is pretty low on most days, but it's too easy to forget about the basics. As one class goes out of the door and another one impatiently awaits to finally get in, I have a million thoughts going through my head. Log missing homeworks, photocopy extra homework sheets for lunch, email year manager with my concern about Suzi, have I printed enough worksheets for the class this time? I need to ask Rob for his missing work from last lesson. Where is my out of lesson pass, again? I need to give out the red pens. Register! Need to get the register done in the next five minutes!

As my new class arrives, I need to park the thoughts from last lesson on focus on the children in front of me. I need to remember our routines, things to give out and messages to pass on. I need to remember what I wanted to teach them today and how to go about it. At the same time, I need to respond to anything that is going on in the classroom, this extremely unpredictable environment.

I've realised that checklists can make my life easier, freeing up an important brain space, helping me to focus on learning rather than all the little bits and pieces that need to be done while at the same time ensuring that everything is done as it needs to be, and, ultimately, making my lessons better.

I now I should use checklists more, but I incorporate them into my teaching more and more now. Here's an example:

I also have task checklist for almost every morning. When I get to school, I will sit down and write down all the task that need doing before the day starts at half eight. I'm yet to make it a prioritised list: for now it's just a checklist of sheets to print, powerpoints to finish and emails to write/respond to. It takes so much worry off my head, because I see exactly what needs doing and I am able to organise my time accordingly.

Checklists are great for students, too. When some of my classes were slipping with their exercise book presentation, I popped a list on the side of the whiteboard to remind them of the need to write down the date and title, draw a margin and write bell work questions, which in turn had to be marked in red. Last year when teaching pie charts, I devised a checklist to help students with producing the best possible quality of work. Checklists for students decrease their mental overload, since they need to remember less: they only need to refer back to the check list to see how much progress they've made already and what still needs to be done.

I'm going to use checklist more in the coming weeks and definitely next year. I want to simplify my life and make it easier, especially with all the changes coming up (you'll soon hear more about those). I feel that it can also be an amazing way of cutting down my workload: beyond not making multiple trips to the photocopier, my checklist cannot be endless, so I need to make smart choices about what needs doing. And having ticked everything essential off the list, I can leave work at a reasonable hour, knowing everything is in order.

Does having checklist kill spontaneity in lessons? Not at all! They provide structure for my work that is necessary to remain focused on what is important: on my pupils. It's a little bit like deep work: if you set time aside for producing high quality work, you will produce high quality work, because you would be free of distraction. And I think this is the biggest point of sticking to checklist: it gets your mind off the little things that are essential for the smooth running of whatever you are doing, and let's you focus on the important.