I would say that the smartest thing I’ve done recently to optimize my work-life balance, was to reduce my hours and teach part-time.
Now, I know that money is a factor for everyone, but for me, I was struggling to get the balance I needed to cope with my teaching workload. So, while my pay is less, I’m coping with the teaching load much better than I was.
If you can possibly manage the finances and work part-time, I would really suggest it, especially if health or stress or any other factors are impacting on you. And there are so many benefits of job-sharing as a teacher, I won’t go into them all here.
So, I now work 3 days per week and have a wonderful teaching partner who teaches on the other 2 days. But I didn’t reduce my hours all at once…
How I decided to teach part-time
My journey to choosing to teach part-time started when my body began feeling the effects of stress overload. I’ve written about some of the effects of chronic stress in my post 5 Easy Ways to relieve stress after a long day at school.
I couldn’t think straight – my brain was constantly foggy and my job in the classroom was beginning to suffer.
I knew I needed to think about making a change. Work was certainly overwhelming me. Struggles were happening in my personal life too and it was becoming all too much!
I wracked my brains to think of choices that could make positive changes in my life. My negative mind was saying – leave the profession, but the side of reason said – reduce your hours, (if only temporarily.)
Things to consider before choosing to teach part-time
Phase 1: Weigh up your options
For me to make big decisions in my life, I’ve always weighed up my options. I wrote down the pros and cons of going part-time on a list. The pros came out ahead, with all the benefits that reducing my hours would give me to my health, well-being and my family life, far outweighing the cons of reduced funds.
Phase 2: Get support from your administration
This is an important step. Keep admin in the loop. I have always had reasonably supportive bosses – some more than others. But when my life became all topsy-turvy, with challenges in my home life that spilled over to work, I kept them informed. They were then able to be the support that I needed.
So, when I finally made the agonising decision to reduce my hours, it was supported by the people that could help me implement this decision.
Phase 3: Find a great teaching partner
Many school principals make the decision who you will job-share with. At my school, I’m very lucky that the pool of teachers to work with are fantastic. So that wasn’t a problem for me.
If you can choose your teaching partner, make sure that you get on well with them, that you can communicate and you are both cooperative and open to possibilities. Ultimately you want to optimize your time and make sure the students in your class are not impacted negatively from your choice of going part-time.
Plus you want to feel at peace with your decision as well as it working well all year.
Phase 4: Share the workload equitably
For part-time teaching to work really well, each teacher must be happy with the split of work responsibilities. This needs open communication and flexibility from both parties.
Remember that once you split the teaching load and think about who is doing what, it’s not set in stone. Changes can regularly be made if necessary, if and when one party is not happy with things. Just be fair and cooperative and things will work!
Phase 5: Choose to communicate regularly
There are many ways that you can regularly communicate with your teaching partner.
- there is obviously the verbal method, where you chat face-to-face on a regular basis so that each knows what is happening in the classroom, with the day-to-day operations. This works well for me and my partner, as we see each other on the other days we are at school.
Other options if you don’t see each other in person are:
- email each other each week to inform the other teacher of things that are unfinished and issues with students that need to be dealt with etc
- use a communication book – regularly write to each other in a notebook to keep the same sort of journal. This physical resource is beneficial because it is always to hand to make your notations in and can be referred to quickly if needed.
I have used all of these methods to regularly communicate with my teaching partners over the years. They all work really well if used each week, which is a must to ensure your part-time teaching partnership is optimised.
In Conclusion
I love to teach part-time! But I know that this way of working may never become a reality for some people because of their circumstances.
In my life though, it has truly been a godsend to help me working toward work-life balance.
Please consider this as a possible option for you, if you have been feeling like me in any way and are trying to achieve work-life balance.
Remember you are worth it!
Michelle
Related Articles:
For more about Work-life balance read the following article:
- 2 Top Tips to Achieve Work-Life Balance
- Secrets for Work-life balance for teachers
- Tips for Teachers: How to Stop Thinking about School
- 7 Super Easy Ways to Simplify Your Teacher Life
PIN IT FOR LATER!
Has this information been helpful? Please let me know in the comments 🙂
Leave a Reply