Secrets for Work-Life Balance for Teachers

Inside: Do you seek ways to bring work-life balance into your daily life as a teacher? Read to find the secrets of work-life balance for teachers to fulfil this elusive dream of many.

Is it possible for teachers to have work-life balance? Well, the jury is out on that question for many teachers.

I’d like to discuss this further.

My journey to achieving work-life balance

I’ve been on a dedicated mission to gain work-life balance in my own life.

When I started teaching 8 years ago, the teaching workload took over my life.

I suppose because I come from private industry and local government administration, I wanted to have a system in place to make my own job much easier.

You know how it happens.

When you are first out of university or college, the teaching life hits you like a ton of bricks – planning every night; the exhaustion from the unrelenting talking and behaviour management and don’t forget about having to teach yourself the content…every night! (so at least one person in the room knows their stuff). Plus so much more!

I realised very quickly that teaching was the hardest job that I have ever undertaken…and I’ve had a few jobs in my life.

I soon came to the realisation that I needed to work smarter and try to manage work-life balance. It didn’t happen overnight and I literally felt like I was sinking from all the pressure of this monumental job.

If you have read any of my other posts you will know that I have had health problems from all the stress and workload. So, I have had to take many steps towards a life of gaining balance.

I have had to make some very difficult decisions; firstly, to reduce my workload and then to work more productively. See my post about the suggestions that I make to Increasing Productivity for Teachers.

I’ve also had to seek professional advice about my health and wellbeing, as well as learn to prioritise myself, all these things to help improve work-life balance.

This quest for work-life balance continues to be an ongoing battle and sometimes I feel like the road is steep.

Work-life balance IS achievable for teachers

In spite of all this, I do believe there is hope and that it is possible for teachers to achieve work-life balance.

It remains a topical discussion for many teachers, also in the broader community because of the negative effects that teachers experience. See Teachers Thriving community, Self-Care for Teachers etc who are dedicated to supporting teachers to find answers to support work-life balance.

I have discussed many of these detrimental impacts of the teaching life in many of my posts.

If you’re interested read the following articles about my journey to reduce and relieve stress, find wellness and include self-care practice to gain back my life.

So, you know that this it’s important to solve this issue for yourself. But, it feels like a difficult task.

As teachers, we aren’t taught great systems to save time, to organise, or to effectively manage our workload. We need to learn these for ourselves and some might not ever really learn it.

That’s why I’m keen to spread the word about some tips that I use and have found that is helping.

Tips for work-life balance

Angela Watson, from the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club and Cornerstone for Teachers taught me these amazing strategies, which I’m hoping will make a difference for others.

These ideas will help you to take charge of your life and start to manage your workload and to ultimately gain some balance as a teacher.

Any new teacher or tired teacher, for that matter, can struggle with this so here are three key ideas to consider.

Angela uses the phrase AUTOMATE, DELEGATE AND ELIMINATE and I’m going to discuss this in more detail.

AUTOMATE

I understand that to automate tasks as a teacher means to implement systems in our classroom that become routine and eventually they can run themselves.

Things to automate in your classroom

classroom management systems
classroom organisation
time management and productivity
classroom routines and procedures
class timetables

DELEGATE

It also is key for us as teachers to understand that we need to learn how to delegate certain tasks to others.

If we can pass off these things to others, we can allow these classroom helpers to use their own capabilities to organise or run activities or tasks without much input from us.

Delegating, therefore, frees up your own valuable time. This action is easier said than done for most teachers.

Things to delegate in the classroom

marking
making learning resources
photocopying and laminating
filing
tidying the classroom
handing out worksheets and activities
classroom jobs – cleaning the whiteboard, shutting the windows, etc etc. You get the idea.

These types of tasks can be delegated to parent helpers, teacher’s aides and students. It’s all about setting up a self-running classroom.

Learning how to have a self-running classroom is one of the important things that I learnt from joining Angela’s 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club.

To have a self-running classroom, your students need to know the routines and the procedures that keep your classroom ticking along without you having to explain everything all the time.

Having a self-running classroom also includes having designated areas that are clearly identified for each activity or task in the classroom such as the Library, quiet area, assessment turning in spot, sorting and filing, area for teaching resources, marking, etc etc.

I would thoroughly recommend joining Angela’s club to learn the systems of a self-automated classroom and learning how to delegate.

ELIMINATE

Elimination of the ‘unnecessary’ is one of the things I have needed to learn to help me improve my personal work-life balance.

It’s asking yourself the question, “What should I do versus what can I do?”

I needed to learn to say to myself that ‘good-enough is ok and it gets the job done.’

This is hard. Many Teachers are perfectionists who care so much about our students and doing a good job.

Find out what you can eliminate in your day-to-day. It’s not things that I can tell you to stop doing.

Here are some questions for you to think about:

How can you reduce the amount of marking you do?
How can you stop double handling tasks?
Can you reuse lessons from previous years to cut down on planning time?
Can you reuse resources from previous years or start making longer-lasting resources to use in subsequent years?
What can you eliminate to save you time?

A few things you can easily eliminate:

checking of social media
talking to co-workers who pop in
making and eating snacks

Try to drop the perfectionism as well and ‘give it a go’ to eliminate the unnecessary in your teaching life!

Do you want more work-life balance tips?

Achieving work-life balance for teachers can be different for everyone. Balance in our lives is not static, but fluid. (Ellen, Self-care for Teachers, 2019).

These following suggestions have helped me to achieve much more work-life balance than I’ve ever had. See if they can help you too.

Useful ideas to help with work-life balance

Tip #1: Don’t feel guilty

Don’t ever feel guilty when your life needs to come before school.

Your family is your greatest concern and is ultimately more important than work. At the end of your life, you won’t say, “I wish I worked more.” You’ll say, “I wish I spent more time with MY family.”

Tip #2: Learn to say No!

Saying ‘No’ is very important for teachers to learn how to use effectively. Often, we put school before anything else, so this is a must to help bring balance in your life.

Tip #3: Don’t read work emails on your phone

This is a tip I learned recently. Many of us think it is easier to read our emails on our phones instead of getting to a computer.

I have learnt that if our work emails are that accessible, our minds never really get the chance to switch off.

Plus, it often is not very productive because you may need to double-handle this task anyway, as most emails can’t be actioned from our phones and will need to be dealt with when you are back at your desk.

Do yourself a favour to help improve work-life balance; Don’t read work emails on your phone!

Tip #4: Track your work hours

This is a new tip I’ve learnt recently too. Ellen from Self-care for Teachers recommends this strategy as a way to help work-life balance.

If we track our work hours it brings to mind exactly how much we are working and we can then monitor our working hours with the view to cut back.

Tips #5: Work at school until you are finished

This is a must-do tip from me.

Working each day until you are finished your work or having a non-negotiable finish time, has helped me achieve greater work-life balance. I discuss this in detail in my article called Two Top Tips for Work-Life Balance.

Then you can leave your work-bag at school and go home and switch off.

Tip #6: Don’t take your teacher bag home through the week

This is pretty straight forward. If you are new to this concept maybe start with one or two nights per weeks leaving work at work.

I use this tip every week now and have not looked back. It’s a great way to help achieve work-life balance.

Tip #7: Do something you love

Prioritise yourself by doing something that you truly enjoy or love. A much-needed activity to help stave-off teacher burnout.

Tip #8: It’s ok if teaching takes a backseat to your life

As teachers, we need to realise that we are not indispensable. Sometimes to gain balance, we need to put our own lives first.

For more Work-life balance tips go to Teachers Thriving for some other quick ideas from their Work-Life balance for Educators project. Take their Work-life Balance quiz and find their downloadable e-book.

Finally, I hope these tips give you some ideas that you can use to help with developing a greater work-life balance.

Go after it, even if you might have to make some difficult decisions – it will make a huge difference to the quality of your life.

Remember you are worth it!

Michelle xx

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Secrets for Work-Life Balance for Teachers

My journey to achieving work-life balance

Work-life balance IS achievable for teachers

Tips for work-life balance