Is there such a thing as a healthy work-life balance as a teacher? Yes.
Is it developing better time management? No. Well, yes, a little bit, if you are getting so overwhelmed by your workload that you sit and stare at it without starting on the first thing, or if you procrastinate like it’s a competitive sport. Or if you’re getting close to burn out and you find yourself rereading a sentence several times without taking it in because your attention is diverted inwards.
There are lots of ways we can better manage our time. And most of these things we are aware of, so why do we make it so hard on ourselves?
I have a few guesses. Firstly, we already struggle to manage our time that we think we don’t have any time left to stop and think about how to make a change (however, I would suggest that you seriously consider taking more than a quick moment to consider the points in this article – they completely changed my work-life balance for the better). Another idea is seeing people who go full throttle into their work, thinking they can crash in the school breaks. Mostly, I believe teachers accept that their jobs are always going to be busy and there is little we can do to change that.
But we CAN change this. Maybe not at a universal level in this day and age but certainly at a personal one.
The keyword in the examples I gave above is what we ‘think’ about when we consider our workloads. And I’m thinking, maybe teachers need to change their mindset.
“If you change how you think, you change your mindset. If you change your mindset, you change your behaviors. If you change your behaviors, you change your habits. If you change your habits, you change your outcomes. If you change your outcomes, you change your life” – Brianna Wiest
By learning from my own experiences, and from reading books such as the 4-Hour Work Week, I found a few elemental factors literally changed my life. I still identify as a teacher, but I also rediscovered my personal identity that had become lost in the overwhelming workload many struggle with today.
Non-negotiables
Instead of trying to ‘manage’ time, what if we looked at what is encroaching on our livelihoods – the workload. Then begin a process of elimination.
Wait, haven’t we heard this before? Prioritise certain tasks and do those more important ones first, leaving the smaller ones for later? There is some truth in this approach, but only if we focus on the former. Using the process of elimination, we isolate the key tasks that are unnegotiable. I’m talking things like assessments and planning for the following week.
I’m not talking about tasks you may enjoy doing but are a total time-suck. Those must go if you want change. You might say “But I love doing [small task], it is a highlight of my work!” Then I would say, “OK, but what if you eliminated [small task] and found more time in your week? What would you do with this time now?” An example from my own experience would be how I loved carefully framing every artwork my students created, but this took an insane amount of time.
So I stopped doing it. I stopped going out on weekends to find new storage options, games, and resources for the classroom unless it was absolutely necessary that I source these things. I stopped spending too much time on social media, scrolling through unimportant lesson ideas, time-consuming classroom décor inspiration or feeling depressed by how amazing every other teacher was compared to me.
I eliminated several small tasks. It was hard and I felt a little lost at first, but I became more settled when I saw nobody minded or even noticed the changes I had made. I was still doing my job to the best of my ability and the children were learning and happy. Most of those small tasks I had been doing for my own distorted sense of satisfaction and so by removing them, it became clear how little these things mattered in the grand scheme of running a successful classroom.
There are always tasks that we can eliminate. A big one here is marking work. Research has shown that it is ineffective to mark work that children have handed in compared to conferencing with children during the school day and signing their books. Your students will be more open to learning if you work alongside them in this way, rather than requesting they submit work which can come across as tedious and time-pressuring.
Sound familiar? *Cough* report cards *cough*. Let’s try not to put children through processes that even we don’t enjoy ourselves!
Certainly, some schools will have requirements for marking which may be on your ‘non-negotiable’ list. In this case, I’d ask to talk this through with the person in charge of this area to see if anything can be done. Maybe nobody has challenged this before and just accept that it’s part of the job. Remember, we are out to change mindsets first and then action will follow.
I was still doing my job to the best of my ability and the children were learning and happy.
Over-planning
I see this a lot and it’s a huge problem, especially for beginning teachers. Of course, we have to meet certain requirements in our planning, but ask yourself: am I overdoing it?
Planning everything down to the minute is an incredibly limiting practice. If everything is coming from the teacher, this rarely gives children the opportunity to take ownership of their own learning in the classroom. It does not allow for spontaneous, responsive teaching to the direction students want to take a certain issue or topic, instead putting focus on ticking boxes or cramming as much information into a lesson as possible.
Many activities, follow ups and even lessons can be shifted from the teacher’s plan to the students’ choices. For instance, I initially put in time and effort to create some flow charts that children could pick up and use when they were choosing a follow up to my reading groups. I didn’t have to put specific follow ups in my planning, and thus had no need for any extra resourcing. The charts had several options that were general enough to get the children started on an idea, then develop it into their own.
Differentiated planning for children on various academic levels can be another vacuum on our time. I have been horrified to learn that some teachers plan the same things for every single student in their class, no matter who needs extending or more support.
A better way to approach this is through the Maori societal concept of tuakana-teina relationship. Tuakana = expert; Teina = inexpert. This provides a great model for a buddy system where the tuakana guides and supports the learning of the teina. These aren’t fixed roles and are sometimes even reversible where one day the tuakana is explaining a mathematical idea, and then they are the teina learning from another tuakana about structuring a procedural piece of writing. I incorporate this into my planning, giving children time to be both tuakana and teina, letting them lead their own learning. More often than not, children are stoked to share their knowledge or skills with others. It is also great to see how something that has come so naturally to the tuakana before, now has to be broken down into understandable steps for the teina. This keeps every child constructively challenged and requires less planning from me.
As a side note to this point, I reduced the amount of photocopying, laminating, and other resourcing required. Until I eliminated my teacher-directed approach to lessons, activities and general over-planning tendencies, I had no idea just how much time it had been consuming. I remember being organised by 4pm one Thursday and realising I was completely ready for Friday AND the following week. For teachers, this is massive.
Productive work vs. busy work
The 9-5 workday is an arbitrary time chosen in which most people are required to complete their tasks. Most people don’t need that much time to do their jobs well. In fact, we need less time to force us to become more productive in our work.
Teachers do have less time to get their work done considering they’re, you know, teaching for 6 hours a day. But this doesn’t mean we can’t get our work done in our remaining hours of the workday.
Make a schedule and stick to it. When do you plan? When do you resource? When do you mark work? Set aside a certain time frame and put your timer on. I blocked out 3:15pm-4:30pm for weekly planning every Wednesday and just focused on that task. I eliminated those small things that crop up unannounced by logging off emails or at least blocking notifications, putting headphones on and listening to instrumental music (the same playlist every week as a subconscious reminder to focus), and turning my phone to flight mode. Don’t let that end time be flexible. Make it a deadline. Otherwise you’ll end up stretching out your work hours and suddenly it’s 11pm!
Busy work is distracted work. If you let yourself become pulled into other tasks on your to do list during this scheduled time, you’re doing yourself a disservice. So, when something pops into your mind, write it down, but then leave it for later. If it is really important, you’ll get it done. But not right now.
Let others know that you are unavailable during this time. Be kind but firm to those social calls from your favourite teacher friends! I once put up a sign on my classroom door that asked people not to disturb and after a few light-hearted jokes between fellow work friends, they respected it. Some of them even replicated what I was doing, knowing that we were making an appointment with our work-life balance.
Busy work is distracted work.
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is delegating our workload to other places or people so they can do the tasks for us, freeing up our time even further. It is amazing what we can accomplish when people work together.
Most teachers are aware of platforms such as teacherspayteachers, twinkl, sparklebox that hold a wealth of resources from lesson plans to games. My advice would be to know exactly what you are looking for when you head in that direction, otherwise you may find yourself wasting more time scrolling the plethora of activities available. There are heaps of freebies out there. However, I’ve also paid $2 or so for exactly what I wanted but would have taken me hours to create myself. I value my time more than a couple of dollars.
Before you start paying from your own pocket, first look to your neighbours. Do your teacher colleagues have the resources you’re looking for? If you haven’t already, start forming a relationship with some more experienced teachers. Some of the older teachers in my previous schools tended to rely on paperwork for children, but they often had files of lesson plans and resources that they were more than happy to lend to me. Be prepared to share with them, too. Working to each other’s strengths saves time for everyone and it’s a great way to form stronger bonds and collegiality.
Another key idea for you all: outsourcing also means saying ‘no’ to some things to save time in the long run. Being the person who often says ‘yes’ to favours or extra work responsibilities won’t get you respect; being selective in what you say ‘yes’ to doing demonstrates a positive sense of self-assurance, that you think things through before acting. Outsourcing before you even touch the task.
Will my classroom suffer because of these strategies?
If you’re worried about the overall effect reducing workload might have on the success of your classroom, I guarantee you that the children will have just as awesome of an experience as they might have if you did take the time to make those over-the-top wall displays.
I’ve found that by implementing the above strategies, my classroom has benefited more from my improved work-life balance in many ways, but especially in student agency and ownership of their learning. I keep things relatively minimal in my classroom (and it becomes beautifully filled with student work and input), but I bring full energy from my rejuvenated work-life balance into my teaching hours. That contact time with the children is infinitely more valuable to put your time and energy into rather than spending hours and hours of photocopying, cutting, laminating, sticking things on the walls, over-planning...I could go on. But I won’t, because it’s a waste of time!
I bring full energy from my rejuvenated work-life balance into my teaching hours.
So, to recap:
1. Isolate your non-negotiable work (i.e. tasks you are required by contract and law to complete) and make a list of them.
2. Make a list of all other tasks you are currently undertaking. Which ones take up the most amount of time but are the least important? Eliminate them out of your mind and your time.
3. Focus on the non-negotiables. Are you putting unnecessary time and effort into an area that doesn’t need it? Do you over-plan? How can you adjust your practice to free up more time? Can you implement a buddy system?
4. Make a schedule. When do you plan? When do you resource? When do you mark work? Set aside a certain time frame and stick to it. Let others know what you’re doing to get them onboard and keep yourself accountable.
5. Outsource where possible. Work to your strengths, collaborate with others.
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