Maintaining a healthy work-life balance can be difficult in general, let alone in a profession that requires you to take a lot of your work home with you. As a teacher, you are trying to engage and inspire your students during school hours and stay on top of grading and creating lesson plans outside of school hours. There is a lot of time and energy that goes into being a successful and dedicated teacher, but you don’t need to give up your personal life to reach that point. With the start of the new year, it is a perfect time to revamp your daily routine to better take care of yourself, which will ultimately benefit your students as well.

Be Conscious of your Health

First and foremost, you need to be aware of your health. Your self-care practices can have an effect on your mood, energy level, focus and patience, all of which contribute heavily to your success as a teacher. Therefore, you should be mindful of your diet, take part in a regular exercise routine, take vitamins to make up for any deficiencies and get plenty of sleep outside of work. During the workweek, you can also take short walks or take the stairs to avoid adopting a sedentary lifestyle and consider buying blue light glasses for work, which block the blue light that is transmitted from the digital devices you use to teach and plan lessons from damaging your retina.

Balance your Time

Being a teacher requires you to be involved with and dedicated to students. This means staying after school hours if a student needs extra help, working late grading papers, working weekends to create lesson plans, staying in constant contact with students, parents and faculty if anyone has questions, chaperoning field trips and attending conferences to better yourself and stay up to date on best practices. These outside responsibilities are a lot to take on and keep track of, so you need to manage your work commitments and personal commitments in a calendar or organizer. It may seem like a simple suggestion but in order to make sure there is enough of you to go around, while also practicing self-care, it’s necessary.

Take Breaks from Electronics

As I mentioned before, being a teacher requires you to stay in constant contact with students, parents and faculty just in case anyone has any questions, concerns or updates. This is a responsibility teachers take on willingly as they are devoted to their students’ success. However, it’s important that you set aside specific times to respond to those students, parents and co-workers. Being available at all times may seem ideal as you want to be a good teacher, however, you need downtime as well. Instead, set aside an hour or so at the end of each day to respond to any emails or inquiries they may have.

Don’t Take too Much on

Volunteering and taking on extra tasks, like the aforementioned field trip chaperoning and attending conferences, is very important, but there is a limit. You need to make sure you are involved and there for your students, but it shouldn’t become your whole life. Learn to say no to some commitments; it may be difficult at times, but if you’re putting in a good amount of time, then you shouldn’t feel bad about turning a few events down here and there.

Let the Little Things Go

From an upsetting encounter with a parent to a student struggling to understand a lesson, there are plenty of ups and downs when it comes to being a teacher. As rewarding as a career in helping students grow and learn can be, it can also be difficult. In times like these, it’s important to remember that you are affecting your students in a positive way as long as you remain positive and determined to help. Through everything, just remember that you’re making an impact and setting an example every day.

At the end of the day, you are influencing every student you encounter. In order to make the effect you have on them a positive one, it’s important that you take care of yourself first. Creating the perfect work-life balance can be difficult, and there will be times where it becomes challenging to maintain it, but the healthier and more balanced your life is, the better teacher you will be.

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Have you ever been labeled or stuck in a group just because of the time you were born? Yep. We do it all the time. We label individuals as Millenials, Baby Boomers, Gen Y, Gen X – but do those labels really mean anything? I was talking with a friend recently and she said a guy wouldn’t go out with her because she was a Gemini. He told her that he was “just not compatible with Gemini’s”. Imagine how she felt about being lumped into a group and labeled as “incompatible”.

What about homeschool versus public school? Republican, Libertarian or Democrat. Our culture is good at slapping labels on individuals and lumping them into groups, but that is not really fair. In my personal experience, once we know someone, and their story, we have much more compassion for them. It reminds me of the brutal movie “American History X” which is about a white supremacist who befriends an African American man in prison. Through the process of getting to know an actual human being, instead of an ethnic group, Norton’s character learned that what he had been taught and led to believe about African American’s was not true. He had been taught to stereotype and to oversimplify a complex situation.

How Generational Stereotypes Hold Us Back

The Silent Generation, baby boomers, Generation X, millennials, Gen Z — we’re all in the workforce together. How are our assumptions about each other holding us back from working and communicating better? Social psychologist Leah Georges shows how we’re more similar than different and offers helpful tactics for navigating the multigenerational workplace.

Stereotyping is defined as: : something conforming to a fixed or general pattern especially : a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment. So why is this important? Because as we teach others, it can be easy to look at a large problem, instead of looking at the individual. You might as yourself, “How can I feed all the homeless people in Dallas.” The answer most likely is that you can’t, but you can probably feed one person. 

Teaching One Child At a Time

The point of this post is to show that we all want to be treated as individuals and not labeled as a group or put in a box that may not fit. The same goes for students. They want to be seen and heard, not for their background, gender, orientation, or ethnicity, but to be seen as humans with potential.

Educating the poor is more than just a numbers game, says Shukla Bose. She tells the story of her groundbreaking Parikrma Humanity Foundation, which brings hope to India’s slums by looking past the daunting statistics and focusing on treating each child as an individual.

Walk a Mile in Someone Else’s Shoes

“The admonition to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes means before judging someone, you must understand his experiences, challenges, thought processes, etc. The full idiom is: Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. In effect, it is a reminder to practice empathy.”(The Grammarist)

As we go through life, using empathy can help us when dealing with difficult people. When we take the time to get to know someone’s story we can better understand who they are, where they are coming from, and how we can help. As teachers, we have the unique opportunity to speak into the lives of others and help them become the best that they can be.

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I like to see things that change the world around us for the better. That is why I like being on college campuses and institutions that promote learning. Being educated helps us understand the world around us better. Education can help us understand ourselves and others better. With knowledge, we can learn to love others and see them as individuals and not as groups or demographics. So what does this have to do with an app that is about picking up litter?

Teachers Make Big Impact with Everyday Little Things

As I was watching this Ted Talk one of the things that stood out to me is that the creator of the app had involved his children in picking up trash, then teachers were involving students and along the way they had created this online community of people who were doing small things that were making a big impact. I believe that is what teachers do. In the day to day, you might not think that teaching history is changing the world, but over time the impact you are having can be colossal. It is hard to capture the data around teaching and the trajectory on a students life, but we have all heard the stories of the teacher that changed the course of a students life – and sometimes we have stories of our own.

So back to Litterati, what is great about this story was that it started as just a fun way to clean up the earth, but eventually it led to a secondary benefit and that was data that could help change the way businesses do business. Data that was collected was used in a court case and later they found that Taco Bell was giving out hot sauce packets that weren’t being used. I believe that education has this same impact. What we think is just a small thing, ends up being something that changes not only one individual’s life, but the lives of everyone that person comes into contact with.

Dan Lok – How a Teacher Changed his Life

Entrepreneur and author Dan Lok shares a life-changing moment with his teacher Ms. Fallon who saw in him the potential he never saw in himself. This is a story about the power of teachers.

“Never underestimate the power of someone believing in you more than you believe in yourself.” – Dan Lok

How a Coach and Teacher Changed Dwayne The Rock Johnson’s Life

Jody Swick invited The Rock to play football. His coach became a father figure and mentor and changed his life. His grades got better. He started to think about his future and goals. The empathy that Jody Swick had for him was what impacted Dwayne Johnson the most. Seeing the potential in students even when they can’t see the potential in themselves can change their lives.

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Days are long, class time feels too short, papers to grade, meetings to attend, tutorials to be held, the list of to-do’s is endless. However, at the end of every day I have a smile on my face knowing I am exactly where I am supposed to be doing exactly what I have been called to do. I am a teacher!

Making an impact!

Each and every day you enter your classroom and get to teach a group of students who may seem like a motley crew of all sorts! But they love you! They work hard for you each and every day. You see them grow into young individuals throughout the year and see them accomplish and crush goals you have set for them. Witnessing a student achieve something they did not think was possible is the best feeling ever. Pushing them to limits they didn’t know existed and watching them overcome adversity or a struggle is extra special. You know each day as you leave to get into your car that you are making a difference. It may not seem that way on some days, when students are extra difficult, but they will remember you! They will email you years later or write you a letter of appreciation, thanking you for all that you did for them. These students become your “Kids” and take a piece of your heart with them as they leave to the next grade or stage in their life.

Making Memories!

At the beginning of my teaching career , I wish I would have created a journal to record all of the experiences I had as a teacher, things that happened in certain classes, certain students, crazy stories that no one would believe actually happened. Creating those stories that turn into fond memories is what makes teaching so great! You get to become close to your students over the course of a year. I mean you are basically one big family! Enjoy the small side conversations you get with your students, enjoy the chaos,

Holiday Perks!

If you get into teaching for just the holidays you get off, you are missing the true joy of teaching. Don’t get me wrong, having all the main holidays off, teacher work days, student holiday’s and most importantly summer’s off is great. The breaks you get are most definitely earned and quite honestly there needs to be more throughout the year. Being able to have off periodically throughout the year allows you to recharge your batteries, and gain perspective. I believe if you did not have the holiday perks you would become burnt out. Every little bit helps.

Lifelong Learner!

You may have been in education for years, but you are always learning something. Each and every year that passes, each student you encounter, you are growing and expanding your knowledge as a teacher, friend, co-worker, and mentor. Your students can teach you something daily. Take time to listen to them, be open to new ideas, and constantly be looking for ways to become better. “A great teacher never stops being a student.”

Never the same day Twice!

Depending on what grade you teach, you will have anywhere from 20-80 students. I had anywhere between 60-80. With that many students throughout the day, you never know what you are going to encounter. Each day was greeted with new obstacles, challenges, laughs, and straight craziness. Flexibility is key. It keeps you on your toe, that’s for sure. Each student has their own personality and when you put 20-30 in one classroom together, sometimes your lessons don’t go according to plan. Frustrating at times, but it allows you to learn, grow, and become an overall better teacher. You are never bored as a teacher. If you find yourself feeling comfortable, just step into the hallway during passing period and it will put you back on your toes in no time.

The Students!

Your students will take a piece of you with them when they go. I sometimes said at the beginning of the year how much I disliked a certain class, and that class by the end of the year ended up being one of my favorites. (You are not supposed to have favorites, but of course you secretly do.) Some of my hardest, most difficult students, the ones who literally made me question why I was a teacher, honestly, made the biggest impact on me. No matter how hard I was on them, never lowering my expectations, they always said goodbye, and were excited to return to my class. That’s when you know you are doing something right. You reach those kids that sometimes others have given up on. I would have students come into my room, which I did not even teach. But I loved it! Each student had a special place in my heart and each one taught me something.

Teaching is a daily choice to be committed to others who are depending on you. “The best thing about being a teacher is that it matters, the hardest thing about being a teacher is that it matters every day.” You will have trials, and stress, but the amount of joy and happiness you get from teaching completely fades out anything else. If you have a heart for children and for educating others, choose teaching! If you want to have the time of your life, Choose Teaching!

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