Aug. 4, 2024

5 Things I Needed to Hear as Someone Who Struggled with Teacher Work-Life Balance

5 Things I Needed to Hear as Someone Who Struggled with Teacher Work-Life Balance

Send us a Text Message.

Did you struggle with teacher work-life balance and looking for a way to make things different this year? In this video, I share 5 things I needed to hear as a new and first-year teacher who struggled with time management.


These teacher time-saving strategies will help you confidently save time as a teacher, minimize teacher overwhelm, prevent you from staying late and start leaving work on time, and prevent teacher burnout.


Download the Maximize Your Prep Guide Here: https://sunny-creator-106.ck.page/5041376f8b
Get support inside The Present Teacher Circle Community: https://thepresentteacher.com/present-teacher-circle/
___________________________

❤️Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/thepresentteacher/
🔥TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@thepresentteacher
🚀Website | https://thepresentteacher.com/
💜YouTube | https://youtube.com/@ThePresentTeacher?si=meqMmiDHJN-0Jmlr

___________________________

// RESOURCES

💌 Join our email list for weekly motivation | https://sunny-creator-106.ck.page/4277e03f92

🌼 Join our Community on Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/groups/thrivingnewteachers

___________________________

//  ABOUT

I’m Helena, a coach for new and first-year teachers sharing knowledge on how to have a thriving career and personal life.

The Present Teacher Podcast is a resource for classroom management, classroom organization, time management, and teacher wellness. Follow along and learn how to thrive in the classroom and in life.

Subscribe to The Present Teacher Podcast to get inspired by new weekly podcast episodes!

00:00 - Teacher Work-Life Balance

09:17 - Empowering Teachers for Success

WEBVTT

00:00:00.040 --> 00:00:22.352
So a while back, I ran into a comment where someone asked whether or not it was bad or good good or bad to start leaving work on time, and this really got me thinking to when I first started figuring out a way to get my teacher work done in time for me to start leaving at contract time without taking work home.

00:00:22.352 --> 00:00:35.807
And so, as I was reflecting on this, I came up with five things I need to hear as someone who struggled with teacher work-life balance and was on their way to starting to leave work on time as a teacher.

00:00:35.807 --> 00:00:38.173
So, that being said, let's dive in.

00:00:38.173 --> 00:00:42.130
Hey, teacher Bestie, my name is Helena and I'm the creator of the Present Teacher Podcast.

00:00:42.130 --> 00:00:51.774
I'm a first-year teacher coach and in this podcast you are going to learn everything from simple, actionable classroom management, social learning and teacher wellness strategies.

00:00:51.774 --> 00:00:54.143
You know that impact you want to make in the classroom.

00:00:54.143 --> 00:00:55.810
Well, we're going to make it happen here.

00:00:59.840 --> 00:01:04.671
First started teaching, I was one of the first cars there and the last to leave.

00:01:04.671 --> 00:01:13.373
I always had work that I brought home with me, and it seemed like, no matter what I did, my to-do list was endless.

00:01:13.373 --> 00:01:19.010
I could never get it all the way done, and I just completely felt like a failure.

00:01:19.010 --> 00:01:24.588
So much so that by December I was completely exhausted and reached burnout.

00:01:24.588 --> 00:01:31.590
And by May, when my kindergarteners graduated in a moment where I should have felt proud, I felt like a complete failure.

00:01:31.590 --> 00:01:35.225
I felt like I had failed my kids and I had failed myself.

00:01:35.225 --> 00:01:43.186
And while I was so busy trying to get everything done that I felt like I had missed emotionally being there for my kids.

00:01:43.186 --> 00:01:58.829
And at that point I had decided it's either something else it's got to get better or I can't do this anymore, because I didn't want to be a teacher who was constantly drowning in work that I couldn't actually be there to teach.

00:01:58.829 --> 00:02:01.728
So that's when I decided to make a difference.

00:02:01.728 --> 00:02:12.330
Here are the five pieces of advice I would give myself if I was just starting on my journey and if I was struggling with teacher work-life balance.

00:02:12.670 --> 00:02:17.650
And the first one is your worth as a teacher is not measured by how hard you work.

00:02:17.650 --> 00:02:23.431
I'm going to say it again your worth as a teacher is not measured by how hard you work.

00:02:23.431 --> 00:02:35.045
You see, there's this unwritten rule in society, where society really loves to praise the people who work hard, the people who are constantly working, and out-hustle everybody else.

00:02:35.045 --> 00:02:40.240
But the truth of the matter is that hustling isn't always needed.

00:02:40.240 --> 00:02:54.789
In fact, I find the older I get, the more it is needed to work smarter, not harder, and this was something that I really struggled with as a teacher, because I felt like, oh, but if I make things easy and I'm not working hard, then I'm not a good teacher.

00:02:54.789 --> 00:02:56.341
But that's not the truth.

00:02:56.341 --> 00:03:06.420
The fact is, you get to decide what a good teacher is, and for me, my definition of a good teacher was someone who showed up for their kids and made an impact every single day.

00:03:06.420 --> 00:03:13.405
And I had already tried the hustle way, and the reality was that didn't get me any closer to being a good teacher.

00:03:13.405 --> 00:03:18.883
So instead, I started to pivot and ask myself how can I see things differently?

00:03:18.883 --> 00:03:20.225
How can I make this easy?

00:03:20.225 --> 00:03:27.062
And that's when I started to automate things and that helped me get out the door during contract time.

00:03:27.062 --> 00:03:37.710
And the truth of the matter is, when I found a way to do that, it actually made making an impact easier, and being a good teacher, by my definition, was easier.

00:03:37.710 --> 00:03:42.633
So take some time to ask yourself what does a good teacher look like to you?

00:03:42.633 --> 00:03:47.858
Is a good teacher someone who hustles 24-7, or is a good teacher something else.

00:03:47.858 --> 00:03:56.352
From there you can start deciding which way you want to go, but for me, my worth as a teacher doesn't matter how many hours I work.

00:03:56.352 --> 00:04:00.491
It's how I work and how I show up for my kids.

00:04:01.180 --> 00:04:07.110
And a lot of people think, oh, but you know, leaving work on time is as bad.

00:04:07.110 --> 00:04:14.580
But the truth is, what are you going to do with that free time that you're going to have that you're not dedicating to work?

00:04:14.580 --> 00:04:19.310
Are you going to research new strategies to use in the classroom?

00:04:19.310 --> 00:04:25.610
Are you going to sleep in so you show up fully rested or go to bed on time?

00:04:25.610 --> 00:04:36.146
Are you going to go to the gym so you have energy throughout the day, or take care of your body and eat more healthy, nutritious meals so you have energy that sustains throughout the day?

00:04:36.146 --> 00:04:43.591
Are you going to pick up a hobby so you can, you know, have an emotional outlet other than work?

00:04:43.591 --> 00:04:44.774
Are all these things?

00:04:44.774 --> 00:04:48.867
Or spend more time with your family, or start a second business or a business?

00:04:48.867 --> 00:04:55.586
And then, if you make a list of all the things you're going to do with this new time, are any of those things bad?

00:04:55.586 --> 00:04:58.694
No, none of those things are bad.

00:04:58.694 --> 00:05:04.045
So does that mean that leaving work on time and not working so hard as a teacher is bad?

00:05:04.045 --> 00:05:07.209
Mean that leaving work on time and not working so hard as a teacher is bad?

00:05:07.209 --> 00:05:08.149
No, I had chosen.

00:05:08.250 --> 00:05:11.192
I decided to look at things differently.

00:05:11.192 --> 00:05:13.074
I decided that wasn't the truth for me.

00:05:13.074 --> 00:05:23.146
In fact, making my life easier made me a better teacher, because I was able to make a more deeper impact with my kids.

00:05:23.146 --> 00:05:30.971
So again, ask yourself what kind of teacher do I want to be, and which one is going to get me farther or closer to being the teacher I want to be?

00:05:30.971 --> 00:05:36.930
And remind yourself my worth as a teacher is not measured by how much work I get done.

00:05:36.930 --> 00:05:38.432
Teaching gets to be easy.

00:05:38.432 --> 00:05:40.041
Teaching gets to be simple.

00:05:40.041 --> 00:05:41.545
Teaching gets to be fun.

00:05:41.545 --> 00:05:43.048
It gets easier and easier.

00:05:43.048 --> 00:05:44.952
The better it gets, the better it gets.

00:05:44.952 --> 00:05:52.360
I get to make it easy.

00:05:52.360 --> 00:05:53.223
I decide to have an easy teaching career.

00:05:53.223 --> 00:05:54.144
I decide that teaching gets to be easy for me.

00:05:54.144 --> 00:06:03.538
The second piece of advice I wish I would have heard, as a new teacher coming in that struggles with work-life balance, is it's not bad or cheating to make things easier.

00:06:04.540 --> 00:06:07.870
Now, growing up, I can tell you exactly where this came from.

00:06:07.870 --> 00:06:12.285
Growing up, school came easy to me In a weird way.

00:06:12.285 --> 00:06:19.089
I could kind of sense when a teacher was going to say what they were going to say and I knew exactly where the answers were.

00:06:19.089 --> 00:06:25.153
It wasn't necessarily that I memorized the whole book or the whole lesson or anything.

00:06:25.153 --> 00:06:39.184
I just knew exactly which questions teachers were going to ask for understanding before I even knew what that was, and I could tell you where the answers were going to be as we were first reading the content.

00:06:39.826 --> 00:06:47.968
And so, since school came easy to me, I started to feel guilty because that my skills I realized other people didn't have.

00:06:47.968 --> 00:06:51.139
And I started to feel guilty because that my skills I realized other people didn't have.

00:06:51.139 --> 00:06:57.452
And I started to feel guilty or like my skills helped me cheat in some way when it came to school.

00:06:57.452 --> 00:07:06.254
And so I stopped using some of the skills that I naturally had for school to make things easier because I felt like I was cheating.

00:07:06.254 --> 00:07:10.581
But the truth of the matter is it's not cheating to use your skills.

00:07:10.581 --> 00:07:13.047
It's not cheating to make things easier.

00:07:13.047 --> 00:07:17.423
You're not cheating out your kids if you make your life easier.

00:07:17.423 --> 00:07:25.605
If anything, you are making it easier for you to show up emotionally and hold space for them to show up as a teacher you want to be.

00:07:25.605 --> 00:07:34.026
It wasn't cheating for me to use my skills that I could, you know, figure out how teachers taught.

00:07:34.026 --> 00:07:39.201
Essentially, it just gave me more space to fully take in the content.

00:07:39.201 --> 00:07:44.173
Rest assured that if, when the assignment came up, I knew exactly what I needed to say.

00:07:44.173 --> 00:07:49.711
So all that to say it's not bad or cheating if you make things easier.

00:07:49.711 --> 00:07:53.971
It's what I like to refer to as working smarter, not harder.

00:07:54.519 --> 00:07:57.771
So how can you make things easier for yourself?

00:07:57.771 --> 00:08:04.908
How can you make it easier in your classroom so you can show up with confidence and make the impact you are destined to make?

00:08:04.908 --> 00:08:07.021
You are not, you know, giving your kids less to make.

00:08:07.021 --> 00:08:08.824
You are not, you know, giving your kids less.

00:08:08.824 --> 00:08:20.475
Whether you write a lesson plan in an hour, 20 minutes, 10 minutes or five hours, does it change the way you present it to your students?

00:08:20.475 --> 00:08:26.581
No, absolutely not.

00:08:26.581 --> 00:08:29.065
Instead, your students are still going to get the lesson, regardless of how long it takes you.

00:08:29.065 --> 00:08:29.766
The same goes for all your work.

00:08:29.766 --> 00:08:34.261
You are not cheating the system or cheating the kids or cheating the teacher next door if you make things easy.

00:08:34.261 --> 00:08:42.287
If anything, you are showing them what's possible and you are showing up and have space to show up as the teacher you were meant to be.

00:08:42.948 --> 00:08:46.885
So remind yourself that I am not cheating by making things easier.

00:08:46.885 --> 00:08:48.932
I am working smarter, not harder.

00:08:48.932 --> 00:08:51.642
I decide that things get to be easy for me.

00:08:51.642 --> 00:08:53.966
I decide that teaching gets to be easy for me.

00:08:53.966 --> 00:08:58.423
I decide to look for ways that make teaching easier for me.

00:08:58.423 --> 00:09:00.086
I decide it gets to be easy.

00:09:00.086 --> 00:09:06.466
I am watching for those ways to make teaching easier to come to me, because those days are mine.

00:09:06.466 --> 00:09:11.982
I decide how teaching goes for me and I decide to work smarter, not harder.

00:09:11.982 --> 00:09:17.234
The third lesson I wish I would have known is that it gets to be easier.

00:09:17.879 --> 00:09:29.551
So one thing that is really hard to fathom is when I started teaching, I didn't really know that there was a way to make things easier.

00:09:29.551 --> 00:09:42.628
I just kind of assumed that teaching always had to be hard, especially with all of the people on social media talking about how hard teaching had to be and always was, and how it wasn't getting easier for them.

00:09:42.628 --> 00:09:45.259
I took that truth as face value.

00:09:45.259 --> 00:09:50.803
But the truth of the matter is you get to decide how teaching goes for you, and it gets to be easier.

00:09:50.803 --> 00:10:04.682
And when you see teachers in your building or online, who are leaving at contract time, instead of using their ways as a way to point out how you're lacking and you're not there yet and what's wrong with you.

00:10:05.462 --> 00:10:19.022
I want to invite you to transition your mindset into thinking on how you can see things differently and look at it as instead look at it as motivation and inspiration of where you get to go.

00:10:19.022 --> 00:10:23.272
If they started where I was and now they are there, that means I get to be there too.

00:10:23.272 --> 00:10:33.388
So it gets to be easier, and the only difference between you and an experienced teacher is that they've had more time to figure out what's worked for them.

00:10:33.388 --> 00:10:35.847
The easier it gets, the easier it gets.

00:10:35.847 --> 00:10:37.868
The faster you get, the faster you get.

00:10:37.868 --> 00:10:40.788
The longer you teach, the easier it gets.

00:10:40.788 --> 00:10:58.426
While you are in your second, third, fourth, fifth year, you can use resources and models and strategies and frameworks all of these things you can use to make your life easier in the upcoming years, and you get to build off of that until it eventually becomes automatic to you.

00:10:58.426 --> 00:11:01.393
So let this be your reminder it gets to be easier.

00:11:01.393 --> 00:11:03.384
The better it gets, the better it gets.

00:11:03.384 --> 00:11:05.386
The easier it gets, the easier it gets.

00:11:05.386 --> 00:11:08.373
I decide that teaching gets to be easy.

00:11:08.373 --> 00:11:10.918
I decide to make teaching easier.

00:11:10.918 --> 00:11:18.480
Every single year, every single week, I decide to use what I've learned to help me make my life easier.

00:11:19.583 --> 00:11:39.162
The fourth piece of advice I wish I would have heard, as someone who struggled with work or life balance, is the experts started exactly where you are Now I know I just talked about this often get to where they are now because they struggled with where they are or what that one thing was.

00:11:39.162 --> 00:11:51.701
So, for example, you heard my story where I really struggled with teacher work-life balance and now I've learned what works for me and I get to share what I know online with the community.

00:11:51.701 --> 00:12:12.770
I interviewed Brittany Blackwell from Teaching Mind, body and Soul and if you listen to her interview where we are talking, she shares how she actually struggled with work-life balance as a special education teacher and, after figuring out what worked best for her, she now shares with thousands of teachers online how it works for her.

00:12:12.770 --> 00:12:16.149
Oftentimes that teacher next door same thing.

00:12:16.149 --> 00:12:24.802
There's a small fraction of teachers that become experts because they do, but the truth of the matter is many of them became experts because they struggled.

00:12:24.802 --> 00:12:35.506
So instead of using where teachers are now as a you know, lack of, like I said, use that as inspiration of where you get to go.

00:12:36.208 --> 00:12:43.341
The fifth piece of advice I wish I would have got, as someone who struggled with work-life balance, is you decide how teaching is going to go for you.

00:12:43.341 --> 00:12:48.081
If you decide that teaching is going to be hard for you, then teaching is going to be hard for you.

00:12:48.081 --> 00:13:04.590
But if you decide that teaching is going to be easy for you, and you are watching for ways to make teaching easier in ways that are aligned to you, in ways that don't feel like you're cheating the system, then those opportunities are going to show up.

00:13:04.590 --> 00:13:12.691
Whatever you decide is what often happens, and this is a whole layer of manifestation here that we could talk about.

00:13:12.691 --> 00:13:31.760
But I honestly believe that the universe God, whatever you believe in is constantly guiding us towards living the life we want to live, and the more we lean into what we want to do and we desire to do, I like to think of those as little nudges towards living the life we want to live.

00:13:31.760 --> 00:13:36.570
So, however you decide to live, your life is how it's going to be.

00:13:36.649 --> 00:13:39.394
So ask yourself how do I want teaching to be?

00:13:39.394 --> 00:13:44.903
What does a typical school day look like for me In a perfect world.

00:13:44.903 --> 00:13:50.004
What does a perfect school day look like for me and what can I do right now?

00:13:50.004 --> 00:13:53.952
Or what do I feel called to do right now to help me get to where I want to be?

00:13:53.952 --> 00:13:56.008
The easier it gets, the easier it gets.

00:13:56.008 --> 00:13:57.988
I decide to make teaching easier.

00:13:57.988 --> 00:14:00.207
I decide teaching gets to be easy for me.

00:14:00.207 --> 00:14:13.109
I decide to look for ways that make teaching easier and easier for me and for me to get more faster so I can show up as the teacher I was meant to be and make the impact I was destined for.

00:14:13.109 --> 00:14:21.611
So that wraps up how the five pieces of advice I wish I would have gotten as someone who really struggled with teacher work-life balance.

00:14:21.913 --> 00:14:35.133
If you found this useful, I would really appreciate if you could subscribe or leave a review or send me a screenshot of you tuning into this week's content so that we can share this content with more teachers who need to hear.

00:14:35.133 --> 00:14:42.048
And if you want to take this a step further, I want to invite you to check out the Ultimate First Year Teacher Guide.

00:14:42.048 --> 00:14:53.006
This guide shares all the questions I get in regards to working as a first or new teacher and the systems I use in the classroom to help me get out the door faster.

00:14:53.006 --> 00:14:59.562
And if you want to take it a step further, I am putting together the Present Teacher Circle.

00:14:59.562 --> 00:15:07.846
So the Present Teacher Circle is a community where we learn about the different systems to put your classroom on autopilot.

00:15:07.846 --> 00:15:29.331
I share behind the scenes on what it looks like to have my classroom management running on autopilot and things like lesson planning, parent communication or communication in general, prepping, grading all of those things and how I put it on automatic or I automate those so I don't have to think about it and I could start leaving work on time.

00:15:29.331 --> 00:15:36.301
So if you want to check this out further, make sure to grab the link in the description below to find out more.

00:15:36.301 --> 00:15:39.926
As always, remember we are stronger together and I will see you in the next one.

00:15:39.966 --> 00:15:41.350
Teacher bestie, bye.

00:15:41.350 --> 00:15:48.386
Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode.

00:15:48.386 --> 00:15:54.716
I hope that you were able to take away some value that will help you thrive inside and out of the classroom.

00:15:54.716 --> 00:16:00.173
It would mean the world to me if you could take five seconds righ now and leave a review on this podcast.

00:16:00.173 --> 00:16:10.585
And if you found this podcast especially helpful, make sure to take a screenshot of this episode right now and tag me on your socials to let me know you're listening as always.

00:16:10.585 --> 00:16:13.701
Remember that we are stronger together, with all the love in the world.

00:16:13.701 --> 00:16:17.392
Helena, aka the Present Teacher, see you next time, teacher Bestie.