Finding a balance

Although you may enter the world of teaching bright eyed and bushy tailed, be warned that this feeling will not last long. Not in the slightest. You will learn very quickly that an infinite to do list is real and teaching is a never-ending pursuit. Soon after starting, you will almost definitely find yourself feeling entirely overwhelmed, and quite possibly consider packing it all in. I don’t say this to deter you from training to teach, nor do I say it in jest. I say this merely to warn you, for your own sanity, to find a balance!

Every trainee’s centre of balance will look entirely different, it is a completely unique set of practices that help keep you sane even in the most trying of times. Nonetheless, I have compiled a list of tips that might guide you in your time of need.

1. Take a day off. It is incredibly tempting as a trainee, and indeed as a teacher, to work seven days a week. Often, weeknights will consist of planning and resourcing for the next day’s lessons or frantically marking books that should have been done sometime the week before. Weekends will often involve planning for the week ahead, marking those books that you still haven’t managed to do even though two weeks have now gone by and a work scrutiny is just around the corner. Not to mention, of course, that on top of this you have your other trainee teacher workload: the PGCE assignments, the teaching standards evidence and the abundance of bureaucratic paperwork you need to fill out. You need a day off. I have begun taking Friday night and the whole of Saturday off – that’s a whole day and a half, practically a holiday! Force yourself to switch off if you must, but do not work on your day off.
2. Handle the holidays. In all honesty, if you joined teaching for the school holidays, just leave now! No matter how many of your friends and family members carry the misconception that teachers get 14 weeks of paid holiday a year and that life must be oh so relaxed for us, by October half term you will understand why teachers absolutely need those holidays. Your to do list for each and every school holiday may look something like: marking and grading end of unit assessments, planning entire schemes of work, seeing the aforementioned friends and family that you have completely forgotten existed for the past six weeks and everything else that has lingered on your to do list since the start of term. As a trainee, I find myself spending at least four days of every school holiday on work. I try to get most of these days out of the way immediately, forcing myself to wake up at my normal, excruciating term time hour of 5am and spending the entirety of these days catching up on work. Then all but the last day of the school holiday are how they should be, relaxing! The last day, then, is the time to frantically realise that you left more than a few items off your to do list and run around like a headless chicken trying to get things done.
3. Hire a cleaner, if you can afford to. It’s no laughing matter that teachers get paid peanuts and that trainee bursaries are absolutely ridiculous (except for maths and science trainees – those guys are minted!), so I completely understand that parting with any of the little money that you have managed to salvage is painful. That being said, the last thing you want when you are so stressed and busy that you can’t remember what day of the week it is, and your hair is falling out in clumps, is to be on all fours scrubbing the bathroom floor! Therefore, if you can afford the luxury, paying a cleaner to handle that takes a massive weight off your heavily burdened shoulders.
4. Do not ever expect to finish your to do list. Take this incredibly impractical expectation out of your mind and you might just survive this year, and the next 40 too. Your to do list will go on and on and on until the end of time. The key is figuring out where to put a line under it for the day. Just get the things done for the next day, the important ones, the ones that will end the world if they’re not done (lol joke, nothing will bring an end to the world, go to bed and stop staying up until the crack of dawn trying to finish everything; you optimistic twit).
5. Have a switch off time. Mine is 8pm. After 8pm on any given school night, no school work will be conducted at all. While this does mean that for the hour leading up to switch off time I am frenetically trying to organise myself for the next day, the benefits of having real wind down time before bed far outweigh this stressful hour.
6. If you have children, prioritise them. By all accounts this is easier said than done, but it is essential. Yes, you may have to sacrifice some time with your children in order to complete your training year, but ultimately, they should continue to be your number one. Emergencies involving your children are way more important than staying in school to teach your year 9s, and even the hardest hearted of mentors will understand that. Likewise attending your children’s parents’ evenings is more important than staying late at school to do some printing that you could get done during tomorrow’s break – or not. That day and a half you’ve taken off work every week – make the most of it and spend time with your children. If you have the option, enlist the support of family and friends to help with your children this year; school drop offs and pick ups especially, that way, the time you do get with them will be cherished and meaningful!