How to Find Your Ideal Work-Life Balance As a Teacher Working Flexibly in Education
By: April Brown
In the early stages of my educational career, it wasn’t uncommon for me to pull 10-12 hour days while teaching full-time in the classroom. Work-life balance as a teacher sometimes feels basically impossible.
But after welcoming our daughter in 2016, it was apparent that something had to shift. Thankfully, I found the Beyond the Classroom course and began using my educational expertise to land a variety of flexible jobs in education.
Since starting my family, one of my goals has always been to prioritize our time together and my well-being. This past January, I gave birth to our second daughter, and I knew it was time to reassess my work-life balance once again. It’s a constant work in progress!
Whether you’ve successfully transitioned to working beyond the classroom or are currently in the process, it’s important to find your ideal daily rhythm by tuning into your needs. And just like everything in life, your needs change as you grow and new responsibilities or aspirations emerge.
Four Steps to Better Work-Life Balance as a Teacher
As we approach a new year, it’s the perfect time to reflect on your ideal work-life balance as a teacher working flexibly in education. Here are four tips to get started:
Check in with your emotions.
What if instead of looking forward to the end of the work day, your work was integrated into your life so well that it inspired and propelled you forward?
Checking in with your emotions is the perfect way to start cultivating the life that you dream about and improve your work-life balance as a teacher (or former teacher).
Take a simple quiz to assess your happiness at work or reflect on the following work-life balance questions:
When you think about your job, what feelings come up?
If you are experiencing challenging emotions, can you pinpoint the reason why?
Do you feel underappreciated? Underpaid? Like your work isn’t aligned with your values?
How do you feel about the colleagues you work with? Do you have a solid support system?
Are you able to complete your work during work hours? If not, what gets in the way (e.g., unrealistic deadlines, confusion, off-the-clock work expectations)?
Conduct a whole self assessment.
Once you’ve allowed your emotions to flow freely, print out or fill out the Whole Self Assessment. You may decide to fill it out in one sitting if your ideas are flowing freely, or another option is to dedicate a few ten-minute sessions throughout the week.
Stepping away and coming back to the assessment might support you in becoming more aware of your needs. Notice any patterns you see in your writing.
For example, are you doing well in certain areas of your life, but struggling in others? How does work optimize or minimize your ability to spend time with family and friends? Or spend time in nature?
Reflecting on these questions can support you in figuring out how to reprioritize your workflow so you can tap into the areas you are neglecting. Truly improving work-life balance as a teacher often requires this kind of self-reflection, whether you’re working in a classroom or in flexible jobs in education.
Map your week.
Get out a piece of paper or open a blank document on your computer. Create sections for Monday through Sunday and map out a typical week. This is one of my favorite work life balance tips because it really forces you to think about what you want your schedule to look like.
Reflect on questions such as:
What are your mornings, afternoons, and evenings like?
Which days feel overwhelming?
Which days provide opportunities for pause and spaciousness?
What days are your favorite? Why? What types of meetings, activities, and creative rituals do you partake in on those days?
Once you’ve completed your map, try to identify pain points. For example, are you trying to take Friday afternoons off but all of your instructional coaching clients book calls on Fridays? Do you find you end up completing curriculum or writing projects in the evenings when your brain is totally fried after a busy day of work, kids, and household duties?
Jot down all of the pain points that come to mind and don’t hold back!
Reprioritize and take action.
The final step of the process to improve work-life balance as a teacher working flexibly is to spend some time mapping your ideal weekly flow. Create another blank slate of your week, but this time, utilize the strategies below to reprioritize your time.
Utilize flexible time blocking. This strategy allows you to carve out specific times during your week to work on different tasks. For example, everyday from 1-3pm might be dedicated to taking coaching calls. Alternatively, you may wake up early in the morning to partake in an exercise routine. The beauty of time blocking is that you can be flexible with it and change things around as needed. Each day can be different and it’s up to you to find what works!
Get rid of the extras. It’s important to assess the tasks that can be delegated to someone else. For example, handing over image creation to a colleague whose expertise is graphic design can add three extra hours to your week. Alternatively, older children and partners can help with various household duties. Reflect on the following questions:
What tasks can I skip?
What tasks can I spend less time on?
What tasks can I get rid of completely?
Set boundaries. Everyone is comfortable with different boundaries, and it’s important to tune into what works best for you. Reflect on the beginning and end of your work day, what time you will stop answering emails, and whether or not to give employers and clients your phone number. Limiting social media use and deleting specific work-related apps on your phone are other ways to prioritize your life away from work. When you’re working flexibly as an educator, setting boundaries becomes one of the most important parts of shaping your work-life balance.
Why Work-Life Balance As a Teacher Working Flexibly Isn’t Always Easy
If you’re like me, you probably thought that leaving the classroom and working freelance jobs in education would magically fix your work-life balance problems. You probably also discovered that it wasn’t actually that simple.
Whether you’re working contract jobs in education, such as freelance curriculum development or education writing, or you’ve started your own education business, work-life balance for entrepreneurs can be really challenging.
If you’ve used these tips to explore your ideal work-life balance and are still struggling to create the freedom and flexibility you’ve been looking for, finding a community of like minded educators can help.
Explore the Beyond the Classroom course and join our growing community of teachers, former teachers and passionate educators making an impact in countless ways. Get support to leave the classroom, get flexible jobs or grow a business.
Check out more resources about work life balance:
https://www.chalk.com/resources/tips-for-work-life-balance/
https://hbr.org/2021/01/work-life-balance-is-a-cycle-not-an-achievement
https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/work-life-balance#make-sure-to-clock-off
About The Author
April Brown (M.Ed) is Educator Forever’s community facilitator and a curriculum coach for the Curriculum Development Foundations program. In 2015, April began designing curriculum and writing articles for an EdTech company as a side gig while she was teaching in Placencia, Belize. After having her daughter in 2016, April was eager to use her unique experience teaching and leading in mainstream and alternative settings in the United States and internationally to work remotely while still making a difference in education.
The Beyond the Classroom course empowered April to leverage her skills as a compassionate disruptor and out-of-the-box thinker to excel as an instructional/well-being coach, adjunct instructor of a Trauma Supportive Schools course, curriculum developer, and writer for publications such as PBS SoCal, Education.com, and Britannica for Parents. April is an advocate for teachers and students – inside and outside of the classroom. You can find April in rural Vermont spending time with her husband, two beautiful daughters, and charming rottweilers.