I have a weakness. It is finding balance in my life. There are 14 school days left in the year, and I am using this to justify the long days at school, the weekends filled with work, and hours spent in front of my laptop. However, there is always an excuse for me; the time of year rarely matters.
But you know what? I shouldn’t think this is okay. Our profession should not place demands on us that require almost as many hours working outside the classroom as we spend inside the classroom. Now, I know not all teachers spend hour upon hour a week working, but I think most, if not all, of the great ones do. Why? Because we care about our students, our profession, and the world.
In the process of caring so much, we forget about someone very important in our classroom.
Ourselves.
We neglect balance in our lives and justify it because we are working with kids and impacting the future. I am the worst at this. I generally start a year with some semblance of balance, but as the year progresses, I become more and more unbalanced. By the time I reach this point of the year, my entire life is school, and I have lost all sense of balance.
This summer, my goal will be to find balance and to establish a plan to maintain balance throughout the school year. I need to find balance between what happens inside of school and what I need to do outside (like take care of me, my husband, my dog, my cats, my house, etc.) Will it be easy? No. Do I always manage my time well? No. Is there a huge room for improvement? Absolutely.
How do you find balance?
Note: I wrote about a similar topic a month ago, so obviously this is a huge weakness for me! Just Breathe