Therapy Thursday

How To Make Your Educator Life Easier

According to a recent article posted by classcraft.com, the top challenges that educators faced in 2022 and most likely into 2023 are as follows:

Parental support
Behavior management
Lack of effective communication
Too much administrative work
Balancing different learning styles
Changing in educational trends and technology

That is a large burden to carry! To learn more about how to manage these, click here.

In addition to our work responsibilities, we have to balance our personal and home life as well. When I first started teaching, my classroom practices were not a good example of how to balance work and personal life. As the years went by, I learned better management skills. We can all agree that finding a balance can become overwhelming. Here are three tips that helped me save time and lower my stress levels.

Save Time By Cooking in the Instapot or Crockpot:

Tired of fast food and cereal or even microwaved meals? Need a home-cooked meal. An easy way to do this is to cook meals in the crockpot. Don’t forget to put in a liner so it is easy to clean or it will defeat the purpose. You can feed yourself for many days or a small family for a couple of meals if you plan accordingly. This will require very little prep, inexpensive ingredients, simple recipes, and less cleaning. Start your first meal by adding meat and vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, green beans, etc. (extra vegetables or rice if you are vegan or vegetarian). Cook for eight hours on low if in the crockpot and 1.5 hours in the Instapot. Vary your meals: stuffed potatoes, stews, all meats and vegetables, and soups can be prepared this way. Just throw it in and cook with ease. This will save time that you would normally use to cook over the stove or in the oven. Eating healthy is important for your body to be able to handle stress.

Put Processes into Place for Chores:

Load the dishwasher in the morning so you have clean dishes at night or as in our house, we run the dishwasher at night and put the dishes up in the morning so we don’t have to face it when we get home at the end of the day. Do one load of laundry a day and set one chore a day to complete so it doesn’t pile up; save your weekends for something you enjoy. Spread the tasks throughout the week. If you have early elementary- to high-school-aged kids (5 grade or older), teach them to wash and fold their clothes or have them do other chores around the house, teaching them life skills and self-reliance.

Limit the Time You Spend Working Outside of Your Work Hours:

We all know that one hour a day, if that, which most school districts provide teachers for planning, prepping, grading, etc. is simply not nearly enough time we need to get our work completed. Most of us are taking hours of work home with us. Working outside of contract hours has always been par for the course when it comes to the classroom. We all expect to work outside contract hours, but we often find that we are neglecting our personal life to meet the expectation in the classroom. At one time, I easily worked 80-hour weeks. I walked into my classroom at 6:45am to prep for the day. By 3pm, I was headed out the door with a bag full of papers and hands full of projects to grade. Here is what I learned over the years:

❶ Choose what is important to grade; not everything has to be graded.

❷ Set a timer for how long you will allow yourself to work at home. Stop when the timer goes off.

❸ Multitask and grade papers while watching the movie you have been wanting to see.

❹ Let go of your perfectionism, not everything has to be PERFECT, even though our systems often push us to perfection. We are not perfect. We are human.

❺ Find thirty minutes to an hour to do something for yourself; I call it decompressing from the day. Listen to music, dance in your living room, exercise, watch your favorite show, or take nap because we are all tired! — whatever brings you happiness.

❻ Find ways to stay organized in your classroom and stay on task: Set aside 10-15 minutes a day to answer parent emails. Prep for the next day’s classes before you leave for the day so you aren’t in competition for the copier the next morning. One way I kept students from claiming they turned in papers when they didn’t, was to color-coordinate my classes. First period was assigned red, second period was orange, third period was yellow, and so on. When they turned in their papers, I would hold up the colored folder—whether red, orange, yellow, etc —and show them I was placing a folder-sized rubber band around it horizontally and another vertically so there would be no way for them to fall out. I rarely had an issue with students claiming they submitted their work when they didn’t because they knew my system. This saved me time looking for students’ papers that “went missing.” Color coding your systems can save you headaches.

❼ Teach students to clean up after themselves. No, it’s not the custodians’ job to pick up after them, and no, it’s not your job; it is their job. They make the mess; they clean it up. Again, life skills! Have the last set of students, if you have desks and chairs, place the chairs on the table. Give them 3 minutes before the bell to clean up; set a timer. If their area is clean, they may exit the classroom. This will save you time after school cleaning up your room.

❽ Identify your priorities. What are the “MUST-DOs?” What MUST get completed for this week for your classes and what MUST be completed at home such as bills. Let’s be honest with ourselves, with the load we carry, not everything is going to get completed on your list. Just mark out or take out tasks you know you will never get to. Set realistic expectations for yourself.

❾ Get enough sleep. Set a time to go to sleep and stick to it. Eight hours is suggested. You may feel like you can function on less, but rest is very important to be at your best performance.

I hope these 3 simple tips I have learned while teaching can help you save time.

As teachers, we are often overworked and pulled in too many directions. We often put others before ourselves and it is hard to learn to take care of ourselves. Addressing mental health is part of self-care for our minds, bodies, and souls. Remember, if your cup is empty, you can’t fill someone else’s cup. Here are 27 FREE COUNSELING OPTIONS FOR

TEACHERS https://www.weareteachers.com/free-counseling-for-teachers/

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