We teachers need to sustain our energy and wellbeing day after day, week after week and term after term for the entire school year. Teaching is a customer-facing job. You are the leader, the conductor, the trainer, the sage on stage, the guide by the side. This is physically and emotionally demanding, and if you don’t get yourself classroom-fit you will burn out.
You can’t hide away behind a laptop or in an office cubicle. You can’t have long lunches or pop out of the office for a massage. You can’t just switch off. You can’t have a quiet day, a lazy day or a cruisy Monday after a big weekend. You must bring your best self every day. If you don’t, the kids will make it a living hell for you. Sure, we all have days where we are tired or grappling with illness, tragic news or family complications. We need to develop a few coping mechanisms so that when these things occur we can get ourselves back on track as with as little difficulty as possible.
So what can you do?
Develop a baseline of physical fitness. Teaching is an active job. Yes, it’s not digging holes, building fences or laying tiles. But you will be moving around a campus and a classroom. You will be on playground duty. You will be constantly using your voice and body to communicate. You will be talking to a variety of people. You will be carrying textbooks, laptops and resources. You will be going to meetings, planning lessons and marking assessment. You might be coaching a sporting team, have an event to attend in the evening or even a weekend school commitment or camp. On most days you’ll get approximately 10 to 15 minutes of lunchtime to yourself. This occurs daily for at least 40 weeks of the year, and those other weeks are set aside for professional development, planning, research, stocktaking, course-building and so forth.
This means that you have to look after yourself physically with exercise that includes both cardio and strength training. It will sustain you, give you strength and confidence, and make you feel better about yourself. Having a decent level of physical fitness means you won’t fall asleep on the couch exhausted every night at 7.30pm. It means you won’t hit that wall in Week 8 of a 10-week term. It means you’ll still be strong in Lesson 6 on a Friday afternoon, when you find yourself in front of 25 Year 9 kids who want that lesson to go quicker than you do.
So how much physical fitness do you need? Here is a rule of thumb: can you do a single push-up? I don’t mean on your knees, or with your bum sticking up in the air. I mean a full push-up. Can you walk up a single flight of stairs without puffing, feeling a burning sensation in your quads or needing to stop at the top to catch your breath? If you said no to one or both of these then you have a bit of work to do. Walking, running, aerobics, weight lifting, Pilates, swimming, tennis, touch football, soccer, it all counts. Get some exercise at least a few times per week. Please note that the following pursuits do not classify as exercise for the purposes of the teaching profession: lawn bowls, darts, gardening, archery, shopping or pub crawls.
You also have to switch off. Teachers take stuff home all the time. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, especially around heavy marking and reporting periods. But if you don’t find a way to switch off, the classroom will remain in your head every waking minute. Sometimes it will creep into your dreams. You’ll wake up exhausted. So what can you do? Find something that fills your bucket. I’m not here to talk about anything too deep and complicated, and you won’t find yourself in the lotus position humming something unintelligible with me.
Here are three things that I find helpful, and that I know have worked for others.
Friends and family: not a great surprise, I know. But I’d like to suggest something apart from the obvious point that friends and family provide emotional support. It’s simply important to have people to spend time and have fun with so that work does not become your only point of social contact. You need the opportunity to do things apart from lesson planning and teaching! Friends and family give you a purpose outside of work, and you can plan enjoyable things to do together that will sustain you when you are mid-term. They give you something to look forward to.
Hobbies and other interests: again, apart from the obvious need to do things that feed your soul, I’ll share something else that gives me some sanity. Every school holiday I’ll put some time aside to do house renovations. Nothing huge, as I don’t have great handyman skills or even great workmanship. Generally it’s painting: walls, fences, ceilings, carports, even floors. If it’s flat and stays still long enough, it gets painted. I don’t need to think too much, I don’t need to talk too much, I don’t have too many decisions to make, it’s a little bit physical and active, and I can have the cricket on the radio playing in the background. Wonderful stuff.
I recently read about something recently called an ‘opposite world’. It’s the thing that a person does in their free time that is completely different to their work. For instance, my friend is an accountant. It pays the bills but he finds it mind-numbing. His true passion is marathon running. He travels all over the country going on running staycations.
Alone time: a teacher will talk and interact with people all day, make thousands of decisions and respond to thousands of questions. It can be draining. You need to recharge, and you’ll benefit from some time alone to do so. That might mean reading a book, going on a hike, hitting the gym, doing some renovation jobs, going on a road trip, binging on the latest TV series. Whatever it is for you, try to find some of it.
Cut a few corners
Here are eight little tips to help you throughout the school year:
- The more planning and front-ending that you can do, the greater your ability to weather the storms of the school year and your own personal life.
- If you have an LMS (Learning Management System), upload videos and links ahead of time so they’ll be ready to go when needed.
- Don’t be a loner. Build your networks at school, you’ll need them.
- Thinking outside the ordinary teaching box to build the capacity of your kids. Routines are wonderful. So are extra resources at the ready in your room.
- Get your classroom set up the way you need and want it. You might be sharing a few classrooms with other teachers, so collaborating with them on desk positioning will save you time and reduce your anxiety.
- Use your wall space. Put up class rules, academic reminders or prompts for the kids to ask themselves when they finish a task instead of pestering you. Displaying the class rules on the wall means that you can draw attention to them as a simple behaviour-management strategy when needed.
- You might need some time-fillers for a host of reasons. Have board games, simple art tasks and brain teasers ready to go. Do not revert to screening a movie via your preferred streaming service.
- Prior planning prevents poor performance. Remembering this mantra will help you to cut a few corners to preserve your sanity. Plan for when you may need it the most, because tough moments will come for you at some point in the year.