One of the key ways to avoid teacher overwhelm is to be proactive about managing your schedule. We all expected to spend time lesson planning, teaching, grading papers and participating in parent conferences. But it can often feel like these duties are barely scratching the surface of all of the demands on our time. We participate in yard and after school duty to ensure the safety of students, faculty and union meetings, meetings with parents, counselors, nurses and psychologists and other professionals to set up special education or behavioral plans (along with completing all of the paperwork that goes along with this), professional development training, back to school nights, open house, science fairs and fundraising events. It’s no surprise that “teaching” often seems the least of what we do. And that’s before you consider the array of “adjunct” duties that most teaching professionals participate in such as tutoring, homework club, sports programs, performing arts programs, task forces for curriculum development and evaluation, fundraising (again). The list goes on and on. Let’s be honest. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.
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Being overcommitted and constantly feeling like we don’t have enough time or energy to adequately fulfill all of our obligations is very stressful and one of the key causes of teacher overwhelm. Educators list it as one of the main contributors to teacher burnout. Unfortunately, many schools have a culture that silently values a teacher who “does” more, volunteers more, heads up more programs and committees as somehow being a “better teacher.” The reality in many cases, however, is that teachers who are over committed to activities outside the classroom end up being exhausted, stressed, less patient with students, often resentful of the demands made of them. Ultimately, this makes them less effective at the one thing they should be focusing on the most – giving the best of their time and energy to the students assigned to them.
Here’s the reality. Administrators, colleagues and parents are all “spread thin.” Everyone wants the best for our students, and to provide them with the most opportunities to be successful and enriched as possible. Well-intentioned people will continuously make demands on our time, not because they are lazy, but because there is so much that needs to be done, and resources are limited. As professionals, we need to take proactively take control of our schedules. We need to prioritize extra duties that we take on and limit them so that we don’t end up being spread too thin ourselves, as well as exhausted, miserable and ultimately ineffective. But how?
Here are some tips to help you reclaim your schedule (and your sanity) and avoid teacher overwhelm.
Limit/Reduce Extra Duties You Sign Up For
When selecting adjunct duties to volunteer for, make sure that you focus on those that you have a genuine passion, interest or talent for or the activities that will reap the highest reward for your students. For example, if you love a particular sport, then volunteering to coach that sport is a good match for you. Committees that focus directly on student success, such as Study Study Teams will be a more rewarding way to spend time than committees such as curriculum mapping (unless that’s your passion!)
Another criteria for you to consider is whom else is involved in the activity or committee. Your time is at a premium. We can’t always control the people we get to work with. But if we are volunteering for extra duties, we should gravitate to ones where we will get to work with positive, upbeat and fun people, not people who drain our energy and focus on problems and complaining, rather than solutions.
Get Comfortable with Graciously Declining
Teaching is a “helping” profession, and being accommodating and wanting to please is second nature for most of us. Many times we get asked, often by people we report to, to participate in extra activities. Again, it will be harder to decline those requests that directly benefit students. But we need to get comfortable saying, “Thanks for thinking of me, but I’m unable to help you at this time. Good luck with the project!” You don’t need to apologize or give a reason.
I understand that this can be uncomfortable for many of us. But a few moments of awkwardness are a small price to pay when compared to months or even a year of being committed to something that doesn’t interest us. If you are taken by surprise by someone’s request, or if you also just need to buy yourself some time or prefer to decline in writing (an e-mail or text, as appropriate) you can use the phrase, “Thanks for thinking about me. Let me give the matter some thought and get back to you,” or, “Let me check my other commitments and get back to you.” The important thing with this strategy is that, to be respectful and professional, you do need to get back to the person promptly, and not just keep avoiding them hoping they will get the hint that you’re not interested or that they will forget that they asked you.
Establish Boundaries with Parents
As teachers are we are professionals. No one would just show up at a doctor’s or a lawyer’s office and just expect to be seen without an appointment, yet we allow parents to do this to us all of the time. We need to set reasonable expectations with parents at the beginning of the year as to the most appropriate and convenient way to communicate with us. Most parents don’t realize that just because the final bell rings, it does not mean that we are immediately available to meet with them. Most teachers have some sort of after-school duty or commitments, or already have meetings scheduled. Naturally, sometimes emergency situations come up, where we need to accommodate parent requests on the spot. But being “too accommodating” is a slippery slope. The first time you respond to parent e-mails (or texts!) from home or drop everything to put together “missing work” or independent studies with little or no notice, you have started a precedent not only with that parent but with others that hear about it. I recommend sharing your communication protocol at the beginning of the year and sticking to it as consistently as is reasonable.
Make the Best Use of Your Prep Time
If you are lucky enough to have a prep period, make the most of it. If you are focused, you can get a lot done in even 20 minutes of uninterrupted time. To make the most of prep time, you need to be disciplined. Don’t let bad habits such as checking social media or wasting time with chatty or needy co-workers cut into your prep time. These things might seem like they are “relaxing” and needed to help us decompress a little. But the reality is that being “caught up” on entering grades, responding to work e-mails and lesson planning will be ultimately more helpful to our stress level if it means we will feel less overwhelmed and not have to cart all kinds of work home with us. Prep time can still be relaxing “me” time if we turn on some classical music, and revel in how lovely it is not to be interrupted or to have to talk or manage behavior for a few minutes. I have a productivity timer app on my phone that is set for 25 minutes of focused work and a 5-minute break. Research shows that this is the optimal amount of time for maximum productivity. Most apps are free. Just look for something like Focus Keeper or Productivity Tracker if you are interested in checking one out.
Remember the School/Life Balance Wheel
In the Workbook for Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers, you will find a blank version of the School/Life Balance Wheel. It is a handy tool to help you identify areas of your life that might be out if balance. When all areas of our life such as health, family, fun, social relationships, finances, purpose and personal growth are getting adequate attention, we are more balanced, grounded, satisfied, and ultimately more effective as teachers and people. You don’t need to have read the book to get immediate benefit from the exercise. If you would like a free copy of the Workbook to download just e-mail me (see “contact” in the menu).
It’s especially important to update this Wheel at the beginning of the school year when we are typically bombarded with requests to sign up for adjunct duties. Completing the Wheel can help us realize that every time we say “yes” to a new request at school, we will ultimately have to say “no” to some other area of our life that might need attention. Our time and energy are finite resources, and we have to get comfortable with weighing demands made of us against other priorities in our lives.
Honor Your Commitments to Yourself
Most teachers are very reliable. We take pride in following through on all of the commitments we make to students, parents, colleagues, and supervisors. For many of us, putting our own needs last seems natural and acceptable, or has become merely a bad habit. To avoid burn-out, we need to take responsibility for meeting our individual needs. If we tell ourselves we are going to get to the gym or take a fun class that has nothing to do with school or children, we need to honor that commitment. We need to schedule it on our calendar and follow through just as if it were a parent meeting or a doctor’s appointment. Just like on the airplane when they tell the passengers to put on their own oxygen mask before trying to help anyone else, we need to make our mental health and energy level a priority. If we are stressed and exhausted, we are not only miserable, but we are unable to deliver to our students and our families what they need and deserve from us. Taking care of ourselves is not selfish, it’s mission critical.
To summarize, teaching can be fun and rewarding but takes an enormous amount of energy and commitment. To make sure that we deliver the best of ourselves to our students and to be most effective, we need to manage demands made on our time proactively. Being overextended leads to exhaustion, resentment and burn out. Nobody wants to be that teacher!
I hope you use these tips to reclaim your schedule today – it will really help you avoid teacher overwhelm. Feel free to leave comments or add any of your own suggestions below. I read every comment, and they help your fellow teachers.
