Work-Life Balance

You can’t do a good job if your job is all you do! 

This blog post is about a topic I feel very strongly about. Mental health and wellbeing are as important as physical health, and having a good work-life balance is something that can dramatically improve your happiness levels!

Working 5 days a week

When I was a teacher in Germany, I worked full-time from Monday to Friday so achieved a work-life balance by ensuring I never took ANY marking home. In the early days of my teaching career, this was physically impossible, but as I became more efficient, I was able to achieve this goal. To any teachers reading this who feel as though they are drowning in admin and paperwork, as yourself whether it’s beneficial to the child. I realised after a couple of years, that endlessly marking books at home and bringing them back for the next lesson was pretty pointless.

Avoiding taking work home!

Marking and feedback is only really effective and successful if it happens immediately when the child is doing the piece of work. In my last school, a fantastic initiative was introduced called ‘corrective’ and ‘enrichment’. I’m still not a huge fan of the term ‘corrective’ haha but the initiative worked so well. Basically, through the lesson, you would do your normal assessment for learning, have the children grouped according to their understanding, and I would work with a group and have my TA (yes I was lucky enough to have one) with another group.

Once all my group were on track, I would go around the rest of the room seeing how each individual child was getting on and provide them with verbal feedback. Then at breaktime or lunchtime (depending when the lesson was) I would have a quick look at the books and put them into groups depending on the child’s understanding. I would have a ‘confident’ pile, ‘some support’ and ‘needs more structured support’. In the next lesson, I would seat the children according to these piles. The ‘confident’ group would have enrichment activities to deepen their understanding and mastery of the concept, whilst the other groups would have more structured support, simpler examples, more visuals/concrete resources.

That really worked for me, and ensured that I could leave work at 4pm ish every day (except Mondays and Wednesdays when I had meetings). I would also make sure I did lots after school – for instance, regularly, after my meeting on a Wednesday, I would go to the spa with some colleagues. It really broke up the week and was so relaxing!

It’s also worth noting that I didn’t have a child during my whole time in Germany, which I totally understand makes achieving a work-life balance much simpler!

Since having Amala, my husband and I decided that we would like to care for her ourselves, as it seemed a bit ironic going back to teaching in a school and rarely actually getting to spend time with our own child. That’s when we set off in the van to go travelling and had a re-think about career plans!

Becoming self-employed

Although setting up two businesses did feel like quite an achievement, in the earlier days, I felt quite stressed out. There was a constant nagging worry about whether I’d get new pupils in lessons when others moved on, whether I could sustain the business and if I could retain students. I was also constantly thinking about planning lessons, as I was teaching Monday-Friday and then having to do planning at the weekends.

When childminding took off, it made me relax a bit more from a financial-stability point of view, as the income is a bit more stable as parents/carers book on a month in advance. Tutoring is certainly not as stable as children have a lot of holidays and from week to week you’re never fully sure what income you might get (I will come back to strategies of overcoming this in a later blog!).

Parenting and running a business

My husband and I are in a very unique situation in that we have both looked after our daughter since she was born. That was really a massive deciding factor in Ben becoming a childminder, as we both wanted to look after Amala together, and didn’t like the idea of her being in a nursery or equivalent five days a week, whilst we taught other people’s children. It didn’t really seem fair. Of course, the intensity of this cannot be underestimated! I know a lot of people see going to work as a bit of a break from looking after their child, and during our week we spend every waking minute of the day (and sometimes the night) with ours. We don’t have breaks away from children from Tuesday-Sunday, and we have lunch everyday with at least three haha! It’s certainly not for everyone, but for us, it works perfectly.

Working 4 days a week

Due to the intensity of parenting, childminding and tutoring, we decided it would be a good idea if we could have Mondays off, and Amala could go to a childminder (my sister, conveniently!). It just so happened that we didn’t get any childminding enquiries for Monday initially and then we decided that we would not offer Mondays at all. I then had to jig lessons around so that I could also free up Mondays. I do still teach one lesson in the morning but apart from that, I am as free as a bird!

This makes life so much more fulfilling. These days, I try not to think about teaching on Saturday and Sunday, and dedicate part or all of Monday to planning my week. I do give myself a few hours during the week too, which I can use for planning so that it reduces the work load on a Monday. This means my husband and I can go out for the day, or go for a bike ride etc. I truly feel like I am living life, and not just working all week waiting for the weekend. I’m also practising living in the moment a lot more, which is challenging for my hypo-manic brain haha! I feel that working with young people really helps with that, as they naturally are more present in the moment.

Top Tips for motivation

Something I’ve found incredibly beneficial is to go off in the van, somewhere with a beautiful view, to do my planning. The change of scenery certainly helps with my motivation levels. You can follow my ‘Monday planning posts’ to see what else I get up to on my extra day off!

I have also tried starting my Monday morning by going for a run to try and get motivated to do planning! The jury is still out on whether that one was effective…!

Does anyone have any top tips for achieving a good work-life balance? I’d love to write a blog full of everyone’s ideas – comment below so I can include yours.