On balance and happiness

Work/life balance…  It’s something that most of us claim to strive for, but when I talk to friends and colleagues, we come to the consensus that actually achieving it is hard.  I believe, however, that balancing time spent on work and time spent on things that fill us up is critical to being truly happy.

I admit that over the past two years I failed at this.  I have fallen into the category of teacher-workaholic.  The following words could have been mine:  “Hi, I’m Lizzy, and I’m addicted to my job and have somewhere along the way fallen for the giant lie that my students’ reading levels and progress on paper are more important than the six year olds seated in front of me every day.  (Or my sanity, for that matter.)"

I can only speak from the teaching profession when I say that so many of us are like this.  In fact, in my experience, the only teachers I see leaving when the school day is over are the ones who have children at home.  The rest of us stay, looking for more ways to differentiate, filing endless piles of assessments, taping student work to the wall after it’s fallen for the 123^rd time, and calling parents when they are available to chat about their kids.  If you don’t have children, and you leave right after school every day, I confess that I have probably judged you.  This is not something I am proud of, but it is true.

It has often felt to me that working parents are excused… allowed to leave faculty meetings early, told “don’t worry about it,” when it comes to events in the evenings or on weekends, not emailed about volunteering their time in the morning before school starts.  In fact, I just attended a co-teaching workshop where a teacher partnership (who were fabulous and a wonder to behold) declared, “We have kids, so we do not have the luxury of staying after school for hours.”  Um, it has never felt like a luxury to me. 

Please do not think I am frowning upon, or speaking against, working mamas.  On the contrary, working moms and dads, I bow to you.  I worship you and I want to know your secrets.  How do you get your kids out of bed and dressed in the morning, in addition to yourself?  How are you able to focus on 22 students’ allergies, hopes, dreams, strengths, and challenges, in addition to the little ones you have at home?  I am lucky to know many working parents who do all of these (seemingly) effortlessly, with a smile on their face and with their hair in place, which is something I will never understand.  Working mamas, you are heroes, and I get that this sometimes means you will need to leave early or be unable to come to evening activities.

The only problem I have with excusing parents more often than non-parents is… how does this fare for teachers who don’t want kids?  Are they expected to stay late, sign up for extra committees, and show up at every event for the rest of their lives?

OR- more relevant to my situation- How am I going to GET the husband and kids if I am always either at school or working on things for school?

With that in mind, I knew I had to come up with a New School Year’s resolution.   I saw that spending almost all of my time and money on school had led me to crankiness (crappiness, not happiness!).  As much as I LOVE kids and feel extreme passion for teaching and learning, I see how I started to feel toward my job. 

I think, if happiness is a goal, we need to work toward it the way we work on our PIP’s/ PDP’s (or the dreaded SGO’s).  It will not just happen to us.  We need to identify the things that make us happy (for me, dancing, family/friends time, and quiet time with God) and set aside time to do those things.  Otherwise, we will continue to stay at school until 7pm, and then bring our heavy teacher bags home with us.  (I have already put dance classes on my calendar through October, so I can get out of school at a decent time!)

There will always be more we can do at school.  But we only live once (as cliché as it sounds) and I want to live happy, whether or not I am a mother yet.  Someday my prince will come.  And when he does, I want to be able to say, “Hi, I’m Lizzy.  I’m blessed to spend a lot of my time working with six year olds.  Here’s what else I love to do…”