Are you a teacher who's feeling stressed out and overwhelmed. Do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing some other kind of job or perhaps pursuing a whole different career, but you don't know what else you're even qualified to do. You don't know how to start a job search. You just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you're not alone. My name is Katie Boitnott.
I'm a career transition and job search coach. And I specialize in helping burn out teachers disliking deal, not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day-to-day job, but to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. Join me for teachers in transition. In some episodes, I'll be speaking to stress management techniques and how you can manage your stress on a day to day basis. In other episodes, I'll be talking about career transition.
What tools do you need to be successful in a job search when you're moving from one career into a totally different track. These are questions that you need answers to, and I can help you find those answers. My name is kitty . Boitnott welcome to teachers and transition.
Welcome back to episode 106 of teachers in transition and whatnot, coaching the podcast and the YouTube channel. My name is kitty [inaudible] . I am the owner of Boitnott
coaching and the founder of teachers in transition. If you've listened to this podcast or watched the YouTube channel in the past, you know that I alternate topics one week talking about stress management for teachers and on alternating weeks, talking about career transition strategies for those teachers who are ready to leave the classroom and want to find something else to do, but aren't quite sure where to start this week. The topic is stress, and I want to specifically address managing your stress by managing your workload. Now, this is a part this, what I'm going to share with you today are some strategies that I've offered in my workshop on stress management
teachers , uh , stress management strategies for teachers , uh, it is part four. So this is , um, part of a series that I'm offering on how to better manage your stress.
And if you're a teacher, how you can maybe address some of the overload that you are experiencing as a teacher, because in my experience, especially this time of year, some people on spring break, some people are back from spring break, but as people return from their spring break, whenever it happened sounds to be the pace at school tends to speed up almost exponentially. There are all those tests to get ready for and administer, where are the drills and the preparation.
And then there are all the end of the year activities in a normal year. You'd be having graduation ceremonies and into the year concerts and all sorts of all sorts of things. It may not happen this year, but because of the nature of this year, it's been even more stressful trying to figure out how to make things as normal as possible. Even though we haven't been experiencing normal quotes times.
So I want to offer some specific strategies and some ideas, and I will also offer some links to some help that you might find useful , uh, in the show notes. So let's start with organizing your day by setting your priorities. If you need to write out on a piece of paper or make a list on your computer of all the things that you need to achieve or get done in one day and address it as what needs to be done today, and then put the biggest, most important items at the top of the list.
And if you don't get to everything, it won't be tragic. But if you leave the most important things off until the end of the day, they may not get done. So make the most important job responsibilities or duties or whatever it is that you've got going on. Make the most important part , the first order of business for your day, plan your activities strategically, and be aware of time suckers.
The things that we can get engaged in that are , um, not productive will not adding any, any value to the day, but we can tend to get lost in and things like email. You might be best served by putting it . You can email into a particular block of your day and then turning your mail off for the rest of the day, as well as opposed to doing what I often do and have to remind myself not to do. And that is to check email as they pop up. That is a time sucker that is not productive.
And studies are more and more showing that when we try to multitask and switch from one activity to another, like checking Facebook and then going back to work or checking email, and then going back to a task at work that we actually lose IQ points. And so it isn't productive. It's not in your best interest to block a time of day.
This is advice I need to take for myself block a time of day that you're going to devote yourself to checking email and responding to email that you've received in the past 24 hours. And then turn the email off. Now, if you need to check it one more time before you leave at the end of the day, that's up to you, but keep the email box closed during the time when you need to be really productive. Otherwise you'll be distracted and not able to do your best work, avoid procrastination.
We all tend to procrastinate. We all tend to put things off until we feel the urgency of a deadline, but that just adds to your stress. So to the extent that it is possible, eliminate your tendency to be procrastinate , to be a procrastinator and do the hard parts. First, do the things you dread most first and get them out of the way and off your plate. Also plan for potential problems, plan for a crisis that might pop up that way.
You can still get the work done and you've added in some time for the potential upset about something. And, and then of course, I want you to make your personal time a priority, even if it means that you need to schedule it by putting it on the calendar for the day, taking the walk, calling a friend, doing something for yourself, schedule it so that you know, it will happen.
You might also consider, and this is going to sound like hearsay to some teachers out there, but just trust me for a moment and listen, you might want to consider the possibility of leaving some of your work at work instead of dragging it home. Again, studies show that teachers more than just about any other profession, tend to work over hours. They take their work home that are working on the weekends. And part of it is the nature of the beast, right? You need to be planning.
You need to be grading. There's always something to do. If you're a special ed, either IEP has to be completed. Always you can make work for yourself if you're not mindful of what you're doing.
So
I'm going to suggest that it's possible that you could cut back on the number of assignments you give, make the assignments you give your students meaningful, not busy work. And that way you're not creating busy work for yourself by having to check everything that you've assigned to be mindful about the assignments that you make, and if possible, cut back and make those assignments more meaningful, not more, more, you don't need them to be more plentiful,
Do
An audit of how you spend your time. And that might mean as you go through any given day, write down everything that you do, and then do a true audit, which is determined , which activities were useful and helped you to be productive. And which activities were actually meaningless. And didn't add anything to your day, but we're time suckers. They just took up unnecessary time in your day
And
Be mindful of the time wasters , as I said, the email, which doesn't warrant your immediate attention often, but because it feels urgent, we tend to respond to it, even though it may not be important. If you've never read Stephen, Covey's seven habits of highly effective people. You, you might not recognize this verbiage, but in his book, he talks about the urgent versus the important. So email is urgent, not often important in the same way that other activities in your day are important.
Be mindful of how you get sucked into Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, or even LinkedIn, even any of the platforms that you may use in a day, be, be mindful of how much time you're spending. And is that time useful?
Is it productive or is it a time-waster once we get back into in-person work at another time waster a time sucker that we were often guilty of when we were in person working is the office gossip that we tend to get involved in when we probably shouldn't or just in general, the day-to-day chit-chat, you know, people stopping you to tell you something about something that's going on in their lives , which is important to them, but may not be all that important to you.
So possible solutions for how to be more productive and less stressed at work is to really become mindful of how you are using your time and make the most of the time that you have so that you don't feel like the proverbial hamster on the wheel, running, running, running, and not getting anywhere. We often feel that way. Don't we , when we are caught up in meaning less work, let go of any need to be perfect quote unquote, perfect. Perfectionism is not a badge of honor.
It's often a curse for many people to let go of the idea that you need to be perfect and simply do good, good work, not perfect work and set realistic goals for yourself. Those are some specific strategies that you can use to help manage your stress at work more effectively. And if you had to choose just one, then choose just one and concentrate on that.
Maybe it's not checking email constantly, or maybe it's not checking in on Facebook every every hour or so, or maybe it's the cutting back on the number of assignments that you give so that you can cut back on some of your planning and grading and have more time for yourself and your family and friends. Don't let teaching become something of a , of a moratorium for you. If you learn or grow, not learn .
If you grow to resent your job because it's taking so much time and effort away from your family, your friends, your self care , then you're not doing yourself any good. You're not doing your students any good. When you start to resent the work, that's a bad sign. So do what you can before you get to the point, or if you're already at the point of resenting, how much work you have to do for your job, then consider what you can start to eliminate. It's doable. The world will not come to an end.
If you give one less assignment this week to students, trust me it won't. And if you need help, there are plenty of guides and books out there that can help you to figure out what you need to let go of. I might also suggest I don't have any personal connection with where I'm not an affiliate for, but I do know that there is a program that Angela Watson has created for her followers. Um, I don't know what it's called now, but it used to be called the 40 hour work week for teachers.
And I had a friend tell me of someone who had enrolled in Ms. Watson's program, that it had saved her life. Quote, unquote, it saved my life. She said she was an English teacher and you know, how many papers English teachers traditionally have to grade? So check out Angela Watson. She has a podcast and a website and a program that you might find useful if overworking at school is a problem for you.
So with that, I will let you go for this week, continue to be safe, wear a mask when you're in public, whether you've been vaccinated or not, and be kind to one another, we're almost at the end of the tunnel as far as this pandemic, but we're not quite there yet. So please be mindful of the fact that we need to be kind to one another. As we proceed through this unprecedented time in our history. If you need to reach out to me, I'm at kitty, boitnott@gmail.com .
I'm available for any question or comment you might make. If you would please review this podcast to help other people find it and as always stay well, stay safe and I'll see you next week. Bye for now.
So there you have it. An episode of teachers in transition. I hope you enjoy the information and I hope you'll plan to come back. Please subscribe to teachers in transition so that you can be alerted of future episodes. And let me know if you have any questions or topics that you would like me to specifically cover in a future episode, I'm more than happy to help with individual questions as well. So email me at kitty Boitnott at boys , not coaching.com.
If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. I'm Katie Boitnott and this is teachers in transition.