BALANCE IS ENCOURAGED
“I think why I love this place is because I don't get emails on the weekend. It's something I didn't realize until I came here—I'm not gonna lie, I was addicted to my phone. It was just constant notification. It would be 10 pm. ‘Hey, just to let you know, this is happening tomorrow’. It was this last-minute communication. Here, at the school I work at now, there's this focus on ‘We want you to work hard, but we also know that you have a life’.”
“Being in that place kind of pushed me into structuring my life (…) There's like two people here—It's 4 30. In other schools, people are there to 6 or 7. The school day ends at 4. People leave. And it's supported. The principal says ‘Go home’. It's that nudge that I think is what helped me become happier because sometimes, as a teacher, you're like, ‘Oh, my God! Like, ’Dfferentiation’! Like, ‘Oh, I found this cool lesson!’ and you lose track of time. Having that positive support and that work-life balance helps you hold yourself accountable—not losing yourself in the job.”
“In my other jobs (…) I started losing track of my hobbies. I used to work out here and there, not crazy, but I enjoyed it. I used to play basketball. So when I got to this school, part of our summer P.D. is ‘What do you like to do outside of school?’ Shocking! Shocking to have that on the first week of PD! Throughout the year, there's this constant check-in of, How are you doing?”
“I ACTIVELY FORCE MYSELF TO UNPLUG”
“The other thing, too, is that I actively force myself to unplug. So at 6 o'clock, I actually turn my phone off, which is something I only started two years ago. And I also cut social media. And part of that is because I see my own students showing these symptoms of instant gratification and constantly checking. There's like doom scrolling where you just scroll absentmindedly. You don't even know what you're doing. I was doing the same thing and I think for me to model it for the kids, I have to do it myself.”
MANAGING TECHNOLOGY
“I turn my phone off (…) Starting last year, I actually don't take my work computer home. It's a physical disconnect from my job. I still have a computer at home for myself. I purposely bought a tablet because I can't do work on my ipad, because it just doesn't work effectively. And it's good, because then it pushes me into my other hobbies. I love watching shows. I like watching sports. There's games on it—I love gaming. So I kind of forced myself into that because being on a tablet also gets me away from my phone—the constant texting, the constant notification. (…) So I have these designated devices for certain parts of the day. My phone turns off, but my family could still contact me because on my ipad—what's good about Apple is that they all connect, so my ipad is still connected to my phone. So if someone calls my phone, it actually rings on my ipad, which is awesome (..) But I purposely took texting off my ipad and I deleted it. So now I can only make calls, which also forces me to go back to the old-school way—if I want to talk to somebody I have to call them (…) So that's how I purposely stagger and structure.”