Juggling Work-Life Balance Whilst Teaching Remotely
Achieving work-life balance is difficult at the best of times. However, the unprecedented changes and uncertainty brought about by COVID-19 have made it even more challenging. The rapidly changing environment has been both unsettling and demanding. Staff have had to quickly adopt new approaches, learn new technologies, retrofit lessons to suit the new approach and support the mental well-being of students, ALL in a time of personal stress and anxiety. The uncertainty brought about by COVID-19 outbreaks may result in a return to remote learning for periods of time. The following strategies are intended to help you in these uncertain times. Keep Perspective You are not alone. Angela Duckworth, Professor of Psychology and author of “Grit” writes that people’s stress…
Parent Conferences: Mastering the Non-Verbals
Parent conferences are a busy and demanding time for teachers, especially where we are dealing with complex issues, working with difficult people or delivering ‘bad’ news. Effective communication is vital in building trust. Our use of non-verbals is important Take care of yourself Never be alone in the building for parent conferences. Prepare well, ducks in a row, with written documentation of issues. Breathe well. Take several deep breaths before the conference. During the conference, stop and take two deep breaths any time things are tense. (also see dealing with “a big cat” below) Show that you care about them and their child Let them know you understand how much they care about their child. You all want what is…
Working with Lawnmower Parents
Over-parenting was often called “helicopter parenting”, as these parents hover over their children to make sure nothing goes wrong. Research shows that today’s parents spend more time per day parenting than in the 1980s. Parents are protective by nature but some consistently intervene to help children avoid any kind of failure. Lawnmower parents go to whatever lengths necessary to prevent their child from having to face any adversity, struggle or failure. Instead of preparing their children with the skills to cope with the challenges they are likely to face, they mow obstacles down so kids won’t face them in the first place. Media often refer to children of such parenting as “cotton wool” or “bubble wrap” kids. In To Kill…
6 Simple Strategies For Saving Your Sanity
Working in schools is busy. There is always too much to do and not enough time to do it. One of the many challenges is that the work can be never ending. There is always MORE that can be done. MORE preparation, MORE marking and feedback, MORE researching options, MORE skills to develop, MORE technology to investigate, MORE emails to answer, MORE tasks on your TO DO list! Working in schools can be a never ending job. You could work 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. You have to choose NOT to. 1 Get Organised and Declutter Your work space should be organised and ideally CLEAR. If your desk is piled with work that you are ‘going to…
BIG Black Holes: Where does the time go?
At times, working in schools can be overwhelming. You have students and parents to help, lessons to plan, student work to mark, meetings to attend, reports to write, budgets to submit, emails to respond to and, if there is any time left—students to teach. There is so much to do, and only a limited amount of time in which to accomplish it. Time management for staff in schools is far more complicated than for staff in other industries. We face unique challenges: Much of the day is already scheduled. There is very limited leeway so staff in schools must work very efficiently with the very limited time that is flexible. An important component of working in schools is to assist…
7 Strategies For Student Engagement
1 They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care We have all heard this saying before but it’s true. Our work in schools is ALL about relationships. Do your students know you care? How well do you know your students? Smiling makes a difference – smiling lets your students know that you are happy to have them in the classroom – it makes them feel special and wanted. A teacher who smiles at every student every day is saying, “I’m happy you’re here, I’m happy to be teaching you and this is a safe environment”. Students who believe that you are genuinely happy to see them each day are much more likely to “buy”…
Difficult People Are Sent To Teach Us Something
A great way to turn situations or people that we might find frustrating or annoying into opportunities for improving ourselves is to develop the habit of seeing every person that we meet as somebody who has been sent to teach us something. Rather than thinking that cranky, hard-to-please parent has been sent to make our life difficult, it is helpful to try to see them as someone who has been sent to help us to develop more clarity in our communication (because what we said was misconstrued), to refine our listening skills (because they aren’t going to stop until they have said the speech that they have rehearsed) or to overcome complacency and get even better at our job (when…
6 Strategies For Reducing Email Load
Working in schools, we need to protect our professional time vigilantly. Email can eagerly devour our preparation time, infringe on our time outside of school and can distance us from the important tasks. If we are disciplined though, email doesn’t have to be a burden – we can use it as a weapon of efficiency, making us more frequent communicators with parents and administrators, more effective record keepers and more focused in our growth. Here are six strategies for reducing the flood of messages we receive and becoming more pragmatic with our replies, freeing time for more important endeavours. 1. Unsubscribe Ruthlessly According to the email service provider Mail Chimp, only 18.6 percent of education newsletter emails are opened, and…
Avoiding DHS (Deferred Happiness Syndrome)
Have you ever said…“I’ll be happy when…….. “…this week is over!” “…I’m on holidays!” “….the kids leave home!” “….the house is paid off!” OR “….I’m on long service leave!” These are examples of deferred happiness syndrome (DHS). Deferring or putting off our own happiness until some later time. We have all heard that we should make the most of every day but most of us just get by from one day to another. We all know that we should make the most of every day and most of us have good intentions. However having good intentions isn’t enough. It is our actions that ultimately count. A great strategy for avoiding DHS is to set a deadline (e.g.…
Is it time for a digital disconnect?
Are you too attached to technology and obsessed with the digital world? Between texts, emails, phone calls and notifications from the multiple social media apps, when are you really unplugged from this virtual world we have created? In the last 10 years the cyber demands for our busy social lifestyle has proven to be an amazing way to stay connected and current but it is important and beneficial for us to disconnect with digital and reconnect with reality for a few minutes a day. THE BAD Social media has been noted by researchers as the millennial generation drug of choice. While this technological advancement isn’t officially considered an addiction, our attachment to the internet and social media sites is becoming…
7 Stages of Overcoming A Setback
In Emotional Intelligence at Work, US psychologist Hendrie Weisinger identifies seven stages most people experience after a set back. Similar to Elizabeth KublerRoss’s stages of grief, he says, ‘You need to experience and manage each stage, successfully moving through each one. Failure to do so keeps you stuck in a particular stage and further from your comeback.’ The sequence of stages is not set in stone. You might experience several at once; you might move between stages; you might return to one already passed. But, Weisinger says, it is essential that you work thoroughly through each stage… 1. Disbelief – overcome it. The first reaction has been likened to a lull before an emotional storm. “This isn’t really happening to…
Learning to Live With the Quirks of Others by Ken Warren
Do you know someone who is quirky – who has peculiar aspects of their appearance thinking or behaviour that are unique to them? To be honest, I think we all have our own personal quirks – things that make us who we are, that give us personality, and make us special. My wife, Christy, tells me I am very special. If we are sufficiently odd or different, we start entering the world of the eccentric. I believe eccentrics add much colour to the world and are very much underappreciated. To be honest, I admire eccentrics for the diversity they bring to the world and for being truly themselves. When I told Christy that I aspire to become an eccentric, she…