How to get your life back from teaching

It is possible to stop teaching from taking over your life, argues Rob Ward – you just have to find ways to do less
15th July 2018, 10:03am

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How to get your life back from teaching

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/how-get-your-life-back-teaching
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When I worked as an English teacher in Germany, teacher wellbeing simply meant that the staffroom was a smiley, welcoming place that was well-stocked with pretzels and beer, which were brought out when school ended at 1pm on Fridays. No one discussed mindfulness classes or yoga retreats, yet most of the teachers seemed strikingly cheery and unstressed in comparison with the average British teacher.

So, could “add-ons” that are touted to improve teacher wellbeing actually be doing more harm than good? Yes, argues English teacher Rob Ward, writing in the 13 July issue of Tes. Far from helping teachers to relax, he suggests that initiatives to improve wellbeing can actually create more work for some teachers. 

“Individual teachers are desperately hoping to make themselves well again by doing something else, something extra,” writes Ward. “This is absurd. Doing more will not give you your life back. You have to do less.”

Luckily, Ward has some tips for how to stop teaching from taking over your life - and none of them involve meditation.

1. Set parameters

“I set myself hours and within those hours I work hard and efficiently,” explains Ward. “I do not work at home. Not on an evening, not on a weekend. Never.” He believes that work done at home “half-heartedly in front of the Great British Bake Off” is work that is not worth doing - even if that means sometimes things go unfinished.

2. Revisit how you mark

It’s easy to get bogged down by mark schemes and marking requirements. “I rarely give pupils grades for their work,” says Ward. “It just leads to kids comparing scores, and a number offers them no way to improve.” If there is specific feedback to give, Ward aims to give it immediately and verbally.

3. Plan and make resources

“I am a thief,” Ward admits. “I steal ideas, often from Twitter, and I have no shame in this. I’m not a perfectionist; I haven’t got time to be.” He also advocates teachers within a school working together on resources: after all, while teaching ideas and exam specs come and go, the central tenets of most subjects have been the same for many years and will be the same for years to come.

4. Take a stand on ‘your duty’

For many teachers, their job is their life: it is a passion and a vocation. Not for Rob Ward: “I decided I didn’t want to be a teacher all day, every day. It’s a job, and I get paid to do it - I call school ‘work’.” This means that Ward is hesitant to say he is responsible for his students’ results or performance. Much more effective, he says, is modelling good behaviour - “I never look stressed in front of the kids and I very rarely lose my temper.”

Ward acknowledges that these changes will not work for everyone, but for him they have meant that he can achieve a good work-life balance. “Try a few on for size,” he urges. “Trust me - you’ll never look back.”

This is an edited version of an article in the 13 July edition of Tes. Subscribers can read the full article here. To subscribe, click here. This week’s Tes magazine is available at all good newsagents. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here.

Elliot Douglas is a student at the University of St Andrews. He tweets @ElliotDee 

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