“If you don’t look after yourself, you’re no good to anyone,” my doctor told me in my first year in teaching.  

This is the article I’ve been building up to for a while. This is the one where I get to be your sage, with my 20 years’ experience, and share with you my nuggets of wisdom about how to get a decent balance between teaching and life.

Luckily, as I type, my five outfits for the week ahead are crisply ironed, the lamb tagine is simmering deliciously on the hob, and my daughter and I have mastered the French plait for the morning.

I am, of course, full of crap. In reality, I’m known for my ability to burn a frozen pizza, I’ll give my right arm to anyone who can find the hundreds of missing socks in my house, and my daughter was 5 before she was able to recognise an iron (at grandma’s).

In reality, I can’t claim that there aren’t evenings when I just don’t seem to hear what my children or husband are saying because there’s not an iota of space free in my noisy head. 

In reality, I am more likely to throw myself at 100mph into the first weeks at work, fall into an exhausted heap, and sleep like a teenager at weekends, than to pace myself wisely, choosing a gentle jog over a glass of wine.

In reality, there are people dear to me whom I’ve neglected for months.

In reality, I veer between fierce pride in my ”working parent” status and abject guilt.

In reality, well, I suppose I’m muddling along like the rest of us.

So, I turn instead to wiser people. More measured people. People who are, frankly, more likely to outlive me by a couple of decades. The colleagues who arrive early every morning and organise their time ruthlessly so that they can disappear into the sunshine at 3.30pm on a Friday. People who have the balls to tell me when the latest deadline is unreasonable and will claim their full 50-minute lunch break to catch up with one another. People who can smile at the knowledge that, whilst they are on their way to the lido, I am just getting around to writing my “to-do” list at 5pm on a Friday.

Learning how to say ‘no’

Keeping a work-life balance, as you will have gathered, is something I can never take for granted. I have to be constantly watchful, and have to listen to the people who tell me what I don’t want to hear, whilst never once answering fully truthfully when my Mum asks if I’m “overdoing it again”.

But, on a serious note, where my causalities are generally domestic ones, and ones which won’t change lives - and my children, though not always entirely glossy, are happy and feisty and joyful - I am always aware of the advice I was once given: watch out for those who preach about wellbeing, because they are often the ones least likely to look after themselves.

The loss of a boss and a dear friend who took his own life is never far from my thoughts, and whilst I may get a few extra grey hairs, forget a few too many times what my husband told me about his schedule, and forget to reply to a few extra text messages, the overall lesson is clear: if we don’t look after ourselves, nobody else will. And if we don’t find a healthy balance, we risk burnout - or worse.

So, there’s the “saying no” thing. You see, I’ve never learned to say no to teenagers who want extra help, extra input, extra learning. I’m honestly not sure I ever will. I’ve never subscribed to the strategies which prescribe strict lists of 15 students “worth intervening with”, whilst turning the others away from extra classes. I’ve never been able to turn from a child who is frightened or in trouble outside school hours if I think there’s a single thing I might be able to do to help.

I’m not completely beyond redemption. I did recently explain to some Year 11s that, since I spent more time with them than my own children during the average week, no, I wouldn’t be coming in on Saturday to give them an extra day of lessons. And I have the child-police: my own children who have highly developed strategies to ensure I’m not working (school or research or anything) on at least one day a week. They’re getting more skillful and harder to evade.

Speaking of which…. ‘Mummy, you said we’d have a snuggle and a read.” I need to go and read with my daughter now. Over and out. The profession may just survive if I clock out for a few hours... 

Emma Kell is a secondary teacher in north-east London and author of How to Survive in Teaching