Whether you’re a first-year teacher or in your 25th year, the end of the academic year is always chaotic. Like sharks smelling blood in the water, students can physically sense summer break. It must be a trait gained and lost in adolescence. As such, teacher sanity is a real thing as you, too, know the end is nigh. These feelings are no different at international schools, though possibly even enhanced as students and staff usually travel. These are my experiences and tips for keeping your teacher sanity at the end of a school year.
My Teacher Sanity
Teaching is both enriching and exceptionally stressful. Whether it’s maintaining student learning, writing reports, keeping in contact with parents, or cramming in any final grading, the end of the year is STRESSFUL. This doesn’t matter whether you’re a novice teacher or like me with 14 years of experience.
Like my students, I often struggle to be productive as I don’t sleep as well, want to push to-dos until the last minute, and can be a bit more quick-tempered than usual. On top of all that, I end up being a giant ball of stress because I’m worried my procrastination will come back and bite me in the ass, so I stress more and do more things to avoid the work that stresses me out.
In his book Unwinding Anxiety, Dr. Jud Brewer calls these ‘habit loops.’ Dr. Brewer is an MD/Ph.D. at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center and has done considerable work on habits, anxiety, mindfulness, and stress (if you’re interested, he has a great Ted Talk on breaking bad habits). Anyways, the ‘habit loops’ he describes go like this:
- Trigger: Negative emotion or thought
- Behavior: Worry
- Result: Avoidance/Distraction
- Repeat: He doesn’t actually list this repeated step but discusses it. After you’ve sufficiently avoided or distracted yourself, the negative emotion or thought persists, and the process repeats.
This is classic me. As an over-worrier and someone with what my wife is sure is undiagnosed ADHD, I constantly wrestle with sitting down and accomplishing the work I need to be doing…like grading. As such, these habit loops are very real and damning for my productivity, anxiety, and stress levels. If you didn’t already know, stress, particularly chronic stress, has some truly horrible side effects.
I am, by no means, a master and navigating my way out of these habit loops. They can and continue to bog me to this day, but I did want to share with you some of what I do to help with these end-of-year blues and stressors.
Tips & Strategies for Keeping My Teacher Sanity
So what do I do to help mitigate these stressors and try to keep my anxiety to a minimum? Let’s take a look.
Home and Work Separation
Like the state and religion in the US Constitution’s First Amendment, I strive to separate my work and school lives. As a teacher, this isn’t always possible. There are papers to grade, feedback to give, or reports to write; sometimes,e I have to work at home.
Grading
Yet how many times have you, like me, brought student work home to review, only to leave it in your bag until you leave for work the next day? I can almost guarantee you have. As such, I live by the mantra, “Will the world end if I don’t finish this tonight?” If the answer is no, I leave it at school to enjoy my time at home. If the answer is yes, well, then I have some homework!
Ask yourself that same question: Will the world end if I don’t finish this tonight?
Chances are the answer is no, so don’t bother taking it home. But what about planning or working on your computer?
Working on Your Laptop or Phone
To further facilitate the separation of school and home, I have two computers – one for work and one for personal use at home. I realize this isn’t an option for everyone, so what I do in other circumstances (or when my school computer craps out) is separate browsers.
I tend to personally not use Google Chrome as it is, such a power hog on my computer’s CPU, so when I’m forced to use my personal computer for work – I use Chrome, an entirely separate browser. Even something as benign as a separate browser allows me to distance myself from my work at home. Quitting that browser helps me disengage and disconnect from the daily stress, work, emails, and Google Classroom alerts to help me feel more relaxed at home.
These separate browsers allow me to keep using my laptop without clicking back into my work Google Drive or responding to an email. I used to use entirely separate profiles/accounts on my computer, but this proved more effort than it was worth.
To push this separation even further, I also don’t sign in to my school email on the same email client I use for personal use. For example, if you use Apple’s Mail on your phone for your regular email account(s), I wouldn’t don’t add my work email. I find a 3rd-party app or another, such as Outlook (which is used with far more than Microsoft accounts), and sign in there. Yes, it may still be on my phone, but it’s not the one I’m checking as frequently.
As for my laptop, I don’t sign in except on the browser. Period. I’m far more inclined to respond to a lengthy email on my computer than on my phone (autocorrect), so I just don’t.
Ultimately, using separate browsers has been a good compromise as I can digitally separate my work and personal lives. The same goes for carefully managing my email.
To sum up:
- Ask yourself: “Is this work I might do world-saving?” If the answer is no, then leave it behind.
- Add a second, less frequently used browser for school work if you share a laptop between home and the classroom.
- Use a separate email client to separate your work and home life to create that balance.
Time Blocking & Pomodoro Clocks
There is a good chance that you’ve heard of this strategy for managing your time. As someone who struggles with time management, time blocking, with the help of a Pomodoro clock, has been life-changing.
Time Blocking
Let’s start with time blocking – what is it? Time blocking is exactly what it sounds like – blocking out hours (or perhaps minute segments) for your day so you know what you’ll be doing at those points. The idea behind time blocking is that you schedule important tasks and don’t get bogged down and end up focusing on one activity for too long.
Let’s look at an example: It’s the weekend, and you have some grading you want to complete. It isn’t urgent, but you want to get ahead. You also have some errands to run, plan to go to the gym, and catch up on a missed episode or two of a favorite show. As humans and teachers, we e can easily find ourselves doing far more grading than planned. When we stretch our time with one activity, perhaps not even the most important that day, it pushes back other items we hoped or planned to accomplish.
By extended time grading papers, perhaps you skip the gym. Time blocking helps you say, “Okay, from 9 to 10 in the morning, I will grade. From 10-11, I’ll hit the gym, but after that, I’ll do what I like.”
Some people block out their entire day, but I do not. For one, my weekdays are fairly well blocked out as a teacher with classes and preps. I do, however, time block my preps and after school. So what does that look like? Here’s an example workday for me:
My Time Blocking
- 5:40: Wake Up, complete my World & NY Times mini crossword
- 6:00 – 7:00: Get ready for work and eat breakfast.
- 7:20 – 7:50: Complete my morning agenda, check/send email
- Teaching
- 10:00 – 11:00: Grade/Plan (depends on the day), Duolingo, grab a snack, social media, etc.
- Teaching
- 12:45 – 1:30: Grade/Plan, get coffee, check the news.
- Teaching
- 2:30 – 3:30: Emails & Planning for the next day (certainly, there are some meetings that I can’t control)
- 4:00 – 5/5:30: Exercise/Gym
- 7:00 – 8:30: Work on Nomadicgregors (blog, podcast, etc.), social media, etc.
- 8:30 – 10:00: Dinner, TV, video games, etc.
- 10:00 – 10:30: Read then bed
I don’t time block the whole day, even after work. During some time blocking, I will do other things as well. I may put on the TV while I’m working on our site, but overall it helps me make sure I work on the things I want to work on but not feel so closed in on being productive that I feel like I’ve failed if I don’t meet it.
Time blocking helps you keep you focused more so than a simple to-do list. In conjunction with a to-do list, time blocking can be incredibly effective. This Forbes article does a great job of laying out exactly what time blocking is and some tips and strategies to help get the most benefit out of your time blocking.
Pomodoro Clocks
You’ll notice in my schedule above that several items are blocked within my set blocks. In traditional time blocking, you’d use that whole time for one specific activity, but I struggle with sustained focus, so I take short breaks. However, like working on something without time blocking, a short break can quickly take over and become a long break. This is where Pomodoro clocks come in.
A Pomodoro clock is essentially a dual or tri-timer. You set a timer to work on a specific task, for example, 25 minutes. The timer goes off at the end of those 25 minutes of working, and another begins, for example, 5 minutes. During these 5 minutes, I can essentially do what I’d like. After several rounds of this, you can set a longer break timer, but this isn’t something I usually do.
I like to use the Focus Keeper app for my phone, or if I’m on my computer, I use Pomofocus. By combining time blocking with a Pomodoro clock, I can be productive even at the end of the year as my focus and drive wane.
Exercise for Teacher Sanity
This one can be difficult, but it is something I find absolutely essential, so let me explain why.
First and foremost, exercise keeps us healthy. My health goals and weight have fluctuated a lot over the last 7-8 years, but going to the gym has, by and large, been a constant. My mental health improves after I go to the gym, and I feel better physically. It doesn’t need to be an intense workout. A simple walk on the treadmill for 20-30 minutes works for those days I really do not want to go, Overall, I make sure I set time in my time block for the gym and make myself go, even when I absolutely don’t want to.
Another benefit of heading to the gym is dedicated time away from work. While at the gym, I can pop on music or a podcast and tune out the world. Even if I just walk on the treadmill, I’ll take a book or my Kindle to read to avoid spending extra time on my phone.
Studies show that maintaining an active lifestyle helps maintain your circadian rhythm. Exercise helps you to feel sleepier, regulates body temperature, and releases endorphins. If you’d like to read more about the effects of sleep and exercise, please check out this article from the Johns Hopkins Medical Center.
Teacher Sanity and Consistent Bed Times
The last item I’ll write about that helps me keep my teacher sanity at the end of the year (and during the entire year) is keeping a consistent bedtime. Now I don’t always stick to my bedtime, nor is it set as early as it probably should, but overall I stick with keeping it as consistent as possible.
Like sleep and exercise, the research behind staying consistent with your bedtime is fairly solid. Not only does a consistent bedtime help keep you better rested, but it also has significant other health benefits. According to a New York Times article, “A 2020 study found that people ages 45 to 84 with erratic sleep schedules were nearly twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease as those with more regular sleep patterns. An analysis of over 90,000 people linked circadian rhythm disruptions with a greater risk of mood disorders. Researchers have even tied irregular sleeping patterns to high cholesterol and hypertension.” Not only is sleep important for our students, but it’s important for us teachers as well.
I try to consistently go to bed at around 10 pm each night and spend some time reading. I also try and wake up around the same time. However, waking up at 5:40 am on the weekends is less than ideal, so I usually aim for 7-7:30. I’m not always perfect at keeping this schedule, but I try. I find that I am less tired throughout the day, though not not tired. It is still teaching, after all! I also find I can be more productive on a consistent schedule.
Final Thoughts
The end of the school year is certainly one of the most stressful in a teacher’s (and student’s) life. Apathy, stress or both can set in and derail a class, a lesson, or the last several weeks. These strategies work for me, and I hope they will help you.
If you’d like to learn more about international education, please contact us, schedule a consultation, or just head over to our international education page.