Ep 139: Balancing School and Home: Making the Most of Your Time At School So You Can Enjoy Your Time At Home (With Kristen Donegan)
Inside This Week’s Episode: — Most teachers are guilty of bleeding their teaching life into their home life. Teachers are hard workers and are known for bringing home work on nights and weekends. But - it doesn’t have to be that way. My guest, Kristen Donegan shares how teachers can make the most of their time at school so that they can leave their work-life at WORK!
We are all Guilty of being the last car in the school parking lot from time to time.
There’s always one more thing to do. One more set of copies to make. One more…one more.
And then it becomes a pattern. Staying late at school night after night… Bringing home work to complete on the weekends becomes the norm.
Before you know it - you’re THAT teacher who has no boundaries and feels like their work day as no end and no beginning.
Today on the podcast, we’re going to talk about something that I was NOT the best at when I was in the classroom. When I first started teaching I didn’t have any kids yet, I wasn’t married, and I didn’t have a lot at home that I had to devote my time to. So - I poured all of my time and energy into teaching and being in the classroom.
And, quite honestly, I could do that because of my circumstances, but that didn’t really set me up for success later when I did have a family and I did need to prioritize a work/home balance. When we don’t develop a healthy balance, we start to establish some bad habits.
This week, I’m interviewing Kristen Donegan of Easy Teaching Tools. Kristen Donegan has been an elementary school teacher and Reading Specialist since 2005 in both California and O'ahu, Hawaii. She has enjoyed teaching kindergarten, first grade, a 1/2 combo, and second grade before resigning to continue Easy Teaching Tools Inc. and raise her daughter & son. Kristen has also presented at professional development conferences such as SDE Nationals and Teach Your Heart Out. Founded in 2010, Easy Teaching Tools has helped over a thousand busy teachers implement classroom hacks to save time, implement research-based practices to meet the needs of their students, and focus on work-life balance.
Kristen is sharing how teachers can take their time back and be that teacher that leaves at their contracted time, AND doesn’t have to feel bad or guilty for doing so!
Here’s what we talk about:
the most common mistakes that teachers make that keep them from making the most of their work day, which then causes them to spill work over into their home life.
how to get ahead of the work week so that teachers don’t feel like they are just working day to day
how teachers can utilize STUDENTS to help buy back some of their work time
tips for managing time so that no time gets wasted during the school day
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