Finding a work-life balance can be tricky for anyone in any profession. Teachers in particular struggle to find work-life balance due to the increasing emotional demands of our work, as well as the negative perception of teaching. This refers to the general public’s perception of teachers, that they aren’t skilled and have decided to be teachers as a backup option, as well as teachers’ perceptions of themselves and their own profession. 

Not only are a lot of demands placed on teachers by schools and parents, but teachers place a lot of pressure on themselves. Finding a good work-life balance has a big impact on your health, and is worth making a priority. Unfortunately, many of the suggestions that I am going to make to find work-life balance as a teacher will not be applicable in your situation.

Different schools, states, and countries have different issues impacting teacher well-being and work-life balance. There isn’t really a quick fix, and most of what you can do is advocate for yourself and your colleagues. Please don’t check out because these things sound impossible. It is likely that they will be impossible for many teachers. I’m not going to give you a feel-good answer like meditating or going for walks with your dog in the evening. I’m going to give you real big changes that you can make if you want to make your work-life balance and well-being a priority.

Set yourself boundaries.

I told you this was going to be difficult. If you’re overworked and need to find some work-life balance, the way to do it is to do less work. This means less work at home when you’d rather be spending time with your family or doing other things. 

I realise that this isn’t entirely up to you. Many teachers get little if any time during the day to plan lessons and check student work. Many teachers are forced to work from home after the school day has finished in order to do the best thing for their students. This isn’t work-life balance, though. 

Finding work-life balance as a teacher might be as simple as staying late after your class has gone home to plan the next day. I know that I’m terribly guilty of leaving as soon as the bell goes and getting back to work after dinner, where I’ll work into the night. These boundaries need to be personalised for you, as I know that around 3:30 pm, I completely crash. I could stay for another 3 hours to drag my way through what I have to do, or I could take a long break, get some dinner, then do the same amount of work in 45mins once I’m refreshed. 

You really need to know yourself and how you work to set your own boundaries. I believe that at the beginning of my career, I set my boundaries too firmly when I said that I wouldn’t do any school work on the weekends. I instead sacrificed my breaks during the day and stayed late, which worsened my overall well-being. Take the time to try different methods of organising your time working to see if there is something that works for you. If there isn’t because the amount of work you are expected to do is too high, acknowledge that and keep going down this list.

Make those boundaries clear to your leaders.

If you can’t work on the weekends because you have a family that need your attention more, let your leaders know. As a leader myself, I have a few teachers who will come to me stressed about not getting absolutely everything done. I had a teacher recently come to me desperately asking if she could leave on the bell on a particular day instead of staying late for our scheduled meeting. She said that her daughter was going to pick out a prom dress at that time, and really wanted her mum there. Of course I gave her permission to go. 

I sat down and had a long conversation with this teacher. She had been working incredibly hard, with a lot of hours put in at home and over the weekend, and she felt like she had not been spending enough time with her family. Her youngest daughter is starting school next year, and she would really like to be able to support her. She was almost in tears because there was always more work to be done. 

In teaching, there is always more work that could be done. You could always spend more time helping a student go through a task, more time preparing your lesson so that it’s perfect, or more time giving detailed feedback on their latest test. The work for a teacher is potentially never-ending, and so someone needs to draw a boundary somewhere. 

Where this boundary is depends greatly on the school and culture that you’re in. I can’t speak for every leader by any means, but there are some of us out there who do want to look after our teachers. If you’re doing an excessive amount of work at home, we may not notice unless you tell us. There may be things that we can do to help, whether it’s taking some of the load, advocating for you, or helping you prioritise.

Go to your union.

I’m lucky enough to live in a country with a strong union culture. Our public teacher’s union is particularly strong, and you can rely on them to get things done most of the time. The vast majority of the teachers that I work with are union members, and I know that I can get help from the union if I’m having difficulty achieving work-life balance because of the expectations of my school or state government.

Go part-time.

Again, not an option for the vast majority of teachers. Where I am in Australia, part-time teaching is pretty common, and most teachers are paid enough that this is an option for many of them. In order to get less work and more life, you’re going to need to sacrifice some of that work time. If you can’t fit all of the work that you are expected to do in your week, consider having less work expected of you.

Going part-time as a teacher doesn’t have to mean that you aren’t working the rest of the time. You may want to be at home to look after the kids, but you can also use this time to focus on a side hustle or another job that interests you. 

You may also want to look into being a substitute teacher. You could be a full-time sub and choose your own days to work, or you might want to go part-time and sub on the days that you’re not at your regular school. Many schools that I know will prioritise their part-time teachers for sub work if they need a substitute teacher on the days that they have off. With this option, you can choose whether or not you want to work on those days.

Consider teaching online.

This isn’t a conventional suggestion, but I found that I struggled far less to find work-life balance when I was teaching online. Yes, you have more planning to do, but I found that I also had more time in my work week to do it. I also wasn’t quite as exhausted when I hadn’t been physically running around after kids all day. 

Online teaching does have some downsides. If you’re a teacher because you love being around your students all day, this probably isn’t the option for you, and it can be a steep learning curve. But if you have a local distance education school that is looking for a teacher, it might be worth the challenge of giving it a shot.

Consider another profession entirely.

It’s not all in your head; it is particularly difficult to find work-life balance as a teacher. Sure, the holidays are great and you can spend this quality time with your family, but during the term you’re often expected to burn the candle at both ends. 

There are plenty of other options if you have the skills of a teacher. Many online learning platforms are looking for people to help write resources and curricula for them, museums and galleries run programs for schools as well as professional development for teachers, and universities may also be looking for people to run outreach or mentoring programs. You might need to think outside of the box a little bit, but I know teachers who have even gone into marking standardised tests part-time while they still do some substitute teaching, and they’ve found it really works for them.

You could also go for a complete career change. You might have other skills that you’d like to utilise or build. Going part-time as a teacher may be a good option if you’d like to upskill or try some casual work in another profession before you commit to the change.

Move to a different state or country.

Yes, these suggestions are getting more extreme and probably less possible the further we go down the list. If you do some research, you will find that there are so many different teaching cultures and systems around the world. The problem may not be that you chose to be a teacher, but the particular education system that you work for. If you’re seriously considering this option, take the time to look into registration and qualifications before you commit in case you need to do any extra study or jump through any unexpected hoops.

It’s drastic I know, but work-life balance is important.

These won’t work for everyone. At the moment, teaching is structured to make finding work-life balance particularly difficult. If you’re going to balance your work and your home life, you can’t just have more of both. To truly find this balance, you need to sacrifice some of your work, but not everyone is in a position where that is possible.

These are the things that we need to do to improve the working conditions for all teachers. At the moment, in your life, there are limited things that you can do. There are more things that are possible if you have the finances and are willing to make a big change, but this of course isn’t ideal. Teachers are burning out all over the place, and drastic action needs to happen to improve the culture and expectations of teaching.