Thursdays have become important days in my week and my working life. I have discovered that how I live my Thursdays impacts my mental health, my home life, my relationships, and the start of my new working week on Mondays. Why, you ask? I work as a teacher on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. However, as many know a teacher's work is never complete. The nature of our contemporary education system, reporting and recording obligations and the ever-changing requirements of our Australian Curriculum is a system of burden. The pressure of this system, from the top down, unmakes diamonds. Our experts do not always make the wisest educational decisions for our students, their parents, or us teachers. Thursday is the day I cross the bridge between work and home. I pause in the middle, look along the river and the river banks, feel the breeze lifting off the water as it travels down the path the river cuts for it. I leave behind my teacher work and enter my home work and my place of leisure and rest. In this place Charlotte Mason's three tools of education - atmosphere, discipline, life - impacts my life as a teacher as well as the quality of learning in my classroom. Here are some steps I am putting in place to protect my mental health, my joy in my work, and bridge my working life with my personal life. #1 - Atmosphere
Atmosphere encompasses us as persons and the place of things. We live, work and learn freely among our natural life conditions, which are different for us all. It includes rhythms of work, leisure and rest. It involves organisation and planning, a healthy place, space in the margins of my days and aesthetics. It re-connects me to my purpose (my why), it restores my emotional resilience, and allows the space to develop a growth mindset. #2 - Discipline Discipline encompasses the habits to keep in place that support healthy thinking, working, living and learning. My habits support my organisation and planning, my time management, a healthy home life, and time for rest. I list out my work tasks for the week and slot them into my days where they will seem to fit best. I allow set time blocks for my tasks and give my attention to that task in its allotted time. I choose my attitude and aim to be fully present in my classroom with my students. This is not easy, especially when unrealistic deadlines loom and the burden of the national curriculum requirements weighs heavy. But both my students and myself deserve more from our classroom experience than deadlines and burdens. We deserve a healthy challenging curriculum and a life-giving educational experience. #3 - Life Education is not restricted to utility, critical thinking, facts and bits of information and neither is the life of the teacher. Education is a life of ideas. Ideas that challenge, encourage and inspire. Each day we must have something to do, something to love, and something to think about. We can do this through engaging with books, art, music, inventions, history, natural history and time outside. We can do this through engaging with leisure activities that we love and that refresh us and relax us. We can do this through worship and fellowship with friends, family and community. Some practices for 2020 Wrap up Wednesday: I complete my working week. I finish what is important and I work to get other tasks done to a stage where I can easily pick them again in the next week. I pack my bag with a plan to not open it until Monday morning. I tidy and organise my classroom and workspace. I let my students, their learning, and my work go with a prayer. I drive home with music that sings joy, encouragement, love. I celebrate Wednesday with a nice dinner, maybe candles, a movie, or a good book, maybe a glass of wine or dessert. Hello Thursday: I enjoy a slow start which may look like a walk along the beach and a swim or breakfast outside with a leisurely book and my cat curled at my feet. I prepare my home space for the weekend - cleaning, washing, shopping, and oranising in a way that restores peace to our place and helps me relax. And I write. Weekend Wanderings: A time to enjoy the company of my husband, our friends and family, and Sunday worship. My weekend's are scattered with nature journaling, writing, reading, gardening, odd-jobs and leisure. Whatever else happens in my week, especially when it goes pear-shaped I protect my Sundays at the very least - spiritual and physical rest matters. Good Morning Mondays: I aim to arrive at school half-an-hour before my official start time. This allows space for a pre-tidy, a glance over my plans for the morning, a look-over where I finished the Wednesday before, thus crossing the bridge back into my work space. Ready and refreshed.
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AuthorI teach with the Charlotte Mason method in home education, tutoring and P-12 Christian school contexts in Australia. Archives
January 2022
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