Professional Learning for Busy Educators

This morning, I thought about taking a sick day—a mental health day. Yesterday was a rough day in the classroom, a day that ended with a parent-teacher conference after school hours. It was a day that I laid my head on my desk during my planning period and resorted to my hidden candy stash in my bottom desk drawer. This morning, I thought, “I’ll take my first sick day.” I’d been saving them for months, coming to school with a bag full of DayQuil and cough drops on more than one occasion.

“It will be fine,” I thought, at first. Then, I let my mind wander. 

“What if all of the subs are already taken? What if they have to split my classes amongst other teachers and then they’re all mad at me?”

“What if I do get a substitute teacher, but she can’t find my sub folder? What will they do all day?”

District officials are touting a newly created wellness room at Ward Melville High School as a lesson in serenity, where the surroundings help teachers and staff de-stress over the course of a hectic

Teachers are notorious for taking care of everyone but ourselves. The coming summer provides a perfect chance to change that.

Some of us will seek the luxury of a true physical, mental, and emotional break from the classroom. Others will leap directly into teaching summer school in order to cobble together a full salary. Or we’ll attend more conferences and trainings in the next two months than in the last 10 put together.

Every teacher, even those of us in the throes of summer school and professional development, should make time to answer an existential question: Who are we when we’re not teaching?

Here are four ideas for making the most of that oasis of time between the end of this school year and the beginning of the next.

How do some teachers make planning, teaching and assessing look so easy?

With the mad rush of the first few days and weeks behind us, there is perhaps, the merest hint of a rhythm emerging within your working week. The veterans among us will have already settled back into the familiar ebb and flow of school, but for us newbies (be it a first placement or the beginning of an NQT year) there looms the daunting prospect of how to manage our time effectively.

Between planning, teaching, assessing and managing additional responsibilities, it’s all too easy to begin feeling a familiar knot of worry growing in your chest.