Latest / Faith, Family, and Lesson Plans / Leave the School at School E2
Transcript
- Mariel E2: he walked into my office. And he asked me to play. Mommy, you wanna play with me? Mommy's busy right now, I'll do it later. Are you ever gonna have time to play with me? that hit harder than anything. that was the moment I decided I don't need to do leadership certification right now. It's gonna be okay. Welcome to Faith Family and Lesson Plan. I'm your host, Mariel Pock I am a follower of Christ, a mom, and a teacher. Today I want to talk about something very relatable for me because it's something that affected me for many, many years in my career as a teacher. A good friend asked me the other day why you want to do this podcast, and my answer was because I want to share things with other teachers that I would have loved for someone to. Share with me when I was a brand new teacher and I was struggling trying to find a perfection that I was never going to reach. And so this topic today, I know that more than one of you is going to relate to it. And the name of episode two is called Leave School at School. Work Life Boundaries. Can we do that? Are we able to do that? Today we're going to be in Genesis 2, verses 2 and 3. And this is what it says, but the seventh day God has finished the work he had been doing. So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. Because on it he rested from all the work of creation that he have done. And this is what we're gonna walk away with today. If God can rest, so can you. Alright. So the main message today, we're gonna focus today on protecting our family time. without carrying out guilt because guilt is a very strong word and we don't want to carry it with us as a teacher or as a mom. Teaching, the work that never ends. Why is it like that with teaching? My husband gets off work and gets home and he can relax and he can watch TV, watch football, whatever. When we teacher, because I know I'm not the only one, get home, our brains are thinking about tomorrow and our lesson plans. In the email we didn't answer, and the papers we had to grade, and the phone call that I didn't have time to make, and that teacher parent conference that did not go the way we planned. Or that very specific student that needs our attention. You know what I'm talking about. Why can't we switch off when we leave the school campus? Because we cannot. And it's The job that just keeps going and going and going. One more paper, one more email, one more lesson, one more phone call. and I think it's because we care so deeply about our students that we extend that care even outside our contract hours. And it's that care in the drags us sometimes to forget that when we get home, we are not Señora Pock That's what my kids call me, Señora Pock I am mommy. And I am the wife of my husband and I gotta take care of my home. But we are so into our jobs, so into my my goal or my of my calling of being a teacher that I carry that twenty-four seven. Why do we do that? Staying longer at school does not mean that I care more. Think about it for a second. Staying longer at school does not mean that I care more for my students. Caring for students and constantly working is not the same thing. And I'm gonna repeat that because I want you to listen to it. Caring for your students and constantly working is not the same thing. You can be an excellent teacher and you can care for your students a lot. That does not mean you're gonna be a bad mom or a bad wife because you carry that with you and you drag it all weekend and it's only Saturday and your brain is already on Monday. And what are you gonna do? You can love your students, but you have to also love your family. You can do both. And every one of them has their specific time and a specific place. But the teacher guilt. Again, guilt that very heavy word that carries all of it when we don't accomplish something. They don't finish work. They don't finish grades, papers that we left in our desk, the phone call that you went we didn't have time to make. Sometimes you do an attendance. Raise your hand if you ever forgot to do attendance. my goodness, I had to put sticky notes on my computer to remember to do attendance. And I only had three classes a day. Some of y'all they had seven classes a day. You have to remember to do attendance because you know, that email will come and say, Hey, you didn't do attendance in third block. An unfinishes to-do list that no means that you fail. I am a to-do list girl. I have a notebook. I am obsessed with notebooks. I love notebooks. And I have a to-do list every single morning. That's the first thing that I do when I get to school. I write a short prayer because I had to start my day with Jesus. And then I start writing my to-do list for every class that I'm going to teach today. I that's the very the way my brain functions. Now what happened if I get a phone call and they tell me my own child is sick at school and I gotta go pick him up? That too do list is not getting done. Probably not even half of it. Does that make me less of a teacher because I didn't do that? No, it makes you human. Because that's what we are, humans. The to-do list is a really good help. It's a guide But that doesn't mean we're gonna be perfect if we accomplish everything in it. Teacher have limits because we're humans. You do have limits, you do not need to be perfect. Responsibility is not the same as being available. And I had to learn this myself this year. This year, after 11 years in the classroom, I finally say no. And that was a big shock for me because I don't think I knew that word before. Whatever was asked of me was just yes. Yes, I'll do it on Saturdays. Yes, I'll do it on Sundays. Yes, I'll do this evening. One time I even remember I got out of bed to complete a translation work that was needed. The person that forgot to send it to me, I really needed it and forgot to send it to you. And my answer was, don't worry, I'll get up and do it. Why did I do that? I got out of bed. I was in bed already at nine nine something. I got up and finished that one document. Nobody was gonna die if I say no. And I had to learn that myself. And I learned that you do that this year. And I said, you know what? If you don't send me an email that you want it to be translated before four o'clock, which is when I leave school on Fridays, I'm not doing it because I am not checking my email during the weekend. And that is something I started this doing this year, starting I guess the first day of school. Once I get home, and especially on the weekends, I do not check my email. Whatever it is that is there is still going to be there at the beginning of the week. And I'm gonna go and check and it's gonna be there. Now, if this is super urgent, somebody's about to die. Well, you know what? They can call me. They're not gonna send you an email. Remember that. You need to replace the I didn't get to do everything with I did what I was able with the time I had, which is a lot. If you are a teacher, if you are a mom, you spend the whole day doing things for other people. And what you did was enough with the time you had. You're not a magician. You have to remember that there is only one savior, and that's not you, is Jesus. And he's not looking for perfection. When he called you to be a teacher, when he called you to be a mom, when he gave you that calling specifically to you, he was not expecting for you to be perfect. Because he's perfect for us. He called you with all your imperfections because he knew that that was the right place for you and that that calling was perfect for you. But then you say, Well, how do I do this? How do I set boundaries? How do I leave the school at school and I don't carry it with me for the rest of the week? And this is a few things that help me. I choose when the day, work day ends. I have to choose when it ends. My students leave at 4 p.m. I leave school at 4 30. I'll tell you the truth. At 4 p.m., I sit at my desk for a few 10 maybe 10 minutes and I stare at the wall. Because I need that time. I need that time of quietness. I need that time of my phone is not ringing. I need that time of I am not answering 50 million questions. I'm just gonna sit here. and think. I don't even know what I'm thinking about most of the time, but I just I need that downtime. Now 415 I start turning up everything. I start cleaning a little bit, but my trustworthy needs to go. And then I leave school. 4 twenty five, I close my laptop. If you have a desktop, turn off your computer and leave the school. You don't love your students more just because you stay until 5 30 PM. And that's time that you're robbing your family. Because after contract hours, guess what? They are not paying you more. You're doing that for free. But that is time that you're taking away from your family. How do I decide when the day, the when the work day ends? Well, write it down if you cannot decide. But you're just write it down, put a sticky note, put a smiley face on your computer and a sticky note to say, four o'clock, I'm out. And keep that as a promise to yourself. My shutdown routine, I told you, I need those 10-15 minutes of quietness. I really do need them. I teach high school and the amount of questions that I answer in the day, probably 90% of them irrelevant to my lesson and unnecessary questions and repetitive questions. But I always tell my students, I get paid to answer your questions, so ask them. And it's true, we do get paid to answer those questions. Turn off your emails. Notifications, you can do that. We all have our emails in our phones now. one thing that I had to turn off was this thing right here. Because even though I don't have my phone, my notification will come in here. You can go there, change the settings, you do not get those notifications. Nothing is more important than your time with your family. Once you get home, your mom. Once you get out of the school, your kids need to too. Working from home should be an exception and only for very specific special exceptions. It's not the default. You do not need to take home every day. You do not need to carry papers with you. All those units that you didn't create, guess what? They're gonna still be on your desk tomorrow morning when you go back to school. That's going to be okay, I promise. The world is not gonna end because you didn't post that grade. We need to be present at home. And this is a personal experience that happened a few years ago. They really, really changed the way I see my job. I used to, when I started teaching, I used to want to do everything. I'm the new teacher, but I want to do this and I want to be part of this team. And I want to be head of this team. And I want to do this and I want to do that endorsement. I wanna, I wanted to do everything. I don't know. I guess it's new teacher fever. I don't know what to call it. I want to do everything. And one of those things that I wanted to do while I was doing two other endors endorsements, I remember I was doing the eSOL endor endorsement and the PBIS endorsement. I had this amazing idea of getting my certification and leadership. So I was going through the process of doing my application. I wanted to go to the University of Alabama. You had to do an interview online, answer a few questions, turn in all your documentation, your application, all that stuff. So I was in that process. I get in. I thought I was so excited. I can do this. Yes, I can do this. I can be a teacher nine hours a day and then come home and do all this via mom and do three endorsements at the same time. Yes, I can do it. No, I can't You have to sacrifice one area of your life to be able to do that. There is no other way to do that. And I remember very well, my child was about five years old. Maybe four. Maybe four, because I was a brand new teacher. And he walked into my office. And he asked me to play. He has some, they look like Legos, but they're like big pieces. And he said, Mommy, you wanna play with me? And my answer was, Mommy's busy right now, baby. I'll do it later. And his little face, he just looked down and walked out of the office and said, Are you ever gonna have time to play with me? And that hit harder than anything. And that was the moment I decided I don't need to do leadership certification right now. It's gonna be okay. I'm gonna finish the other two endorsements because I already started it. And I got up on my desk and I went and played with my child. Because he was five. And his life was going back in front of my eyes and I was doing nothing. Do you think my child would care how many endorsements mommy had or how many certifications mommy had? No. He wanted mommy to play in the floor with him with some Legos. So I stopped and I never went back. Maybe one day I'll get the certification for leadership. I don't know. I don't even know if I want it as at this point. He is almost 14 now. And I respect our time together more than anything. Once I get out of the school, 4 30, I am mom. And that's all I am. And every once in a while I am Mamita. Cause he is a teenager now, so I don't get Mamita very often no more. But let's go back a little bit to Genesis 2, where the Lord said that he rested at the seventh day for all the amazing work that he did. And listen, if the creator of the universe, the run the ones that runs all this, can stop and rest, why can't we? Why can teachers just stop and rest and enjoy that time of doing nothing and maybe just hugging your babies and watch a movie and have ice cream? That sounds awesome to me. God established that rhythm of work and rest. And he said that that rest day was holy. That's how important he said it was. Because rest is part of God's designs, it's not laziness. Rest is part of his design for us. And that's why he did it himself. Rest is also an act of faith and trust. When I don't get everything done, I trust that the Lord is gonna help me tomorrow to finish that. I trust the Lord with my unfinished to-do list. And that's okay. And that does not mean I am a bad mom or I am a bad teacher. That means that I'm trusting God. If the Lord says you should rest, Mariel I am going to rest. This happened yesterday and it really got my attention that we're talking about this today. Yesterday we have bad storm in the middle of the night and the light went off in the morning. We didn't have power. And we stayed in bed until 9 a.m. I don't ever, ever, ever do that. Why? I am not sure. I knew I couldn't get up and make coffee or watch TV or do absolutely nothing. So I slept. And I slept more than I'd done in so many years. I loved it. Maybe we need the power to go off every once in a while so we stay in bed longer. We need to trust God with our unfinished work. God can handle what I cannot handle. God can handle what I cannot finish today. It's going to be okay. He will take care of you, girl. We are not the savior. You need to remember that. And I know there are kids, our students will bring all kinds of a lot of problems to us sometimes. And sometimes it's a lot of drama. And sometimes it's some stuff that weighs heavy on us. But you have to remember something. You are not Jesus. You're not a mean to save everybody. Yes, you can pray for them. Yes, you can love them. Yes, you can do everything that is in your hands. But carrying that home. And not taking care of your family because you're so involved in that problem or in that situation that you forget that you are needed at home. Remember, you gotta be present at home. Do not waste that precious time that what you have with your family because your babies are not gonna be babies forever. Mine is almost 14, and every time I look at him, I feel like crying. Because he used to fit in my lap and be, you know, so tiny and just hug me and push his little arms around me. And now he's taller than me. Your babies are not gonna be babies forever. You're always gonna have new students. Because they go, they grow up, they graduate, they leave you, they go on with their lives. But your kids only have you. You are their mom. We can prepare faithfully and trust God with the results. Yes, you do your best at school. You prepare, you do your lesson plans. Lesson plans for me are something I can't never walk away from. I know a lot of teachers say I don't need a lesson plan. I know what I'm teaching. For me, lesson plans are everything. It gives me a structure. I love a structure. I know how I'm gonna open. I know what my work, my work face, I know what the students are gonna do, I know what my task is, I know what my closing is. That's for me. Lesson plans give me structure. I love structure in my classes. I cannot do anything without structure. If you can teach without lesson plans, that's wonderful. But you have to prepare so that God will bless your results. I prepare my lesson plans and I trust that everything will go well according to His will. And remember, our best does not have to be perfect. We were not called to be perfect. God did not give you the classroom for you to be perfect. God didn't give you those kids at home and expect for you to be a perfect mom. He gave you this because he put a calling on you and he trusts you with that calling. So all we have to do is our best and trust in him for the rest. That even came out as a rhyme. So I'm gonna give you a little challenge this week. Let's see if you can do this. Number one, choose a boundary rather than trying to change everything at once. Just one thing. Just one thing. For example, I will not answer emails after I left school. Just one day. Once I leave the school, I'm not answering no more emails. I'll answer them in the morning. That can be one of them. You don't have to do all of the ones. This is just a real challenge, remember. Leave when you contract hours end and this is probably hard, I know. But listen, you're not gonna get teacher of the year just because you work until six p.m. And why is it to be the teacher of the year anyway? Your kids are not gonna say she's the teacher that loves us the most because she stays here until six pm. Working longer doesn't mean that you care that you care more for them. It's just you're wearing yourself off and you're robbing your family of the time that was designed for them to enjoy your company. Stop checking your emails after the set time. Mmm. Friday, 5 p.m. No more emails. I'm not checking them again until if you want to Sunday night. Because why? That weekend is for your family, remember. Pick one school-free evening each week. Maybe if you if this the rest of them is really really hard for you, do you pick one day in the week? maybe Wednesdays if you go to church. This day after I leave school, I'm not taking any work home. I'm not doing nothing else for school. I am done with school for this day. Just pick one day. If you pick Friday, that's really good because then you carry on for Saturday and Sunday. Create a Friday shutdown routine. Because it's Friday, right? You go get your kids, your own kids. And go get something yummy to eat or go prepare something drammy at home and say, you know what? No phones, no emails, no schoolwork, just my family time right now. This one took me a few years to understand, and now that I do it, it makes me very happy. Stop taking papers home to grade. Let me repeat that. Stop taking papers home to grade. It's going to be okay. They're not gonna go anywhere. Leave it at your desk in a folder. You can do it on your planning when you come back next week. Remember, tell yourselves, I have done what I can do for today with the time I had. And you do not say that with guilt. You can say with thank you, Lord, that I got to do as much as I can today with the time that I had. You and I know that our planning time is not enough. Then we had to use it wisely. If we have things to grade, well, most of the time to grade everything for all my classes, it takes me more than one day. But I divide them. I divide them. Today I'm gonna grade this class, today this class, today this class, and then eventually it gets done. And it gets done, and that's what you do. Remind yourself that your students are in God's hands and you are not God. You are not Jesus. Yes, we pray for them. Yes, we care for them. But at the end, we're doing our calling because God gave us a purpose and God put us in that classroom. Trust the Lord with your job. Trust the Lord with your kiddos and trust the Lord with their problems because I know they have a lot going on too. Remind yourself that your family deserves your presence. And I'm not talking about a presence that you are so tired you don't even feel like talking to them. That you just want to go lay down and fall asleep on the couch because I've been there, I've done that many times. I am too tired to even interact. I am too tired to listen to the stories of my son at the end of the day. Not anymore. Remember that they also deserve your presence, your presence, that they can share a memory with you and we can laugh together. Your presence where you can watch a funny movie if you want to. My son loves to walk, to watch funny videos on YouTube. Well, watch those together and let's laugh together. Be present for them because that's the only thing they're gonna remember. God is not asking you. To be everything. God is not asking me to be everything to everyone. He's asking you to be a teacher. He's asking you to be a mom. Maybe he's asking you to be both. But you don't have to be everything for everyone. And there is specific times for all of them. Let's see. Where is my time? I don't know where my time is. Okay. Ooh. Okay. We're gonna review now because I am a teacher, and that's what we do. We always review. So pause and take a breath. Just breathe. Breathe. Release what you cannot control and give it to God. It's his anyway. Thank God for the calling that you have and tell them how honored you feel that he has called you to do this because this is not an easy thing to do. That he has called you to give, to give you this calling, he's calling you to. Bless these kids because every single kid that he place in your classroom is for a reason and he has a purpose for that. Ask Ad for wisdom and establish healthy boundaries and remember you are a mom, you're a teacher, you can be both, but don't be both at the same time, because you're gonna end up sacrificing one of them. This is our closing message for today. Yes, you're a teacher. No, you don't need to be perfect. Yes, you're a mom. No, you don't need to be perfect. You're also a child of God. And in resting in Jesus, we can show them that we trust Him, that He will take care of the stuff that we cannot take care of. Leave the school at school and you can start that. Monday. Trust the God. Trust God with all the things that you cannot control, the all the things that are unfinished in your to-do list. And one more little thing before I go. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Give yourself some grace. And remember, you don't have to carry everything. God does that for you. This was Faith Family and Lesson Plans. Remember this week to carry this with you. Faith in the classroom. and Grace at home. Have a wonderful week. I'll see you soon.