...Finding Balance.

When the question comes up, as it inevitably will in small-talk, “what do you do,” I’m never quite sure how to answer. It’s as pressing of a question to me as “who are you?”

We live in a culture where we are defined by what we do. Our “who” is equivalent to our “what.” And the pressure that I’m faced with when asked that question can be overwhelming and lead me to question really, who am I?

My struggle is deciding between my two selves:

I am a teacher.

I am a mom.

And when I struggle to differentiate, I find that I’m doing a disservice to both parts of me, and in turn, I sometimes feel that I am doing a disservice to all the children in my charge: my students and my own kids.4

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This week I returned to work after 8 weeks of maternity leave. I spent nearly two months at home with my kids, three year old twin girls and a brand new baby girl. For several months my priority was being a good mom: reading to them every night, keeping a (embarrassingly minimally) clean house, feeding them from all the food groups, and yelling as little as possible. My priority was being a GOOD MOM. If you asked me what I did, the answer would be easy: I’m a mom to three beautiful, intelligent, powerful little girls.

But now that I’m back at school, I’m back to the balancing act that I’ve dealt with since my twins were born. Now, in addition to being a good mom, I’m trying to also be a GOOD TEACHER.

I want the absolute best for my students; I want to build them up, encourage them, empower them. I want to teach them to lead and to be successful. But I also want what’s best for my own kids, which includes a mom that’s home at a decent hour, who doesn’t do work at home in place of loving, cooking, and playing.

And that balance is HARD.

I feel it most when I’m receiving phone calls or texts regarding curriculum or grading while I’m giving the girls a bath, or coloring pictures of their cats with them. When I see those unanswered messages on my phone after the girls go to bed, I feel inadequate; there are teachers constantly giving their all, working all day and all night, doing what I used to do before I had kids. I suddenly feel like I used to be a great teacher, I used to work hard for my kiddos, but now I’m dropping the ball.

Is it fair that we ask our teachers to practically give up their lives for their jobs? Because I’m not going to lie, I feel an incredible guilt when I leave my school’s parking lot before 4pm. I hate that I have to decline meetings or work parties.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE going home early. I’m so happy to walk into the door to “Mommy’s home!!” I get bombarded with hugs and love and appreciation. And if I do stay, if I do spend a weekend working, or a few hours after school leading a club or coaching, I’m overwhelmed with the opposite guilt. I should be at home with my family. I used to be a good mom, before I came back to work.

I have big dreams. I want to expand my current leadership program, which is one class, to a full-time program where I can reach more students. My ultimate goal is to expand that idea to the district. I want to unify the leadership among our middle schools. I want to write a curriculum.

I have big dreams. I want to raise my daughters to understand their worth. I want to teach them to read and write. I want to teach them to advocate for themselves, to do well in school, to clean up after themselves. I want to spend time with them.

I have big dreams of raising test scores, empowering students to advocate for themselves.

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I teach, as in actively work with students, more than 5/6 of my paid work day. I give up my lunch for clubs that I can’t host after school due to constraints at home. I give up my planning period, which is 1/6 of the day, more often than not to cover classes or meet with other teachers, minimizing (or getting rid of all together) the time I have for grading and planning. To make up for that loss of time, I come in to school hours before I’m contracted to, the earliest I’m able to, when they open the building at 6am. So that I’m not doing work in place of hanging out with my family, I’m staying up long after the older kids’ bedtime (9pm) to take care of planning, grading, writing rationales, or responding to e-mails.

This loss of time within the school day, which leads to the early arrival and the staying up late, have consequences for my family and me personally: I lose out on nursing my baby one more time before I leave. I lose out on hours of sleep to come in earlier and to stay up later. I miss out on appropriate chances to take a break at lunch, since more often than not, I give that break up for the betterment of my students or my work.

I’m not the only teacher/parent facing this dilemma. Many incredible teachers are worn so thin at work, then completely depleted at home, that they struggle to maintain being a GOOD TEACHER and a GOOD PARENT. And if they do maintain both, very often they burn out and seek other career opportunities, careers that will allow them to “turn off” when they get home; careers where they are paid for their time rather than just expected to donate it.

I could never leave the classroom to be a stay at home mom, as much as in my head and heart I sometimes wish that I could. I couldn’t because I love my students too much. I love my time with them. Some of that is selfish; I like what I do, and I don’t want to give it up. As I said, I have big dreams. I’m learning to balance teacher life with mom life and finding new ways to integrate the two.

But lately, I have a new “big dream…” that something could be done so that I have the time I need to be a great teacher and get to turn off when I get home so that I can be a great mom.

Something has to be done, or we’re going to start losing a lot of great teachers because they want to be great moms. Sometimes, the desire and need to do both is just too much.