Bruce Walker, College/University curriculum officer collegeuniversity@wmea.org
The Balance Needed for Success
N.B. By the time you read this article, we should be in the next academic term. Just apply this to future terms and all should be well. You did it! You got to the end of the academic term. Things are finally dying down and there is a sense of relief that all the hard work invested into your students and community showed results (whether positive or… informative). Regardless, what do you do now? Do you just jump away from your desk and run towards your loved ones that have been patiently waiting for your undivided attention? Do you jump right into planning for the upcoming academic term to make improvements for the next term? The answer: It’s a balance. Very early in my teaching career (circa 2006), I was heavily under the impression that to be successful I must stress myself out to the highest degree and if I was not operating over 125%, everything I did would result in a poor product that would get me fired. Ok…maybe it wasn’t this bad, but my overactive imagination did not do me any favors. I continually stayed late in my office. I put in more work and effort than I probably should have in very minor tasks. There were several times I invested energy where it did not belong and skipped areas that needed the most amount of attention. The thought that the only way to rise to the level of veteran teachers was to sacrifice blood, sweat, and tears. Unfortunately, this led to being taken advantage of by people I thought were on my team and I would sacrifice my own personal health and needs for the sake of my students. Although this sounds noble, it was a far overreach of what my responsibilities were, and I needed to adapt to a new strategy. Fast forward to moving to a new position, I picked up on ways to distribute my workflow and realized that I had to put myself in a growth mindset that would allow for a healthy balance of doing my job and living my life for me AND my students. Burnout was easily on the horizon, and this was an area I truly did not want to approach. One of the most effective strategies I found to help organize me was to set clear boundaries between work and personal time. This might involve setting specific times for work and specific times for personal activities, such as exercising, spending time with loved ones, or engaging in hobbies. I am a planner and appreciate productivity organizers and calendars. Nowadays, I use programs like Notion (https://www.notion.so) to keep me on track and make the organization of everything I need to do quite easy. I can find it all in one place and can switch from task to task with relative ease. If you enjoy pencil and paper, go
ahead and to your heart’s content! Use something and stick with it. Next, learn to delegate and automate or simplify tasks. I cannot tell you the number of times I have
missed a deadline (or two) because the process was SO involved that I was simply overwhelmed. Every time that happened, I created “lesson learned” notes in my brain to figure out a way to not find myself in that position again. A real world example would be our new purchasing process for our college. Those of us that are in the community and technical college sector are very familiar with ctcLink and all the bruises and huge learning curves that came with adapting to this new system. What should be a simple process to purchase sheet music turned into a 54-step nightmare (yes, there were at one point 54 steps to purchase something). Death by a 1,000 paper cuts! However, by looking at ways to delegate and simplify the process, I was able to get ahead of the curve and now have become a ctcLink knight (not yet a Jedi master) helping my department through the purchasing process. Was all of this outside the wheelhouse of my degrees? Absolutely! Did my degrees prepare me for any of this? Not at all! And that’s the point I am trying to make — being flexible and adapting to the unknown helps make these processes more manageable. Lastly, reduce your stress during the workday and engage in self-care. Very true to my first point in this article, when you leave the building for the day, do your best to leave work at work. My brain is on ALL THE TIME, and I have a habit of replying to CANVAS messages from students in the checkout line at WinCo; however, when I have reached my limit and I need to shut down, I will do so. My students know I care about them, and I see them. They also see me as a person who has needs as well. I know this because I am open and honest with them. Being authentic and vulnerable with my students grants me access to see things from their perspective and vice versa. We built a community of trust in our classrooms/ ensembles that allows this to happen. Therefore, take that brief mindfulness focus break at your desk or before the rehearsal to organize what needs to be present to create success. My late father believed in the 7 Ps (which I’m sure he adapted from the military). Because this is a family friendly magazine, I will leave one of the P’s out. Prior proper planning prevents poor progress. I continually work on this, and I hope this saying helps you strike the balance for a bright and successful academic term.
Voice of Washington Music Educators Association January 2023
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