How to Thrive and Not Just Survive During This Back-To-School Season
Are the schedules all set? Did you do seating arrangements? Part auditions scheduled? Is the new sheet music numbered? Did my entire supply order come in? What am I forgetting? When should I distribute lesson schedules and did I triple check them? Is the performance schedule accurate? Did I forget anything on the syllabus? What was I supposed to ask my principal? Questions like this are a constant plague on the mind in the form of anxiety for every performing arts teacher right now. It’s September. Everything is starting all at once and for things that do not start right away, planning is already underway for it. We live for what is happening in about two months… or less if you have a marching band!
No doubt you have a system. Hopefully that system doesn’t include mental flailing!
You need to make sure you take care of yourself, so that it isn't survival, but so that you thrive during this back to school season. That’s the key to staying clear-headed- using the oxygen mask theory.
Step 1: Plan this through.
Take fifteen minutes on the drive home (or a drive somewhere) to deliberately think about how you are going to execute the next few steps. Deliberately plan to plan, deliberately plan to shift routines to include the next few steps and deliberately tell yourself that if you mess up, you will continue the next day, no penalties, no feelings toward it, just simply, tomorrow you will, and do so.
Step 2: Meal prep.
Plan balanced meals for the week on Sunday, and cook them up if you must. Meal prep, especially using an oven or Crock Pot, doesn’t have to take you very much time. It definitely saves you money. All it takes is advanced planning… that you are deliberately going to do in Step 1! Dinner is generally the most difficult. Roast up some chicken thighs that you can season differently each day, get some salad kits, and roast up some frozen veggies at the same time as the chicken. It’s about ten minutes of prep, an hour or less in the oven and you have multiple inexpensive meals. It’s easy to make sure these items go on your shopping list the following week also!
Step 3: Fitness.
When can you get an extra walk in? Is winter going to be difficult? Get a folding walkpad for your living room and walk during a show. That hour will be done before you know it. Download a bodyweight strength training app. You don’t need any equipment and very little space, and the app can remind you to work out. The workouts are generally under 20 minutes. Guess what else is around 20 minutes? Yoga sessions that are free on YouTube!
Step 4: Brain Quiet Time.
We aren’t talking about doomscrolling or games on your phone. Those are actually too stimulating for what you need in this category. This is a designated ten minutes of time DAILY for your brain to not be engaged in anything. It’s quiet time for you to not be planning, not be productive and to not look at anything. Eyes shut, breathing slowly, body mindfully relaxed. It’s just ten minutes, and yes you can do it. Need help? Try the app “Insight Timer” for thousands of options for free meditation.
Step 5: Self Care.
I put this here at the end because we can’t forget about it. Sure, some of the suggestions in Step 4 could be self care, but in today’s super-stimulating teacher life, it needs its own category and requirement. Self care in this instance is about work-life balance and the ability to decide when you have worked enough and you need to enjoy your life in a mindful, memorable, valuable way. Spend time with your family playing board games, don’t neglect the hobbies you engaged in over the summer, do that weekly fitness class you enjoy, take the family out to place laser tag, and make time for a little bit of fun, so that you do not regret your time only doing work.
Step 6: Invest in Yourself So Your Students Thrive Once Back to School.
Your students are only as good as their teacher. Where are their shortfalls that you, yourself can help them be better at? Every teacher has them and no one is perfect. We don’t want to be that complacent teacher that settles into a comfortable routine of teaching the same things the same way all of the time. Reflect on your students’ progress. Reflect on your methods. What’s missing? What’s that thing that you wish you could teach them in a more effective, more efficient way? What does your curriculum need more of? Before you shut down the internal monologue by saying it’ll be too hard to implement those answers, check out Uplevel U: Music and download our live interactive course catalog here: Live, Interactive Uplevel U: Music Course Catalog. Uplevel U: Music has online, on-demand, self-paced professional development courses that help to fill in those gaps in the most efficient and easy ways. There’s something for every performing arts teacher at Uplevel U: Music!
This article was written by Music Room/Uplevel U: Music's owner and creator, Karen (Kay) Janiszewski. This article was written by Music Room/Uplevel U: Music's owner and creator, Karen (Kay) Janiszewski.
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