Working at home is not as easy as people think it is. It is easy to be distracted and hard to separate work responsibilities from home responsibilities. During this stressful time, many teachers have their own children at home at the same time they are teaching from home. Having a schedule helps balance work/home responsibilities. If both parents are home, it is easier to share responsibilities but sometimes teachers are single parents.
Separate the day into morning, afternoon, and evening blocks. You might want to meet as a family to work out a work/home schedule for everyone to see.
List the home responsibilities for each block such as breakfast for the family, lunch for the family, dinner for the family, helping children with schoolwork, cleaning the house, and bath time. If you have older children, consider having the older children helping at mealtimes either cooking or cleaning. Consider having older children help younger children with schoolwork when needed.
List the work responsibilities for each block of the day. It would be good to do a daily video for your students each day which will help them feel connected and not abandoned. This video can just be a “hello” and an overview of what you hope they get accomplished today. There may be work that needs to be graded and lesson plans that need to be done. You might plan a time that you can video conference with others in your department or school each day as a check-in to see how everyone is doing. This will help you feel less isolated.
Then create some kind of spreadsheet with the three blocks of time for each day of the week. Put your responsibilities into the blocks that they need to be in. By spreading these out into a visual, it will help be less overwhelming. You can print this out for your family to see. You might also want to come up with a family schedule. Having a routine will help everyone feel grounded and get used to the “new normal.”
Do you plan your routine at home? How do you work it out? Please share.
No comments:
Post a Comment