Also known as “How to Keep Teaching a Job While Being a Milspouse.”
Juggling it all, like in a circus
As a working mom, there have been many times when I’ve needed to juggle things, such as:
- Home: Why are there still boxes to unpack!? Who is going to go grocery shopping and when!?
- Work preoccupations: what am I teaching tomorrow? Should I even have a job now when we’re going to leave in a year?
- Husband: did he eat today? It’s 9 p.m., what is he doing at work still?
- Kids: what did they forget to take to school now and are we even raising them right?
- Kids in stuff: how am I going to get them all to three different places if one has the musical to get to, one has soccer, and one has swim class at the same time?
- My sanity: um, yeah, ha ha ha. And also: notice how I’m all the way at the bottom of the list?
As a military spouse, with a husband that often works long hours and is out of state/the country on TDYs, I’ve had to organize my home life to get my work as an educator done. Anyone have to be at work at 7:30 a.m. and also have a 45 minute commute, while your kids start school at 9:10 a.m., and no, your husband’s not home?!
At the same time, I’ve had to organize my work life so that I can be home when I need to be. Sorry, I can’t chat or hang out in the teacher’s lounge, I have to work through my lunch because I can’t print and make copies after school or take all these essays home!.
As a teacher, there are certain boundaries I have needed to set in place in order to survive–I mean, in order to prioritize. Everyone knows–scratch that– everyone SHOULD know that there is no way a teacher can get everything that he or she needs to do in one planning period of what–45 minutes? Teaching a classroom of 28 or more students that come from diverse backgrounds with a wide range of abilities and skills, knowledge gaps, and specific needs? There are not enough hours during a school day!
What’s the secret?
Once you mix all three personas: mom-milspouse-teacher, you need a cape so you can do it all. I only have this for you though. If you want to keep teaching through PCS-ing, kids, and family life, you have got to set boundaries & keep your eye on the prize.
That’s it.
For me, my prize is my family. I will put the oxygen mask on my family before I put it on my job, no doubt about it. They are my #1.
As far as setting boundaries, if you don’t know how to say no, you’ve gotta learn, friend. Teaching sometimes means that you get tapped to spend more time doing something for the good of your students.
“No.” is the shortest sentence in the English language.
“I’m unavailable.”
“I’m unable due to prior commitments.”
Boundaries
I can’t come in two hours early every day, I’ve got three kids to get ready for school and breakfast to make. I can’t stay hours after school, I’ve gotta go pick up the kids and spend a couple of hours taking turns with homework, reading, making dinner, washing dishes, yay. No, I can’t volunteer to coach or lead extracurricular activities with students after school because well, my husband is not home yet to be with the kids, and I don’t have an infinite amount of disposable income (as a teacher!) to hire a babysitter for the afternoon because I already have to hire one for the morning. So I can’t pay someone else to spend time with my kids doing mom-things, while I stay extra time at work and do not get paid for it. Except for that one time that I had a district meeting and got paid $15 to attend for one hour.
And don’t feel like you have to apologize for it, either! We, women, apologize too much. That’s for another blog, but it’s worth mentioning. You don’t have to be sorry you have other responsibilities besides your job! See what I didn’t do there?
It’s not that I don’t care about my work so I don’t want to work “extra.” I care very much. Since 2010, I have worked as a teacher in 9 schools, spanning five U.S. states and one foreign country. I love working, I love teaching, and I love guiding my students through their learning. I’ve been an educator for more than 15 years now. I’ve had to give up certain things in order to work in education. I’ve cried, heartbroken at having to PCS and leave schools, coworkers, and students that I care about very much.
I’ve had to start all over at every single school: learn the curriculum, learn the ins and outs of the school machine, adapt to different expectations, the unspoken no no’s, and I’ve tried to do it to the best of my ability while pregnant, in a new city every time, no friends, husband at work, new baby, oh, let’s put ‘em in Korean daycare because, well, there’s just no room at the CDC, they can learn the language, they’re sponges, et cetera. My friend, It. Is. hard!
The bottom line is that teaching is one of those extremely difficult jobs to maintain as a mom–then to top it off as a milspouse? Phew, it’s no easy feat, so do what you can do.
So what do you do?
What I can do is come in to work my contract teaching hours, do the best job that I possibly can while I’m there at work by being prepared and knowing what I need to teach like the back of my daughter’s head, organizing my time effectively, and thus wasting very little of it, and then leaving work at the end of the official work day to minimize my own homework, if any.
Sometimes I also have to slap my own hand down when I want to volunteer for something, because it’s in my nature to say: I can help, I can do that!
NO, stop it!
You cannot do everything! Not now. Maybe in the future, when my spouse retires and we put down roots, the kids are grown, and I have some free time, I can do those little extra things at work. For now, I’m okay with keeping teaching as “just” a job. I’ve got a more important “job” in my family.
Tell me about it
What about you, working military spouse mom, what do you stop yourself from doing at work so you can also do what you need to do at home?
