It's that time of the year where teachers begin to feel the stress of the school year. With finals only a few days away, there is a sigh of relief that vacation is near. While we prepare our students for finals, we need to learn to also take care of ourselves. I must admit that I am constantly on the move going in several different directions at once.
Students are the same way. They just don't have one class but many so we need to not pull them in different directions as they head towards finals. It's time that we all take a moment to reflect on ourselves and where we are heading. I asked my students to complete a self-reflection on their first semester regarding their strength(s) and weakness(es). As part of my self-reflection of the year, I will do the same.
I realized that throughout the year some of my strengths are my weaknesses where I do not put myself first. I create an odd sense of OCD to make sure that all my grading is done by a certain time. This helps me to be organized with my work and focus on what lies ahead. However, this year, I've learned to focus on grading the majority of the work (when I originally was going to grade) and grade the "late" work at another time. By doing this, the stress started to decrease (just a little) where I did not feel obligated to complete all the work at a certain time giving me more time to spend at home with my family.
While I still have a long ways to go from being overly stressed to make sure it's all done now to let some things wait until tomorrow, I am starting to focus more on me. I wish I could say that I have completely changed that but there is still more work ahead of me. The point is that I did see where my weakness was and instead of ignoring it, I focused on solving it. Let's hope that I can continue to focus on an organized form of procrastination rather than feeling the urge to get it all completed immediately.
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