Teachers - A Day in the Life of a Teacher - Finish Your Day

Teaching is one of the 'jobs' that is not contained within a particular time frame. Great teachers live and breathe education. They care about their students. They care about whether they are teaching everyone as well as they can. It matters to wonderful teachers whether or not they have made a difference. Good teachers don't 'clock in and clock out,' because it's not a job that can be turned off and on. For the magnificent teachers in our profession, it seeps into your thoughts - sometimes when you're awake and sometimes when you're asleep.

While this is not a negative trait, it can have some consequences when it goes on long-term. No matter how energized you are about your teaching, at some point, your brain/mind needs to rest, recuperate, and rejuvenate. It can only do that when we are not still processing what went on during a particular school day, what lessons we could teach next week, how differently we plan to conduct a unit next year based on what occurred during the current teaching of the unit, and so on.

Ralph Waldo Emerson shared this thought which is apropos for the idea of this article:

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Here are 5 tips to help you 'finish each day and be done with it:'

1. Clean off your desk before you go home, putting away everything that has a home. Yes, this means that everything needs to have a home. When you do this, then you can feel some closure about your desk and work - and you will be greeted with a clean desk tomorrow morning!
2. Realistically look at your evening and decide whether OR NOT to take anything home with you. If you have a full evening, don't even take home a set of papers or any lesson plan materials. When you take them home, they are nagging at you while they are there. You can't close out with that nagging going on.
3. Keep a set of anytime/any day substitute lesson plans prepared and handy in your classroom. You never want to worry about a sub coming in when you were unprepared (sudden illness, caregiving responsibilities, other 'issues' that come up, etc.). It's just a relief knowing that IF you had to be out one day, someone else could come in and do something meaningful with your students.
4. Use the time in your car as transition time between school and home. Listen to the radio, talk with a friend on the phone (hands-free earpiece, of course). Let your brain release the day as you move into your non-teacher role(s).
5. Repeat (as often as needed): I can learn from today and I can't change it. When you revisit the interactions, the lessons, the mistakes, the comments, the 'not-yet-dones-but-wish-I-hads,' and the like, you can't rest. Let it go...there is always tomorrow...and if there's not a tomorrow, then it doesn't matter. This may sound harsh, but it's true.

Now, get some rest so that you can get up with determination tomorrow (and you need rested determination as a teacher). As George Lorimer says, "You've got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to go to bed with satisfaction."