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Imagine your family is going to have a fun night by ordering Pizza and watching Netflix, but you are rooted in your room because you still have tasks to do. They want you to spend time with them but the deadline is also tomorrow. You will feel frustrated and irritated in this situation.
Why? Because your professional and personal life are getting intertwined and you are unable to balance them. Work-life balance means that you give appropriate time to both aspects of your life so that you can have a successful career and family life. This balance is important for all educational stakeholders because they are doing a rewarding job that requires a lot of their time and energy. In this case, balancing both aspects is quite difficult.
How can you balance your work and life? This article is going to discuss it in detail.
The Current State of Work-Life Balance in Education
Teaching and learning is a rich and rewarding job but it is time-consuming too. Students have to spend a lot of hours on different assignments and tasks that can impact their personal lives. Online learning has introduced flexibility in students’ lives but also it consumes the majority of their time as they have to do self-directed learning. Different additional online resources can be overwhelming as students have to spend the majority of their time dealing with them.
Teachers also find it difficult to balance work and life because they have to do various tasks. A 2022 survey told us that half of the teachers don't find time to do lesson planning so they have to make compromises on their personal life. Due to online education, they have to remain active on different platforms to answer the queries of students, give them additional support, create online courses for them and add personalized aspects to the curriculum.
Similarly, parents and administrators also find it difficult to balance work and personal life. Parents have to take care of their kid's study needs while taking care of their professional lives. Administrators have to do data management, integrate policies and provide all the online and physical resources their students need. It requires extensive data analysis work and planning that takes the majority of time.
Factors Affecting Work-Life Balance in Education
Researchers defined work-life balance as the satisfactory equilibrium between non-paid and paid tasks of any person. They believed that work-life balance is a challenging thing for people in the education field. There are two types of interferences in this equilibrium; family life disturbing the work and work-life disturbing the personal tasks.
Padma and Reddy researchers believed that institutional workload is the major factor in balancing work and life. This workload not only demands the time of teachers and administrators in the institute but also gets extended to home. They have to look for lesson planning, organizing students’ records, grading papers and other minor tasks that can impact their family lives.
Kanthisree noted that managing a home while raising children and doing a job is stressful during one of his studies. These parents find it difficult to balance their childcare with their employment while doing other home chores. So, parents can feel stressed in this situation when they have to take care of their kid’s studies along with their other tasks. It largely impacts their work-life balance.
Another major factor is digital technology. Online classes and community forums are invading the privacy of everyone. Students can message teachers at any time, causing a disturbance in their family time. Online classes, MOOCs and community forums can also disturb the equilibrium in students' lives. They start multitasking which impacts their health and academic growth.
Strategies for Improving Work-Life Balance
For Students
Students can create a balance in their lives through different time management and task management techniques. There should be a fixed schedule for study and family life.
They can use different techniques such as Pomodoro and time blocking so that they can remain focused on their tasks. In Pomodoro, they need to set a timer of 25 minutes to do the task and then can take a 5-10 minute break. Moreover, they should learn how to prioritize the important tasks and avoid the unimportant ones.
For this, they can get help from different devices such as Google Calendar, Savvy Planner, Monday.com and Trello.
For Teachers
Teachers are the ones whose work-life balance gets deeply impacted. It is because their work is challenging. They have to teach soft skills, hard skills and tech skills to their kids. So, they need to learn effective strategies to balance their life.
For this, they should set boundaries and say no to additional work. They should try not to take extra work home. They should also do physical exercise and meditation to keep their health better. Moreover, they should also follow different time management techniques.
Teachers should also use digital technology for their benefit. For example, they can use Gradescope to grade the papers of their students, saving their time. For project management, they can use different tools such as Itsdart. There are different tools for creating online courses and lesson planning too.
Moreover, they should use community forums such as Padlet to connect with their peers for support and professional growth. They can use app blockers to block notifications and messages from work apps during their family time.
For School Administrators and Educational Software Developers
Administration should create policies and schedules for their employees so that they don't need to work on weekends or extra hours at their homes. Software developers should also implement boundaries and time management strategies to complete their tasks on time.
For this purpose, they can use technology. There are different AI tools for doing administration tasks. For example, administration can do their spreadsheet work through Sheetplus AI or Fibery AI for workspace management.
Software developers can also utilize different AI tools for different tasks. For example, they can use BlackBox AI for coding and WordPress Elementor for Website development.
For Parents
Parents should teach their kids different study techniques and hacks such as active learning, time management and spaced repetition so that they can be independent learners. With it, parents should set a schedule for every person in the home so that they can have an organized routine. In the schedule, they should make sure to add “Me” time.
For this, parents can get help from the library and tutors. If they have other kids, they can involve the older one in helping the younger one with studies. Moreover, there are different AI tools to help them. For example, they can use Edtools to communicate with their kid's teachers. They can use Family Link and Screen Time to monitor their kids' schedules and activities from anywhere.
For NGOs, Communities and Entrepreneurs
Communities and NGOs should initiate different programs that can teach everyone about the importance of work-life balance. They can teach different strategies to educational stakeholders to balance their lives.
Entrepreneurs can also retrain their employees by teaching them effective AI tools and hacks for balancing their work and personal lives.
Success Story
Finnish schools are famous for shorter school days and weeks. They have implemented play-based learning in their schools so that pupils can learn quickly without spending a lot of time cramming. The short school days saved them a lot of hours of the day and gave them long weekends to enjoy with their friends.
There are various examples of Finnish elementary teachers who worked only six hours a day, four hours of teaching and two hours of lesson planning. Institutes also gave long maternity leaves to their employees so that they could enjoy their time with their newborn kids. This balance makes them a hard-working and professional nation.
Conclusion
In short, work-life balance is crucial for every educational stakeholder but a lot of people are struggling with it. In this case, we all must play our roles and implement work-life balance in our lives. Every person should follow specific strategies and implement different policies to ensure that educational professionals have equilibrium in their personal and professional lives. For this, they should encourage them to use various educational tools and platforms for their benefit.
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