Why The 8 to 4 Teacher?
Why The 8 to 4 Teacher?
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Welcome to the eight to four teacher where we tackle the habits, routines, and mindset shifts that help teachers leave school at four without guilt. This is a space for teachers who wanna do meaningful work without working around the clock. I'm your host, Barb Flowers, and I believe you can be an amazing teacher and have a life outside of school.
Let's build a teaching life that feels sustainable and fulfilling. Let's make eight to four your new normal.
So welcome back to the podcast. You may have noticed, we are now the eight to four teacher. This episode is all about. Why I'm rebranding the Teacher Burnout Podcast, and I'm so excited for this because it really goes with what I've been promoting for my own teachers when I was an elementary principal.
And it's this idea of we work really hard when we're at school and then we leave, go home to our families and leave it all behind. And so that's really my goal for the podcast, is I wanna give [00:01:00] teachers strategies about how to be super present. When they're at work during their workday, but then when it's time to leave, leave and disconnect.
And it's really hard for teachers to do this. And I know it was hard for me as a teacher. , but I think this is really the key to helping with teacher burnout . And I started the Teacher Burnout podcast because that was it. I saw so many teachers burning themselves out, and I really wanted to help people with teacher burnout.
I wanted to help teachers with this, and burnout is still something that I'm really passionate about and I care deeply about. But I realized that what teachers needed most were systems and habits to prevent burnout in the first place. And it really started with trying to be the eight to four teacher.
And I noticed this, like I said, with the teachers that I worked with, a lot of them were either burning out because they're working all the time or they're burning out maybe because they're not actually working all the time, but they're thinking about school all the time. They're [00:02:00] overthinking about.
What a parent said to them or how they handled a situation, and that overthinking is just as bad as being at the school till nine o'clock. If you go home at four o'clock and you're overthinking all evening, your whole evening is ruined. I did this as a teacher and I did this as a new principal, and until I learned to compartmentalize and really disconnect from school.
I had that feeling of just always being on, always thinking about it and being stressed. And so that is why I'm so passionate about the eight to four teacher and why I want to help teachers have this lifestyle. And I call it the eight to four teachers. For some teachers that might be seven to three.
Or nine to five? I don't know. It depends on your school and your contract. Where I worked most of the time it was eight to four. I've even had, , schools that I worked at, it was eight to three 30. So whatever your hours are. And then the other piece I have to say is that you get to pick. So for example, I worked at a school, it was eight to three 30, but my rules for [00:03:00] myself were eight to four.
I always like to stay a little bit after. You just have to decide what that looks like for you. My whole intention of this is that you get to choose your life as a life coach. I talk about this a lot, that you are the CEO of your own life, and you get to choose what that schedule looks like. So if you decide that, your contractual time is eight to four and you wanna be the eight to five teacher.
Good for you, that's fine, whatever it is. But you have to set boundaries. That's the biggest thing I'm talking about here, is you cannot let your schedule rule you. You have to decide what you want that schedule to be like, choose it and stick to it. That's the biggest thing I wanna talk about here.
That is the eight to four teacher. I'm going to be sharing tips about. Boundaries, time management, , workload, how to manage workload, how to work on your mindset, how to disconnect from school, how to even work with students on behaviors, because I think behaviors are a huge thing that, [00:04:00] has people working a lot of hours because there's so many behaviors that you're dealing with.
So we're gonna touch on that. Communicating with parents, working with colleagues, a lot of similar topics to what we talked about on the eight to on the Teacher Burnout podcast, but from a different lens of trying to get you out the door by four. That's the goal here, and I'm really excited because I have some mindset mantras I'm gonna be sharing with you throughout the different.
Podcast episodes where I'm going to help you reframe your mindset about the idea that you can leave work and be out the door by four. And I'm gonna give you some practical time saving strategies, planning routines, grading tips, efficient parent communications, all the things that are going to help you have more time.
So this isn't about doing less for kids, it's about doing more of what matters and less of what drains you. We're gonna talk about energy levels and how you keep those up and how you learn to work through your energy levels throughout the week. Now how the [00:05:00] eight to four teacher is different. I have been through a little bit of a journey here with the Teacher Burnout Podcast, where I started publishing episodes every week and then I.
Started publishing episodes every other week. And now what we're going to be doing for the eight to four teacher is we are actually going to go to seasonal episodes. So I'm gonna have seasons of episodes that release, , every week, but it might only be eight episodes that release within that season.
And then there'll be a break and another season comes out and it'll be eight episodes. But the point of this is that those eight episodes or however many per each season will be dedicated around a certain time of year, because that's the biggest thing I see with teachers is you need different supports during different seasons of the year.
And so season one is going to be launching this summer. We're gonna talk about things to do in the summer to really help create these boundaries and help with your workload as you move into the new school year. But that's what you can expect going forward. New episodes will still [00:06:00] have mindset tips.
They're gonna be practical episodes will still be about 10 minutes. I wanna keep 'em short, really practical for you that you can implement right away. If you have not subscribed to the podcast, please do so. Invite other people to follow us. I'm excited about this journey of being the eight to four teacher.
Just make sure that you follow, because this is going to be how you get new information. And I also wanna invite you to download my freebie that I'm really excited about. I made a new freebie for everybody based on the eight to four teacher, and it is the teacher workload assessment.
So what you're going to do here is you are going to identify your workload traps, so you can be out the door by four. So that will be in the show notes. Hope you get that, take that assessment and see where you rate. But stay tuned to the podcast. Make sure you follow us.
And remember, , I'm going to help you make eight to four your new normal so that you can be out the door by [00:07:00] four.
