Skip to main content
ARTICLE

Juggling Priorities

Joanne Myers
Summer 2013

Tags

Congratulations on a successful year as champion educator, sister, mother, daughter, aunt, niece, mentor, wife, partner, and friend.

It  has been a  rewarding and  challenging year. Juggling our personal and professional lives takes time and talent. As women we have that talent even when extra balls are thrown into the mix; we stretch, we balance, we  embrace, and  keep  on  juggling.  This year, as  professionals, we  juggled a  wide variety of “stress balls”: new grade levels, new schools, reporting, strike action, family priorities and obligations, and daily life deadlines, just to list a few.

For those of us who are also part of the “sandwich generation,” with double caregiving  responsibilities  for   children  and aging parents in addition to teaching, the year  was  particularly  exhausting. By  the time we crawl into bed at night we were often too wound up to fall asleep.

A wise and wonderful Primary student once described the word teacher to me as follows:

“A teacher should be smart already because they have to give away their smart to a lot of kids for years. When teachers have finished teaching at the end of the year they have given their entire smart to their kids. They need to get some smart back over the summer and then they start giving it away again.”

Part of “getting our smarts back” over the summer includes reflecting on and reevaluating our priorities. It involves taking quality time to refresh, reignite, and remind ourselves about living life without regrets. This is the time to think about which balls need to be kept up in the air. Perhaps it is time to allow a few balls to drop. They can always be picked up again on another day. Even if you have planned to take courses and workshops, or intend to catch up on your professional reading, summer is also an important time to recharge for the upcoming year.

Summer priorities

  • Take time to reflect upon your summer priorities and list those that are most important for you to be juggling right now.
  •  Book a massage so that your muscles are  relaxed and ready.
  • Do not view caregiving as a burden but as a time to treasure, a time to make everlasting new memories, a time to share and enhance relationships.
  • Communicate openly with your family and close friends about your feelings and challenges.
  • Invite family and friends to share in your caregiving and celebrate the time together.
  • Use the professionals in your life to become educated about accommodating your family’s and your own personal and professional needs.
  • Ensure that one of the balls you are juggling has your name on it.
  • Play games that you remember playing as a child.
  • Sit down and browse through your photo albums and watch some home videos.
  • Take time each day for you and do not feel  that a morning walk is an indulgence.
  • Relax for one hour before bedtime so that  you can fall into a deep sleep.
  • Choose a good book and feel free not to  be able to put it down.
  • Do not fret over the things that you cannot change.
  • Make positive changes where and when you can.

This year, using our professional judgment has been key to our collective well-being and you have done an exemplary job of that. Personal judgement is equally important. Make personal judgments about your time and how you are spending it. Timing is probably the most important skill in the act of juggling.