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I recently read this article by Father James Martin SJ (his June 19th reflections on the Sunday Gospel reading). Please read on even if you are not connected to any religious tradition, his thoughts on taking time for yourself and how overworked we have become in our society are very good for everyone to consider.
and I want to quote a few paragraphs of his:
For as today's Gospel shows us, Jesus understood the value of rest and prayer......
It's an important thing for all of us to hear. Because all of us can get into unhealthy patterns of overwork. Sometimes it’s even worn as a badge of honor: “Look how busy I am!” And, not to put too fine a point on it, but if even the Son of God needed time to prayer, so do you. So do I.
The situation has only gotten worse as time goes on, I think. Believe it or not, when I first started working after graduating from college in 1983, at General Electric, personal computers were just being introduced. And, ironically, as hard as it may be for some younger people to believe, there were two predictions that went along with the introduction of personal computers.
First, we would have paperless offices. Which made sense. Now that we had computers and could store all of our information on them, we would need less paper. Of course the opposite happened. With computers we were more able to write more and more and more reports and spew out more paper.
The second prediction is that we were going to have, thanks to all the time savings that computers gave us--for example, in calculating spreadsheets, writing letters, and so on -- a lot more free time. So the widespread prediction was, believe it or not, the computer would lead to four-day work weeks. Of course the opposite happened in this case too. At this point, it feels like some of us are working round-the-clock, never out of reach of our cell phones, and always able to be gotten at by coworkers.
I can definitely relate to this. I graduated college in 1982 and took a "personal computers seminar" in college. I was blown away! I was used to using card punch machines to create cards for each line of code, then run my 100 or so cards in a card reader and then finally wait in line at the window to the "mainframe computer room" waiting for my print-out (to inevitably find there is an error in ONE of my cards which I have to fix and start the process all over again).
Wow!
My first two jobs out of college were not in teaching (I want back to grad school for that in 1985) and we had the beginnings of personal computers in each. One used a TRS180 I think, one of the original Radioshack computers. And the other used a very early Apple computer.
Once I entered teaching, I loved using a computer to do my grades. I was not going to do all those tedious calculations for each student to determine their grade. I used some very early grading programs.
Over the years technology has advanced and there is more & more of it in our schools. We are not a paperless school (although my principal said to the whole faculty back in about 2005 that was our goal) and in fact we have to print out much more paper than ever! No one is ranting to us anymore about how much copy paper we use though, so I guess that is a plus.
And it is true, our time is really not ours. I get emails around the clock from students & parents. I spend time outside of school updating my website, updating my grades on the computer (after correcting assignments), creating lesson plans, filling out forms & evaluations, and even writing blog posts (urp).
It's important for everyone, especially us overworked and over-stressed teachers to take time for ourselves. One of my criticisms of my student teacher this past year was she worked too hard - here's a quote from my midterm evaluation
Ms. X is extremely conscientious and hard-working as a student teacher and I am so pleased with all the hard work she puts into her planning and teaching. I do have concerns that she might burn out from her high level of dedication and hope that she is able to incorporate personal stress reduction activities into her daily routines.
And I'm not the best person to be handing out criticisms on this front. I have really high expectations for myself and always seem to be trying something new at school.
But I do take time to have other things that I do in my life. And I take out time to be part of a community that is unrelated to school that nourishes me (both my church and my yoga studio). I gain strength and refresh myself when I am in nature hiking. I enjoy cooking and baking as a relaxing activity (and especially enjoy the eating part). I eat good healthy fresh foods and take care of my health. I read copious amounts of books, they are my "sleeping pill" at night and my primary form of at-home quiet entertainment (I generally don't watch TV). And I take time to enjoy my friends and family.
Be sure you do something like that too.
Namaste.
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