“DON'T KEEP YOUR EMAIL ON YOUR PHONE” and “I HATE NOT KNOWING”
“I get this advice constantly--Don't keep your email on your phone. And I'm really bad at that because I hate not knowing.”
“The parents, they love it. ‘Wow! Mr. Todd, he always responds to us so quickly.’ Yeah, cause I'm constantly looking at it. You're welcome.”
“You get the email from a kid (….) It could be like, ‘I really don't understand the homework at all. Can I come in in the morning?’ and they send me that email at 10 o'clock at night, as I'm getting my pajamas on (…) Don't respond. They don't need to know you're still awake. I'll deal with that in the morning. If the kid is responsible enough, they'll show up in the morning, anyway, because they know when I'm going to be in the building.”
“But I constantly want to know. It doesn't bring me happiness that my job doesn't always end (….) What I do like is that I'm always thinking about my job (...) ‘How am I going to teach later? What's that going to look like? Do I have anything more? Should I be prepping? Should I maybe work on a worksheet? Could I improve this assessment that I'm giving to the kids?’ So I'm always thinking about it.”
“But in terms of communication with people (…), I'm trying to figure out how to set boundaries for myself and that's a spot where I'm still struggling with it. My fiancée constantly says ‘You’ve got to stop looking at that phone for emails (…)’ I'm like, ‘But the students are so (…) important to me. I spend every day with them. I want to make sure they're okay, I want to make sure I'm there for them. That's my goal.'”
“At the beginning of the year, I say the same thing to every single student (…) ‘Here's my expectation: You need to give me the first 40-80 minutes of class that we have together. You give me that time and I'll give you anything you need moving forward in life. After-school help? It'll be there. You need a recommendation? I'll give it to you. You want advice on college or finding a job? I'm going to help you.’ (…) So I think I build in quickly ‘I'm here for you constantly’, and I realize, ‘Oh! God! Why'd I say that out loud to them?’ But at the same time it's because it's what I believe. I want to be there for them.”
“I know there are issues that arise emotionally and how I feel when I see things way too late (…) or if I get an email about something that went wrong in class during Christmas break and there's nothing I can do. We're not going to be in school for another three days, but I'm thinking about it now for the next three days, when there's nothing I can reasonably do about it. So I think I’ve got to learn to break that down (…) Don't look unless it's an absolute emergency—in which case don't email me. You should be emailing somebody else, probably, at that point.”
MAKING STRIDES
“I've started (…) to turn off notification until the morning, when I go, ‘Okay, I'm back in work mode. Let's go. Let me see (…)’ But sleeping on it won't help me after a certain point (…) At 10 o'clock, nothing good happens within the world of education—Why bother looking at it? Nothing's going happen for the next eight hours anyway. I'll tackle it when I get into the building. I think that's made life easier. Just leave it behind, right?”
“Even (…) bringing work home—I've been better at that. [It used to be:] ‘I'm going to bring my tests home. I'm going to grade at home and I'm leaving the building carrying a stack of papers.’ It just killed me internally—and what's worse is I brought it home and I didn't grade them. The stack of papers sat on my table, taking space where I could eat dinner, and then I brought the same stack of papers untouched back to the office. Great. All I did today, all I did with these papers, is literally move them from apartment back to school. Nothing changed and I'm miserable because I stared at papers all night.”
“So I do like it when work's over, the work's done. If I can't get it done during the workday, it's a problem.”