Work-Life Balance : A Practical Guide for Teachers

Work-life balance picks up where conventional time management stops. After you have prioritised ruthlessly, learned how to delegate, dealt with interruptions, managed your managers, planned and reviewed and still find you are overworked then it is time to try something else.

Use this book to re-establish control over your life and to understand the impact of work pressures and issues in your personal life, it will show you how to:

• audit your work-life balance to find out which areas are really causing you the most tension
• establish what you want out of your work and your life outside work, this is important because your aspirations change
• allocate time and other resources to ensure that work and life outside work are given the right priorities with reference to your emotional commitment
• deal with the expectations of others
• cope with specific issues such as: the long-hours culture, dealing with excessive workloads, working in a caring profession as well as being a teacher.

The book outlines a range of strategies to help teachers to achieve the right work-life balance for them. It can also be used for whole school staff development programmes – after all work-life balance is the responsibility of head-teachers and governors too.

Margaret Adams is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. She is a trainer, consultant and writer on work–life balance themes.