Range of Healthy Balance

When I was a kid, my parents told me that there was no such thing as a job description. "Whatever your boss asks you to do," they said, "that's your job description for that day. You should always be the best employee they have." Now, listen, they weren't advocating standing for abuse or doing things that made you feel morally compromised. They were just saying that you should always do your best to contribute to whatever team you were on and never to say, "That's not my job; someone else should do it."

Fast forward a few decades, and I find myself doing something rare - muting a phrase on Twitter because I couldn't believe educators were part of it. That phrase was "quiet quitting." For those of you who don't spend a lot of time on social media, let me explain what it means. Quiet quitting means doing exactly what you are contracted to do and not one iota more. That means no sponsoring a club unless it is specifically in your contract. It means no chaperoning dances or field trips. It means no staying after school to help tutor a struggling student. It means you come to school at your contracted time, teach your contracted classes, and go home at the end of your contracted day. It means you don't do any of the things that make you a teacher besides the actual act of teaching class. 

Do I understand why this happened? Of course I do. There are absolutely schools and districts who take advantage of their staff, working them to their breaking point and then just replacing them when they do. I'm not suggesting that anyone put up with that. But this is a coward's way out. Even the name implies that you know what you are doing is the equivalent of not doing your job at all.  Meanwhile, there is an attempt to make it sound virtuous - like you are protecting everyone in the future. In reality, the jobs you are refusing to do still have to get done, and someone will do them.  All you have accomplished is shifting responsibilities from your plate to theirs.

You absolutely need to set healthy boundaries about what time you are willing to answer e-mails and how many extracurricular activities you are willing to commit to. Of course, it is important that you have a life outside of school, so if you are grading until 9PM, something is wrong with someone's expectations. If you are going home at the end of the day and dissolving into a useless puddle, you are working too hard. Please don't think that because I am against one end of the spectrum that I am in favor of the other end.

What I am advocating for is an acceptable range - one where we model excellence to our students without compromising our own health. Because it is a range, there may be days or weeks that lean more heavily towards work - exam preparation week, for example. And there may be days when you have to say, "I'm showing a high quality science video because I couldn't finish grading yesterday afternoon and need the class time to do it today." In a range of healthy balance, you might sponsor a club, but you might limit how many times a month it meets. 

Quiet quitting is anything but quiet. It is about stamping your foot and throwing a tantrum to demand you be paid for anything outside of your contract hours, as though every item, duty, and meeting could be made a line in your contract. It's about going online to brag about how little you are doing and how the system won't keep you down.  A person with healthy balance takes a PTO day when they need some rest; a quiet quitter takes every single one just because they can and will squeeze the last one in during exam review if they have to. 

The quiet quitter isn't virtuous. They aren't making the system better. A person who wants to change things goes through a process, petitions their leaders, has difficult conversations. A person who goes on social media isn't getting something done; they are getting attention.  It's raising slacktivism to another level.

Teachers, as you return from break, you get to a bit of a reset. You can set new boundaries with your students, administrators, families, and yourself. Recognize every week is not going to be the same and every person is not going to be the same.  Find your balance range - not someone else's.