Remember that Life's One Big Balancing Act

All I need to know about life, I learned from Dr.Seuss.

Oh, the Places You'll Go seems an apt book to center my professional ponderings.  The school year has been in session for less than a month, and yet - and yet - oh, all the places (the meetings! the deadlines! the committees!) you'll go, indeed.  So, this post is going to be about balance - so that "you'll start happening too".

Balance on a professional level and balance on a personal scale.  As teacher librarians - and more broadly - as educators, there is a tendency to fully throw ourselves into our profession, is there not? 

We are the working professionals who take work home with us, not occasionally, but daily.  We go into our schools on weekends, stay late on weekdays, and cultivate our professional learning networks on Twitter, Pinterest, nings, what have you, at all hours of the day.

But, is this really sustainable?  

I'd like to posit a new way of teaching and working and living: Sustainable Teaching. Sustainable teaching's motto is inspired by Dr.Seuss: life is one big balancing act.  When the school year starts, how many of us get on the see-saw and immediately sink to the ground?  Or fly up to the sky? How better would it be to teeter between our work and our personal lives, in a harmonious back and forth that ebbs and flows in a natural, organic way.

How many of us get back a little of our mojo during the summer months, only to abandon ship come mid-September?  Those after school runs?  Too many meetings.  That after-school yoga class?  Well, can't I do savasana on my couch instead?  That resolve to eat healthy snacks?  When I'm under stress, just give me chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate.

I'm going to try my best this school year to find that balance.  My new motto is: What the world doesn't need is one more stressed out teacher librarian.  For some reason, just saying that aloud makes me laugh.  And laughter, as Dr.Seuss knows, is the best medicine of all.