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How teachers find time for a health habit when the work comes home

Teaching has two parts, and they run on different hours. The teaching day runs on the bell, and nothing in it can move. The rest of the job (grading, lesson plans, parent emails, entering grades) has no set hours. It goes home with you and gets done in the evenings and on weekends, which are the same hours your health habit would need. How much of that work there is in a given week depends on where your classes are in their units, not on anything you decide that night. Finding time for the habit starts with seeing that plainly. This page is for teachers who know what they want to do for their health, like an evening class, a run, a long walk, or cooking their own dinners, and keep losing it during an ordinary school week. It is not a teacher wellness article, it is not a grading guide, and it is not advice to work less.

Why teaching leaves a health habit with no hours of its own

The first part of the job is the teaching day. First period starts at a set time, say 7:50, whether you are ready or not. Each class runs until the bell. Lunch is as long as the bell schedule says it is, and dismissal is at a set time too. None of those hours can be moved, shortened, or swapped with someone else, because there is a room full of students in them. So nothing else goes in them, and that includes a health habit.

The second part of the job is everything the teaching day needs that doesn't happen in class. That means grading essays and quizzes, writing lesson plans, answering parent emails, entering grades, making copies, and setting up the next lab or activity. This part has no start time, no end time, and no place where it has to happen. So it happens wherever there is room, which for most teachers means the kitchen table on a weeknight or the couch on a Sunday afternoon.

The evenings and the weekends are also the only hours a health habit could use. The teaching day is already full, so the habit has to go somewhere after it. That is the same place the take-home part of the job goes. So every week, the habit and the take-home work need the same hours. That would be true for a teacher who grades fast and keeps everything organized, because it comes from how the job is set up, not from how well any one teacher does it.

Why the habit works some weeks and disappears in others

A lot of teachers notice that the habit doesn't go away for good. It happens for a week or two, then it doesn't happen for a week or two, then it comes back. There is a plain reason for that. How much take-home work you have in a week is not something you set on Monday morning. It is set by where each of your classes is in its unit.

The week a class finishes a unit test, you have tests to grade. The week an essay is due, you have essays to read. The week after a lab, you have lab reports. The week a new unit starts, you might have nothing to grade from that class at all. If you teach four or five classes, or several subjects in one elementary classroom, a few of those can land in the same week, or none of them can. In a week when nothing is due, the evenings have room in them and the habit happens. In a week when two classes turn in essays, the evenings go to reading essays and it doesn't.

You usually didn't set it up that way on purpose. The units were planned weeks earlier, for teaching reasons, like how long the material takes, where the test fits, and what has to be covered before a break. When you picked the due date for the essay, you were thinking about the unit, and your Wednesday class at the gym probably didn't come up. The week report cards are due is usually one of the weeks with the most of this work. So the weeks the habit happens and the weeks it doesn't are not random. They line up with what your classes turned in.

What this looks like in an ordinary school week

A 9th grade English teacher has first period at 7:50 and dismissal at 2:55. On a Friday, 120 essays came in from her four sections. For the next two weeks, her evenings from about 7 to 10 are for reading essays. She signed up for a Wednesday 6:30 yoga class, and she goes in the weeks between essays.

A 7th grade science teacher has his classes do a lab most weeks. The lab reports come home with him in a canvas bag on Thursday, so Thursday and Friday nights are lab reports. Those used to be the nights he went for a run after dinner.

A 3rd grade teacher writes the next week's lesson plans on Sunday afternoon. Sunday afternoon used to be when she took a long walk with her sister. Now it is the walk or the plans, and the plans have to be done by Monday at 7:50.

A high school math teacher gives a quiz every Friday in all five of his classes. The quizzes have to be graded and entered before the next unit starts. Saturday morning used to be his bike ride. Now Saturday morning is quiz grading at the kitchen table.

A middle school Spanish teacher answers parent emails every night. Most nights there are only a few of them. The week before conferences, the emails take up most of the evening.

None of these teachers chose to give up the habit, and none of them is doing the job badly or too slowly. The take-home part of teaching needs evenings and weekends, the units decide how many, and the habit was using those same hours.

Why "work out before school" and "grade less" don't fix this

Most of the public advice for teachers who want to exercise says to work out before school, go straight to the gym at dismissal, keep gym clothes in the car, or walk during a planning period or at lunch. The rest of it says to grade less, grade only what is required, set grading blocks with a hard stop, or leave at contract hours. Plenty of teachers have tried some of that, and some of it works for some people.

All of that advice does one of two things. It looks for a free hour inside the teaching day or right at its edges, or it tries to make the take-home part of the job smaller. Neither one deals with how the week is built. The take-home work and the habit still need the same evening and weekend hours, and the units still decide how many of those hours the work takes in a given week. Getting up earlier does not change which Friday the essays come in.

Advice to grade less or leave on time is also advice about how to do the job. Some teachers can change those things and some can't, depending on the school, the subject, and the grade they teach. Either way, it doesn't say anything about where the habit goes. A teacher who grades less still has 120 essays coming in on a Friday, and still has to figure out what the evenings after that Friday are for.

What to think about if the habit keeps losing to the work you take home

Here are some plain questions to ask about your own school week. They are for thinking about. They are not a procedure, a checklist, or a plan.

  • Which hours did the habit use before it started losing, and what part of the job is in those hours now?
  • In the weeks the habit happened, what was due from my classes, and what was due in the weeks it didn't happen?
  • When I plan a unit, do I know which weeks the take-home work will be the heaviest?
  • Do I think of my evenings as mine, or as the rest of the school day?
  • Is there any hour in the week that the take-home work never needs?

Because units are planned ahead, the weeks with the most take-home work can often be seen ahead of time too. That means the habit can be thought about with those weeks in mind, instead of being whatever is left after the grading is done. How to do that for one practice, in a real school week with essays and quizzes in it, is a different question from how to grade, and a grading system doesn't answer it.

How this differs from nearby Healthy & Awake guides

This page is about how teachers find time for a health habit when the job has bell hours that can't move and take-home work that uses the same hours as the habit. Nearby pages answer different questions.

How do teachers find time for a health habit during the school year?

Start by seeing how the job is built. The teaching day runs on the bell, and nothing in it can move. The rest of the job (grading, lesson plans, parent emails) has no set hours and goes home with you, into the same evenings and weekends the habit would need. Finding time for the habit means thinking about it alongside the take-home work, instead of giving it whatever is left after the grading.

Why is it so hard for teachers to keep a workout routine?

Because the habit and the take-home part of teaching need the same hours. Evenings and weekends are when the grading and planning get done, and they are also the only hours the habit could use.

Why does my workout happen some weeks and not others?

How much take-home work there is depends on where your classes are in their units. The week essays or tests come in, the evenings go to grading. The week nothing is due, there is room. You usually set the units weeks earlier, for teaching reasons, without the habit in mind.

Why doesn't "work out before school" or "grade less" fix it?

That advice either looks for a free hour at the edges of the teaching day or tries to make the take-home work smaller. Neither deals with the fact that the take-home work and the habit use the same hours, and that the units decide how many of those hours the work needs.

How is this different from a busy workday or a busy season at work?

A busy workday is about finding bits of time inside the workday, and a busy season has an end date. For teachers, the teaching day has no spare bits of time, and the take-home work is part of every ordinary school week.

When is practical time-management support worth considering?

When you already know what to do for your health and the problem is that one practice keeps losing to the work you take home, practical time management around that one practice is a different kind of help than a 5 a.m. alarm or a grading system. It will not shrink the grading.

Where Healthy & Awake Time Management fits

Healthy & Awake Time Management is a $47 practical time-management course for working adults who already know what to do for their health and want one practice to keep a place in a real week, including a school week with grading in it. It is educational time management around health. It is not a grading system, not classroom management, not a teacher wellness program, not medical care, and not a nutrition or sleep plan, and it will not make the grading any smaller. One payment includes lifetime access on the current offer, and the current offer comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

If you teach, you already know what you want to do for your health, and it keeps losing to the work you bring home, see Healthy & Awake Time Management.

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Also related: Making time for health inside a full workday and Why health plans get postponed after work. Back to Healthy & Awake.