In the work that I’ve done with teachers, one common theme is that their every waking moment (and ok, let’s be honest, some dreaming moments) are completely devoted to students and school. Between teaching, managing classroom behaviors, coaching sessions, staff meetings, parent phone calls, lesson plans, and grading, there’s barely time to take care of essentials like eating and sleeping, much less luxuries like keeping in touch with family and friends.
For new teachers, it’s GO! GO! GO! during the week, and when you finally have a free moment, the last thing you have the time or energy for is getting on the phone for an hour each with all the people you’ve been neglecting to call since PD started this summer.
So….you don’t call.
For days. For weeks. Maybe even months. These are super important people in your life, and you have no idea what’s happening with them, except for maybe what they post to their Snapchat story. So now, on top of being exhausted and overwhelmed by work, now you also get to feel terribly guilty for being too busy to keep in touch with the people you love!
But think about it: When do you need to feel connection and support from people who care about you more than when you are experiencing difficult and overwhelming challenges?
Teacher-friends, I present to you the Five Minute Phone Call. My friend Jill sent me this a couple years ago and I couldn’t believe 1) How genius this is, and 2) That I hadn’t thought of it myself.
Here’s the idea: When we don’t talk to someone for a really long time, we feel obligated to set aside time for an extended conversation where we catch up on every little thing that’s happened between now and the last time we chatted. That’s nice, but most of the time we don’t have time for that, and the result is that we don’t bother picking up the phone at all. Not cool!
INSTEAD, make a rule with your friends and loved ones to be ok with talking for 5 minutes at a time. If you end up going on a roll and talking for longer than that, awesome! But, if you have to hang up after just 5 minutes (Lessons to plan! Papers to grade! I think I might actually shower today!), then that’s all good too. A couple five minute phone calls is way better than the ZERO phone calls you are making now. And, when you talk more often in shorter chunks, you don’t feel the pull to be on the phone for hours each time.
Give it a try! How else do you keep in touch when you’re busy?