Hey Educator Friends, welcome back to the podcast and in this episode I am going to, quite frankly, just be excited. That's it. I'm gonna be excited. Something that I work on a lot is being my own cheerleader. I don't know if that's something you can relate to at all. Are you uncomfortable with compliments?
Do you find it hard to kind of promote yourself and your accomplishments? Anyway, here's what I'm super proud of. I managed to, yay, release this week, um, something I've been working on for a really long time, which is a new book, okay? It's called Beat Teacher Burnout with Better Boundaries, The Secret to Thriving in Teaching.
without sacrificing your personal life. So first thing I'm cheerleading about is, you know what? I got this sucker done. It's done. It's out there. I'm excited. Um, I also have finished a course that goes with it. So that's already a huge amount of work. But the other thing that is very exciting is when it was released this week, it actually debuted on Amazon as the number one new release in.
Educator professional development. I could be not doing that. And I couldn't be any more thrilled than that. So inside this episode, I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the book and why it might be just the missing piece. Even if you think you're pretty good at setting boundaries, I'm going to tell you a little bit about the information I cover, and especially Especially in the introduction there's a section that's who this book is for and maybe it relates to you.
So see you on the inside. Welcome to the Balance Your Teacher Life podcast where we talk all things avoiding educator burnout, setting healthy boundaries and achieving better work life balance. If you're passionate about education, but tired of it consuming your whole life, you have found your home in the podcast universe.
I'm your host, Grace Stephens, and let's get going with today's show.
Okay, so the title of the book again is Beat Teacher Burnout with Better Boundaries. The Secret to Thriving in Teaching Without Sacrificing Your Personal Life. Now, I don't know how much y'all know about, um, getting books launched into the world. Um, it is, you know, technically it's not that difficult. It's got easier over the years.
But, my goodness, to get the message out is difficult. It usually requires either a huge publishing house, which I do not have, a huge advertising budget, which I do not have, and a huge, like, already following. So just to give you an example, you may know, um, Jamie Sears, who's the wonderful, um, not so wimpy teacher.
She wrote a book last year, and my goodness, I mean, she has hundreds of thousands, um, of teachers on her email list, and she got, she enlisted them to help. book and she even took a billboard out on Times Square. Um, somebody else I follow is a marketing guru. Oh my goodness, she went on this podcast tour.
She was interviewed by over a hundred podcasts, um, the two months before her book came out. So you know what? I don't get to do any of that, but as it turns out, I have my own podcast in, so I'm happy to tell you about the book and Here's what I imagined for this episode. I'm going to read you the prologue now.
One of the things I love doing in class was reading literature to students. Their eyes would light up when they saw me sit in the reading chair. They would run over. And I got to tell you, if you want to listen to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, you know, I'm your girl. I can do the Cockney accent for the Beavers.
I can be stern and scary as the White Witch. Um, I do an excellent, I mean, students years later come back and tell me how magical it was when I read them Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. So, I love to read to kids. I gotta tell ya, you know, this is non fiction. And, you know, not the world's sexiest subject.
So hang in there while I read you the prologue. But the part that I want you to pay attention to is when I get to the part that says, who is this book for? Because I find a lot of people, and I was one of them too. So that's how I get it. In the past, I struggled in certain areas and I never made that connection.
The word boundaries is a bit of a buzzword. buzzword right now. Okay. And I never really connected the issues I was having or these weird feelings or discomfort or areas of my life that I wasn't as successful in that I wanted to be as really boundary setting issues. And I want to reassure you, it's a skill that you can learn and it creeps up in their lives in different ways.
So anyway, what I'm going to do is read you the introduction to the book. You hang in there if you're like, Oh, wow. This is, does not sound like, you know, exciting stuff, but it does have the power to transform your life. So that'll be really exciting in the end. And then I'll tell you what's in the book.
Cause it is fantastic. It has scripts. It has all kinds of things. And one of the things I'm most proud of is when I publish a book, which I always make sure is very reasonably priced. I never want price to be a point of entry for any teacher who's struggling I always provide the workbook for free, and some of you may know that I have also have a background in life coaching and the exercises and the work in the workbook, quite frankly is stuff that people usually charge a lot of money for.
And I don't care if you buy the ebook at 99 cents, which that's what it's at this week, which is crazy, or you know, the paperback, or eventually I will turn it into a hardback. I don't care what version of the book you get, I always give you a link to download. The workbook for free. So I'm really proud of that.
So anyway. All right, without further ado, I'm going to read you the prologue and, um, I will try to have my best teacher voice, not a Cockney accent. And here we go. It's short. So, all right. Prologue. So it starts with a quote. Of course it does. This is why I'm doing it. This is the thing that sets my heart on fire.
And that is by Elizabeth Gilbert. Ortho. All right, there is a meme that circulates Instagram and Facebook feed for teachers. It says, if you've never spent your lunchtime in your car crying, are you even a teacher? Sad, but also, unfortunately, oh so true. In my particular case, being somebody who walked to school often, I didn't have the luxury of crying in a car.
On several occasions when I did need to be left alone to fall apart, I could be found in a fetal position, under my desk, out of student eye shot, through the windows, hyperventilating, and sobbing. But I got smarter. I got into the habit of closing those blinds before lunch, and had mini posters with magnets on the back that I could easily use to cover the security window in the door.
That solved the problem of being discovered by students peering through the windows. But it never got to the root of the problem of why my chosen career created enough anxiety, frustration and overwhelm to require me to break down regularly in the first place. This was a deeper problem and one not so easily fixed with magnetic mini posters.
I mention this because, if you know me personally, you might be rolling your eyes at the notion that I'm writing a book about setting healthy boundaries. As far as school life balance went, there were many years that I struggled in this area. My physical, mental and emotional health, as well as my relationships, suffered because of it.
But as with all the healthy habits I teach and write about, setting healthy boundaries is something I studied, applied, practiced and improved. I fixed it for myself before it occurred to me to help others. Here's what I learned. If you start with the correct mindset and follow the formula, setting boundaries is a skill anyone can master.
Many of us were conditioned to be people pleasers and taught that advocating for our needs was selfish. Re learning those patterns takes work. But doing so is essential if we want to experience the best of life and enjoy healthy relationships. If we want to show up as our best selves for our families, friends and students.
If we don't care for ourselves and our energy, we're little use to anyone else. Learning to set healthy boundaries is an excellent place to start. So this is what sets my heart on fire. Helping teachers craft a more positive experience for themselves and their students. I used to feel shame that I struggled in certain areas.
My natural teaching vibe was modern day, upbeat, Mary Poppins. My British accent surely helped. And I was known for writing on positive mindset habits. I felt embarrassed to tell people that I didn't have it all together every day. But then one day it did occur to me that I wouldn't want to take swimming lessons from somebody who'd only read about swimming in a book.
The person who struggled to swim, who'd almost drowned, and who knew the skill how to navigate the waters with grace. That's the swimming teacher I wanted. Over the past few years, I've learned to be more transparent about my struggles with anxiety, depression, and boundaries. They make me human and open to welcoming others who struggle with compassion and without judgment.
Less romantically positioned than Liz Gilbert's quote, I feel a little like a teacher equivalent of Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, who famously said he'd crawled through a river of crap, let's say, and came out clean the other side. So let me teach you how to swim. With love and compassion, with practical tips and scripts, let me be your water wings until you get comfortable in the water.
As an educator, you must learn to set healthy boundaries. If you don't, you'll burn out and feel yourself pulled under the water. No one is coming to save you. No one's going to give you permission to do less. It will be best if you learned to save yourself from drowning. Everyone, even the most people pleasing, compliant, conflict avoidant among us can learn to set healthier boundaries.
And I'm excited to teach you how. Okay, so that's the prologue. Um, and you know, I don't want to be the equivalent of the teacher in the, you know, your professional development who reads the PowerPoint slides to you. I know you can read. So if you have an interest in the book, I bet you, you know how you can go find it.
But I just want to tell you a little bit what's in it and read you one other little section. So the section that I think might be most pertinent for right now is the section that said, who is this book for? Okay. So just, just really listen and see if this resonates with you. Maybe not all of it will, but maybe some of it will.
All right, you're in the right place if any of the following resonate with you. You're employed in education, as a teacher, administrator, curriculum coach, teaching aid, special education, speech and language pathologist, school counselor, heck, even if you drive the school bus or supervise the schoolyard.
You want to leave campus at a reasonable time each day without dragging home a cart full of work, or a heart full of teacher guilt. You are frustrated that you're easily coerced into taking on extra duties and roles that do not interest you and fall outside your contractual obligations. You feel the pressure to accommodate parent, co worker, and even student requests despite knowing they are unreasonable and beyond the scope of your duty.
You're on the fast road to burnout. and want to better separate school from home. Your family and other people complain about how much of your life is consumed by school. You love education but want time and energy for other things that you love too. You're tired of being teacher tired and worry that continuing at this pace is not sustainable.
You know you need to set better boundaries, but you need more confidence in how to do so and how to do so in an effective, loving, and stress free way that can improve every aspect of your life. You'll also find this book helpful if any of these ideas resonate from your personal life. You struggle to effectively communicate your preferences and desires and assume it should be obvious to your partner or family what you want.
You find yourself saying, I don't mind, to suggestions when you really do mind. You reluctantly agree to do things your family wants to do because you don't want to appear high maintenance, inflexible, or, especially if it's something your parents want, ungrateful. You find yourself agreeing to things to maintain harmony, avoid drama, or you've even taken on the self appointed role of peacekeeper.
If any of this sounds like it could apply to you, you are not alone. Please know that lacking confidence in setting healthy boundaries is not a character defect. It's just something we have never been taught. And let's be honest, we work in an education system that has a self sacrifice culture that thrives and takes advantage of that fact.
Alright, so that's the very beginning. So the rest of the book we go over misconceptions and mindsets, which is really helpful. You know, I always start with, um, Mindset. In fact, um, I have a whole podcast episode. Let me see here. It was episode 17 that I did five misconceptions about setting boundaries that are holding you back.
You might want to go look at that. That's episode 17. And then I go through the boundary basics, 12 rules of engagement. I might do a a podcast episode on that. Then I go through setting boundaries at school. So setting boundaries on your time with toxic co workers, how to say no to different duties, um, how to set boundaries with students, you know, um, all kinds of things.
So, um, a couple of podcast episodes I have, um, you can go back if you want immediate help with that. Episode six I had done an episode on protect your energy from toxic co workers. So you can go back find that episode six and then episode two right at the very beginning was one of the first things I did in this podcast because I find that teachers struggle with this a lot and this can be a quick immediate win is five steps to say no in a professional way.
Now through this book I give a lot of scripts actual scripts here's what you can say but also the you know formulas you want the point is to find your own order. Authentic voice a script can be a good place to start. I made them because lots of people asked me but Nobody wants to talk like they're, you know, just found their way out of chap GPT.
Okay, you want to sound like yourself, but they do give you a proven framework and a place to start. And of course a lot of the mindset that I go into is, you know, assume the best attention, intentions with people. You don't want to go straight into, you know, boundary boss mode and lay the law down. When, you know, maybe a coworker is just having a bad day.
So I certainly approach ways that you can be gentle with people and kind of effectively set boundaries without. Seeming inflexible. Um, a lot of people struggle with saying no right off the bat. You know, I, I coach um, I coach people on how to say, you know, okay, if you don't want to say no, you could say yes with limitations.
Like, that's kind of like a baby step, right? And of course coaching people into, you know, don't start with the most difficult things. issue, you know, in your relationship or on campus. Like you gotta, you know, go with low stakes kind of, um, issues first so that you can gain some confidence. Anyway, so there is so much in the book.
Um, I really love the section. I've never thought about it. Seen anywhere else before, which is why I made it is protecting your piece outside of school. Of course, everything, you know, is from an educator's lens. So how do you deal with your family who feels entitled to your time just because you have quote unquote summers off, you know how that goes, right?
It's summer. And you're off and you have your own to do list that would take, you know, a superhuman to go through. But, you know, you're, someone expects you to come over and help them, you know, go through the garage or, you know, go through their list of to do projects just because, well, you have all summer.
Like, so how do you set boundaries with that? Um, those types of things that are, you know, Um, and then I also have another section on, um, communication skills that can be very helpful for most people. And we'll probably talk about that in another episode. It's um, it's built on the model of Marshall Rosenberg's very, um, effective model called nonviolent communication.
Anyway, that's what's in the book. It is easy to consume, no jargon. Um, it's in, you know, my own voice. I, I don't like books with, you know, huge textbooks with footnotes and all those things. It's immediately practical, again. You know, you're not going to be able to write inside a little book, but I will give you access to the workbook that you can print out with additional exercises and everything else.
So you can find it on Amazon. You can find it. Um, I'm, I'm starting to finish my distribution to other networks, but it's called Beat Teacher Burnout with Better Boundaries, The Secret to Thriving in Teaching Without Sacrificing Your Personal Life. Right now, I made the digital version. Crazy cheap. I don't even want to tell you how, I don't know when you're listening to um, this episode.
If you're listening it later on you might be, huh, I missed out on that. But you know what, it's just to get the book off the ground. But I promise you it is never going to be, especially the digital version, is never going to be more than a fancy cup of coffee. You know, that venti with three triple shots in it.
Um, yeah. So it's, there's no, um, discussion that, Oh, I can't afford it. It is a great resource paperback. Um, yeah, there is a course that, that goes with it, that, that you're welcome to get instead, or in addition to, but you can certainly get. 100 percent value from the resource before that. So I want to thank you for listening.
I want you invite you to think about your own style with setting boundaries and any places where you feel you might not do a great job with this. And is this a resource that can help you? And I want to thank everybody who supports me all the time by being the quick early adopters. I'm grabbing my new stuff.
It means. That's the world to me. My mission is to help as many students, um, let's say as many teachers, educators as possible to feel empowered. If you want to stay in teaching, but you feel you need a positive experience, more positive experience, you know, I'm your person. I have been there. I worked hard on that.
And I only do professional development through the lens of teaching. What makes things better for teachers? Now, ultimately, is that going to affect student outcomes, student relationships and everything else? Of course, it's going to be better for students. But we sit through hours and weeks and years of PD about what's good for students.
How about what's good for teachers? So that we don't have to feel that, you know, we're burning ourselves on this altar of self sacrifice. to do what we want to do and believe in doing, which is helping students be successful. So anyway, if you find any of my resources helpful, especially if you think you know some educators who might really benefit from a really cheap, effective resource to help them set better boundaries, please share this episode with them.
That would mean the world to me. And I hope you are all well. As always, create your own path. Bring your own sunshine and I will see you soon.