How to Cope with Sunday Scaries as a Teacher
Sunday Scaries are the worst. It can feel like an entire day of your weekend was robbed from you. That creeping sense of dread will start earlier in the day on Sunday, and will only get stronger as the day goes on. By night time, you can feel physically ill over the week ahead and all of the tasks you know you will have to do, plus the unpredictable things you can’t see coming.
It doesn’t always have to be like this.
During my first few years of teaching, I had crippling Sunday Scary anxiety. I would lose hours of my Sunday planning and prepping and over-preparing, hoping that extra work would make sure that I was ready for the week ahead and there would be nothing to stress about. But the extra time put into planning and prepping did not help. I did not feel more prepared and ready. Instead, I felt anxious, burned out, and still uncertain of whether I’d done everything I could to get ready for another week of teaching.
Over time, the Sunday Scaries have faded. I genuinely don’t have them at all anymore. But, that didn’t happen by accident.
Today, I am sharing my top three ways to quiet the Sunday Scaries. Let’s enjoy our weekends and not lose too much
Pinpoint the Anxiety
Chances are good, that when you think about your week ahead, you can name exactly what you’re anxious about. Maybe it’s having lesson plans done in advance. Maybe it’s a meeting. Maybe there is a parent or student dynamic that makes you feel stressed. Maybe there’s a coworker who is overbearing and you can’t find a way to have a positive relationship with them. Maybe there are several things. Whatever it is, start by naming it.
By naming the stressors, it gives you the perspective that not ALL parts of your job are bad. There are just some things, or maybe one, big thing that makes you feel uneasy. When you can isolate those things, it’s easier to see the good parts of your job that are left behind when you take out the stressors.
After you’ve named it, list out the steps that you would need to take for this thing to not feel so stressful anymore. If it’s a meeting or an observation, is there someone you can ask about how to specifically prepare for it? Is there a rubric you can review and compare to your lesson plans to ensure that you’re doing the basics? Can you pull any specific data points for a meeting to make sure you have what you need?
If it’s having lesson plans done, how can you break your planning into bite size chunks throughout the week, so you don’t spend your whole weekend doing it at once?
Make a plan, break things into small, doable steps, and cut the big, scary stress down to size.
Block off Sunday Afternoons and Evenings for Things you Love
If the time of day when you feel the most anxious happens at the same time every week, make plans to keep yourself busy with things that you love to do during that time. Don’t think of it as avoidance. Think of it as redirecting your brain to happiness and relaxation. Because, at the end of the day, we can’t control everything that is going to come our way this week…so does stressing about it all day on Sunday actually help you?
If you’ve prepared, planned, and prepped…what more can you do? Does it serve your mind and body well to sit around on Sunday worrying about what-ifs and thinking about the extra things you could be doing? No. If you have plans for Monday, and you have most of what you’ll need to execute those plans, save the last little bit of prep for Monday morning.
Spend your time doing things that make you feel refreshed and rejuvenated. There’s a lot of talk on the internet about how you can’t pour from an empty cup. It’s true, but I don’t think enough people talk about how much intention that takes. If you want to feel relaxed and ready for a new week, you have to plan to take care of yourself…on purpose. You’ll never magically be done with everything you could do for your classroom. You have to choose some days to let the things you could do go, because the things you have to do are already done. And then, spend some time on yourself.
It really does help. :)
Work One Week Ahead
Finally, the most effective way that I have found to eliminate Sunday Scaries in my life is to be done with next week before the weekend hits. That means when I walk out of my classroom on Friday afternoons, my copies for Monday-Friday of the next week are done and sorted. My plans are written and saved on my computer. My newsletter was already emailed out. My classroom is clean. Pencils are sharpened. Centers for the next week are laid out and ready.
Did this happen overnight? No. Was it easy to start working on full week ahead? Also, no. I’m not telling you that anything with teaching is easy. But, to give myself every weekend off and with my three kids, the extra hustle during the work week is well worth it. I’d rather spend every lunch block grading a stack of papers while I chew and chat with my team, than take it home on a weeknight and lose time with my kids.
The key is working smarter, not harder and many things around my room so that I never do more than I have to.
Some great resources to learn more about this idea is:
Happy teaching, everyone!
PS: Want my formula for having every weekend off from school work?
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