Working from home is something most educators don't want to do, but sometimes it's inevitable. One of the most common concerns I hear from teachers is how long they spend engaging in preparation at home. Whether it's writing lesson plans or IEPs, most teachers are working from home at least once a week.

As an educational psychologist that supports burnout reduction, my goal is to help educators engage in behaviors, routines, and strategies to help them reduce the stress associated with completing clerical tasks at home. 

When I talk with teachers about their work from home habits, I hear a couple of patterns. 

1) I feel guilty when I work from home because I'm not spending time with my family, but I also feel guilty if I don't work because the work has to get done.

2) I try to multitask while I work on the weekends. Sometimes that looks like work + Netflix or work + kid's soccer game, etc. 

We know based on the research that multitasking increases stress and the...

I didn't plan to tell this personal story today, but because of what's going on with me on this beautiful Friday, I'm changing it up.

I'm currently going through treatment for an autoimmune disease, and I feel like total crap. Sick selfie below.

I've been in bed most of today working on my phone. I got up once to see if I could work at my desk and filmed an Instagram story and then realized it was a terrible idea.

I remember when I had these flares when I was a teacher. A sub never picked up my jobs, and I always felt guilty, like I was letting my students and co-workers down. The years I taught first grade were the worst. I had no idea what was wrong with me (nor did my doctors) and I was so hard on myself. Frankly, my co-workers weren't that supportive either.

It was during that time that I realized that my expectations for myself were toxic. I realized that I had been taught that being at school was more important than my health, and I had bought into the lie.

So I went to...

A few weeks ago I shared with my email list that when I was a teacher, I went to work sick a lot. As someone with an autoimmune disease, I was rarely contagious, but I could never find a sub. I worked with deaf and hard of hearing students and subs were really intimidated by accepting jobs in a classroom where they couldn't communicate with the students directly.

If I had to be out, I always felt what I thought was "guilt." I couldn't take a physical or mental health day without feeling like a bad teacher that was letting down my students and my co-teacher.

What I was feeling was not actually guilt, so let's talk about what guilt is.

Emotions, in general, exist to give us information about what is happening in our world. For example, anger tells us that injustice is happening, sadness tells us we're experiencing a loss of some kind, and fear tells us we're in danger. So what does guilt tell us?

It tells us that we've done something wrong that we need to make amends for.

So let's...