How to Balance Life and Teaching with a Tutoring Business for Better Teacher Work-Life Balance
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Balancing life and teaching is every teacher's dream.
Working nights and weekends just to keep up with the day-to-day tasks can be overwhelming, especially when trying to chase the perfectly curated, Pinterest-worthy classrooms that fill our social media feeds.
All of which can make thinking about squeezing in time to start and run a tutoring side hustle impossible.
Well my ambitious teacher friend, achieving work-life balance as a teacher AND running a profitable tutoring side hustle is possible - with the right strategies.
The Challenge of Achieving Teacher Work-Life Balance with a Tutoring Business
Your day is already packed as a full-time teacher.
Adding a tutoring business to your already overloaded schedule means juggling being a business owner, prepping lessons, and family responsibilities (and maybe squeezing in a bit of self-care).
The key to making this all work and maintaining some level of teacher work-life balance is recognizing your limits and making time to focus on what matters most.
And also it takes setting clear boundaries so you can operate your tutoring business on your terms.
As a full-time teacher myself, I had to learn how to say “No” more often. Currently, I’m at my limit with the number of kids I can tutor without feeling overwhelmed (and literally what will fit with my time schedule). I know that saying “Yes” to just one more student would mean saying “No” to family time and that’s a tradeoff I’m not willing to make.
Starting a tutoring business is a rewarding way to leverage your teaching skills to earn some extra cash. With the right “balance”, you can grow your tutoring side hustle without sacrificing your personal life and maintain a healthy teacher work-life balance.
Tips for Successfully Achieving Teacher Work-Life Balance with a Tutoring Business
If you’re a teacher looking for tips on how to achieve the dream of some sort of work-life balance, your Google searches will yield a wide range of results.
These could range from complicated and time-consuming morning routines to making it sound like balance is achieved through prioritizing self-care by making time for bubble baths and drinking enough water.
But, when you’re a busy teacher AND business owner…Nobody’s got time for that!
It’s important to find easy-to-implement and easy-to-maintain strategies so you can focus your time and productivity on creating the life you deserve. Here are my go-to strategies that I lean on to manage my time as energy as a full-time teacher and tutoring business owner.
Keep It Simple
Here’s the thing about creating and maintaining a work-life balance…
You gotta keep it SIMPLE!
When prepping for your tutoring sessions don’t overthink or overcomplicate it and just focus on your student’s specific needs. For example, a 30-minute reading tutoring session might include:
10 minutes of word work
15 minutes of reading
5-minute game at the end of the session
Following a structure like this ensures that your sessions are targeted, productive, and manageable. Overplanning sessions only lead to burnout and don’t necessarily benefit your students. Keeping it simple is key to maintaining teacher work-life balance.
Have Supplies Ready Ahead of Times
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Period.
Preparation is key to not only saving you time, but reducing stress and is the ultimate in mastering teacher work-life balance - whatever that may look like for you.
Being prepared makes sure you’re not fumbling to plan things last minute, which is not only stressful but also leads to forgetting important parts of your lesson. My best piece of advice is, if you specialize in a specific subject, keep a variety of materials and activities on hand and ready-to-go. For example, games are excellent tools for engaging students and making learning FUN! When students play they’re often learning without even realizing it.
Batch Prep a Few Weeks at a Time
Here’s the thing - as teachers, we KNOW that repetition is essential for learning and mastery.
But what does that have to do with batch planning for tutoring sessions?
You DON’T need brand-new materials and activities for every session. (Here’s the permission you needed to rinse and repeat lessons.)
When planning for your tutoring sessions, find activities and materials you can use over and over to reinforce and strengthen skills AND simplify your planning. And, reserving the lat 5 to 10 minute of each session for a fun, educational game will keep things engaging without adding in any extra prep!
By simplifying your planning process, you can free up time for family and self-care - key components of achieving teacher work-life balance.
Take ACTION and Achieve Teacher Work-Life Balance
Balancing life, teaching, tutoring, and everything life has to bring starts with prioritizing what matters most.
Don’t feel pressured to do it all.
To achieve teacher work-life balance, start small, set boundaries, and simplify your processes. And to help you along the way, check out my signature course - Tutorpreneur Academy®. In it, I share all my tips, templates, and schedules to help get your tutoring business started right!
How to Start a Profitable Teacher Side Hustle
Just getting started with your side hustle? Check out this YouTube video where I break down all the important components of starting a successful tutoring side hustle.
From getting clients to creating your dream schedule, this video will take the mystery out of it all.