By Julia Bialeski
As a new teacher, you’ve long awaited landing your first job. Now that it’s here, there are many important items to check off of your to-do list as you prepare for the start of the year. Your classroom is sufficiently decorated. Supplies are stocked, pencils are sharpened, and your planner is set up.
One item that may not be on your list, however, is establishing healthy work-life boundaries. It’s easy to assume that you’ll create boundaries later if you need to, but as an educator of over 20 years, I’ve come to realize that the best way to achieve positive work-life integration is by devoting the same time and care to your professional boundaries as you do to your bulletin boards and lesson plans.
Preventing Burnout
I learned this the hard way back when I was a first-year teacher. I found myself in my classroom at 9 p.m. on a Friday evening, writing page-long responses to my fifth-grade students in their reading journals. I was starving, it was dark outside, and I still wasn’t finished. Instead of reflecting on how I needed to divide my time between work and home, I’d started my career assuming these boundaries would appear on their own—and they didn’t. I was on the fast track to burnout, and I needed to course-correct.
Take it from me. The boundaries you make now just might be the key to maintaining and sustaining that enthusiasm you’re currently experiencing, at the start of your career in education, for the long haul.
Not only will this allow you to maximize your productivity, set yourself up as a role model with both students and colleagues, and contribute to a healthy, positive culture in your school, establishing healthy work-life boundaries early on is also an important step for preventing mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion down the line.
Think About Your Values
True work-life integration starts by examining your values. Think about what you need in order to be at your best, both inside and outside of the classroom. Ask yourself questions such as, “How do I define work-life balance in my life?” and “What positive habits do I already have that I’d like to build upon?” and “What are my biggest time and energy drains related to work?”
To get started, it’s necessary to first explain what I mean by “boundaries.” These are limits you identify for yourself, that you apply through actions and communication. They’re personal, and should be individualized for you and your life.
Early in your teaching career, there are many areas in which you should consider establishing boundaries. Here are three that should be at the top of your list.
1. Work Hours
As a teacher, you have contractual hours, but many educators prefer to invest a bit of extra time at school to feel best prepared for their students. If this rings true to you, think about whether you want to do so in the morning or afternoon. Set clear arrival/dismissal times for yourself and stick to them. Use a recurring alarm on your phone as a reminder.
Consider when, and under what circumstances, you are comfortable bringing work home. Some teachers don’t mind grading papers while watching television in the evenings, but for others, this is a no-go. If you are comfortable completing some work at home, set limits around how much time you spend doing so.
I’d also recommend creating a time sanctuary—intentional hours outside of school when work is not an option. This could be preserving every Sunday just for you, or carving out two hours each morning for a routine of your choice, free of work.
Finally, when setting boundaries around work hours, think long and hard about your commitments to extracurricular activities and events. These activities promote a strong school community and can be a wonderful way to connect with students and families, but if you don’t have boundaries around when you will and won’t attend events outside of your work hours, you might find yourself on the road to burnout.
Consider picking one event a month to attend, or choosing one extracurricular activity that you’re passionate about to sponsor. If your current home situation doesn’t allow you to help out with extracurriculars in the evenings, don’t beat yourself up. That’s okay, too.
2. Communication
Another critical area to keep in mind when thinking about boundaries as a new teacher is communication. How you communicate now will set the tone for years to come, so getting this right from the start is important.
In the modern world where everyone is always connected, email can completely take over your life if you allow it to. One easy way to manage this is by establishing hours during which you check and respond to emails. Do not set up work email on your personal phone, and make sure to turn off notifications so that you don’t hear a noise each and every time an email appears in your inbox.
If the boundaries you set around your work schedule mean that you’re using email on the evenings or over the weekend, ensure you utilize the “Schedule Send” feature in your email platform. Parents, colleagues, and administrators don’t need to know that you’re responding to their emails on a Saturday afternoon. If they do, then they’ll begin to expect responses at all hours of the day, and that is neither sustainable nor reasonable. Aim for a response time of around two working days and you’ll remain professional and responsive without email taking over your life.
You should also refrain from sharing your personal phone number with students and families, and you may want to consider keeping your social media profiles private as well. Plenty of teachers even have a boundary around whether their teaching colleagues can follow them on social media. Maintaining some distance between your work life and personal life can be a good thing for many new teachers.
Take advantage of Back-to-School Night, parent-teacher conferences, and other engagement opportunities with students and your community to share when, and how, you can be reached—and to proactively manage expectations around your response time. These can also be great opportunities to share your boundaries around how you are (and are not) comfortable connecting outside of school.
Try saying, “I have a personal rule that I do not friend students or parents on social media, so please don’t take it personally if you request me and I decline.”
3. Rest
Finally, use this opportunity now to establish some boundaries and habits around rest. Rest builds capacity; taking time to recharge and recalibrate on a regular basis prevents burnout later.
Often, these boundaries can be the most difficult to keep, as they are boundaries with yourself, more so than with others. A simple but impactful strategy for ensuring you have time for rest is to proactively schedule it in your calendar.
The beginning of a school year can be a great time to do this. Once you have major dates penciled in—including mandatory professional learning, district-wide testing, and other important school events—identify a few strategic intervals during the year when you will take a personal day just for yourself.
Consider how you can make that time off special. Will you plan to get together with a loved one? Is there a favorite hobby you’ve been wanting to partake in? Or do you simply want to relax at home and do nothing? Preserving this time on your calendar ensures that it will happen. If you wait to take a personal day later, you risk finding yourself faced with a jam-packed schedule.
Along with personal days and school breaks, ensure you’re also thinking about how you can support your work-life balance through a morning or evening routine. Use your boundaries around work hours and communication as starting points, and identify how you want to spend your time outside of work. Having an established routine makes it much more likely that you will log off the computer, go home, and put away your planner.
When you’re away from school, use an out-of-office message on your email so that colleagues and parents know they won’t hear back from you until you return. To help manage your inbox while you’re gone, consider adding helpful links to your out-of-office message that might address frequently asked questions from parents.
Throughout your career, you’ll need to reflect on your work-life boundaries and consider whether or not they continue to serve you well. Just as you used reflection questions to establish these boundaries at the beginning of the year, make time at the end of each term—as well as over the summer—to re-evaluate how things are going and what might need to change.
By developing, testing, and revising healthy work-life balance during your first year, you will set yourself up for long-term joy and sustainability in the profession—which will allow you to bring your very best to your students, colleagues, and community each and every day.
For over 20 years, Julia Bialeski has served as a teacher, instructional specialist,
assistant principal, elementary principal, and district leader. She was recognized for her excellence through leadership and innovation as the 2025 recipient of the University of Maryland College of Education’s Outstanding Alumni Award. Julia currently serves as the Coordinator of Recruitment and Hiring for the Howard County Public School System in Maryland.
