ABSTRACT
Where does your working life as a teacher end and the rest of your life begin? Suppose for the sake of argument it begins on Monday morning – let’s say around 7:30 a.m. when you pull into the car park. (Perhaps it really began the previous day as you tried to plan a lesson, catch up with marking and show interest in what the kids were doing.) It is defi nitely a working day until you leave the building at 5 p.m. or whenever. Yet the day is not over; you may get out some work once the kids have gone to bed. The 2013 workload diary referred to in chapter 3 identifi es that 23.8% of primary and 21.4% of secondary teachers’ hours (14 and 12 hours a week respectively) occur out of hours: before 8 a.m., after 6 p.m., or at weekends. Even when we are not working, our minds are often mulling over the events of the day or anticipating the challenges of tomorrow. This chapter looks at one of the key challenges in our identity: securing a boundary between work and the rest of our lives.
