New Year, New Boundaries: EMAIL [Episode 252]

Rebecca Joyner [00:00:01]:
Over the next 3 weeks, we are going to be diving into a little mini-series all about boundaries. A new school year calls for new boundaries so that you can have your healthiest year yet as a whole human being who knows that teaching is your job and not your whole life, who knows that your identity is not in the work that you do. So we are going to start this 3-week conversation of new boundaries for the new school year Talking about the one most teachers have the hardest time with, and that’s email. Now, this conversation really covers all of the ways that you are accessible to students, parents, coworkers, and admin. So maybe you’re not a big email person, but you have some sort of messaging system, texting platform, a phone that’s always ringing, LMS with notifications that are always dinging, like whatever it may be. That is what today’s episode is for. Ready? Let’s dive in. This is Secondary Science Simplified, a podcast for secondary science teachers who want to engage their students and simplify their lives.

Rebecca Joyner [00:01:10]:
I’m Rebecca Joyner from It’s Not Rocket Science. As a high school science teacher turned curriculum writer, I am passionate about helping other science teachers love their jobs, serve their students, and do it all in only 40 hours a week. Are you ready to rock the time you spend in your classroom and actually have a life outside of it? You are in the right place, teacher friend. Let’s get to today’s episode. In this episode, we are going to cover why you need better email boundaries, how to actually have them, the biggest pushback I get, and then end with even more practical, specific tips, 5 of them exactly. So that you can get started with having new and better boundaries with your email this school year. So first, why do you need better email boundaries? First, you are not being paid to work or be available 24/7. I don’t know a job where you are expected to be available 24/7.

Rebecca Joyner [00:02:16]:
I have family members in my family who have a variety of different jobs, including first responders, including Surgeons who are— have on-call shifts, and even them have shifts that they’re on and shifts that they’re off. Even first responders tend to work 24 hours on and available, 48 hours off. And when they are off, they are off. You need to let go of this feeling like the world is going to set on fire if you are not constantly available. I am like the poster child for recovery of this because this was so hard for me my first few years teaching, and it really took a lot of daily hard conversations with my husband to finally set better boundaries in these areas. And it made all of the difference for like my mental health and my ability to be sustainable doing this job to the point in which I did it full-time before It’s Not Rocket Science exploded. And one of the things my husband would always tell me And I would see this. He had a decade of life where he was in vocational ministry as his job, and ministry is one of those jobs that is extremely personal and person-to-person, where you do feel like you have to be constantly available.

Rebecca Joyner [00:03:31]:
And I remember seeing his phone blowing up with texts and calls at 9:00 PM, 10:00 PM, 11:00 PM, and sometimes I’d be like, are you going to answer that? Are you going to respond? And he’d be like, no. Their emergency does not have to become my emergency. And that’s what I want to say to you today, teachers. Your students, your parents, your coworkers, your admin’s emergencies do not have to be your emergencies. You do not drive an ambulance. That is what my husband was constantly telling me. Or you don’t drive a fire truck, as I was constantly trying to like have water to spray out the fires and put them out. That is not your role as a teacher.

Rebecca Joyner [00:04:11]:
Your role is to teach students your course as best as you can and then equip them for life after your course. And that involves being a problem solver who’s industrious enough to find the answers to their own questions and not constantly looking for someone who will pacify them and do things for them. We have to equip them to do things for themselves. And that comes with being unavailable. Okay. So that is the first thing. How do we actually have boundaries? First, we become unavailable. That looks like deleting all workplace communication off of your personal devices ASAP.

Rebecca Joyner [00:04:51]:
Log out of the email on your phone, unsubscribe from the notification texts, delete the app on your phone, whatever that looks like, do it. Now. And then your laptop or your school iPad or your school phone, it stays at school or it stays in your car, or if that’s not a safe place, it stays in your teacher bag that sits in your drop zone from the time you walk in the door of your home to the time you leave the next day. Because here’s why this is so important. First, anxiety begs action. If you see the notifications, if you see the first line of the email in a preview, you start to feel anxious. Your body starts to respond. It wants to eliminate the threat.

Rebecca Joyner [00:05:38]:
It wants to make the worry go away. It wants to do something about it. And so it’s really hard for you to shut off your mind and your body once you’ve already seen it there. Ignorance is actually bliss in this situation. And I’ve said this every single time. That I have talked about this on this podcast. I have talked about the different times that we’ve had conversations with school counselors and other safety personnel at our schools, like police officers and things like that, where it’s actually a safety concern for students and for you if you are constantly available and you’ve trained your students that you are constantly available. This can be a situation Where their mental health and their physical health is at stake if you train them that you’re always going to be available and then one day you’re, you’re all of a sudden not.

Rebecca Joyner [00:06:29]:
Okay, do you hear what I’m saying? I, I, I like, this is very serious and I don’t mean to be like a super Debbie Downer on this episode, but like, you may think, well, I have to answer the emails because what if they send me something that really is life or death? Again, not in your realm of responsibility. And if you train them that you’re not going to be available, they won’t do that. If it’s a real emergency, they need to call 911. That’s another thing. My husband’s always telling me, you don’t drive an ambulance. In a true emergency, they need to call 911, not you. I tell my, one of my best friends, like, cannot believe that I sleep with my phone in a different room. I started this summer sleeping with it in the living room.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:04]:
And she’s like, but what if there’s an emergency? Like with your mom or, you know, like with your friends or whatever? And I’m like, then if it’s an emergency, they should call 911. They shouldn’t call me. Like, and even one of our closest friends lives next door. I’m like, if there’s an emergency, they’re gonna run over or they’re gonna send one of their kids over to wake me up and bang on my window. Like, that is when they will come get me, but like, I don’t have to be constantly available and you do not either. So that’s the first action step is become unavailable. Second, be clear about when you are available. Train them so that they know you’re not just ignoring them.

Rebecca Joyner [00:07:39]:
You are not seeing it because you are doing other things, whether that’s for your classroom in the class period or just outside of the classroom in your actual life, because you do have a life, remember? Teaching is not your life, it’s your job. So be clear. This looks like signs in your classroom as to when you’re available for tutoring. I’ve always had a sign up, like these are the different times you can come see me. Whether it’s chaotic, like it’s Monday’s lunch and Tuesday, Thursday before school, Wednesday, Friday after school, or if it’s the same every day from 3 to 3:30, have a sign up and you can always point it to students and say, this is when I’m available. Second, you have an email signature that says I am only available at this time, or I check email at 7:30 AM pending traffic and at 4:00 PM before I leave for the day. I will do my best to respond within one business day pending any life crises. Like, put that in your email signature.

Rebecca Joyner [00:08:35]:
I cannot tell you how happy it is when I’m corresponding with some of y’all in my own inbox and I see you have things like this. It’s so wise. Like, do it. And then people aren’t like, Wondering when they’re going to hear from you and refreshing their own inbox because you have said, this is when I’m checking. Another thing you can do is you can put up an autoresponder, like during your class period that says, I’m unavailable to come to the computer right now because I’m currently teaching your students. I will respond at the end of the day, or I will check my inbox at the end of the day. Like, this is a safety concern for you to be expected to be available even from 7:45 to 3:45 when you’re teaching. Like, you should not be at your computer.

Rebecca Joyner [00:09:14]:
You should actually be engaging with students. And parents and admin want you to do that, but then they also want you to be constantly available. That math doesn’t math. And I think we have a really unique opportunity as science teachers to hold the line on this because there are safety things that can very much happen in our classrooms if we are distracted. So we cannot be getting distracted by notifications popping up on the Blackboard or whatever it is. Also set up an autoresponder for your weekends that you are unavailable and point them to where they can go if they need More information or they need support and let them know when you will be available. Like, I am unavailable from Fridays after 4:00 PM until Mondays at 8:00 AM. I will catch up on all correspondence then.

Rebecca Joyner [00:09:56]:
So we’re going to get really clear about when we are available. Now, here is also what availability looks like. Availability does not mean you’re going to spend an hour responding to someone’s email. You read an email from someone, if you cannot respond in under 2 minutes, Then this is a conversation that needs to be had in person. So we are going to actually respond to the email and say, I think this is a better conversation to have face-to-face. Here are opportunities that I’m available for face-to-face conferences. What works for your schedule? Okay. We are not spending hours drafting emails that are then just going to go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth with people.

Rebecca Joyner [00:10:33]:
We’re not engaging in the back and forth. You don’t have time for that. For your admin, again, If they expect you to be checking your inbox every class period in case they have some sort of critical announcement that they need to share, again, that’s a safety concern for you as a lab science teacher for you to be at your computer. You can tell them, hey, if it’s a true emergency, like, come tell me face to face. Okay? Like, this is not going to work. Or another thing you can do is at a minimum, you can set up a rule on your computer. Like, you can bookmark a certain folder in your email, not just like your inbox. So like bookmark a folder.

Rebecca Joyner [00:11:10]:
That way when you click email, it’s just going to that folder and it can, you can set up a rule that says any emails from like these email addresses, like admin at your school or whatever, go directly to this folder. And then that way you can maybe try, okay, after I take attendance, I’ll click that folder right quick and see if there’s anything emergency. Okay, I’m good with admin, then I’m moving on. Another opportunity is Inbox When Ready. It’s a Chrome extension and that allows, it kind of like makes it so you can’t see everything else in your inbox, which. I also love that. So that’s what being available looks like. You’re available and not just like in unending ways.

Rebecca Joyner [00:11:45]:
You’re available at certain times and for certain amounts of time, not just like from 3:00 PM until the email’s done. Like we are moving through email. This is supposed to be a fraction of our job, not like 25% of our job. Now, the biggest pushback I get anytime I talk about this is people DMing me, people emailing me and saying, But they need me. The students need me. The admin have to tell me something. The parents have so much to say. Okay, well, let me tell you this.

Rebecca Joyner [00:12:11]:
You’ve trained them to need you rather than equipping them to find answers on their own. I say this especially for students and parents. You have trained them to need you rather than equipping them to find the answers on their own. Especially parents, when you respond right away to emails, Or if you send multiple emails a day back and forth with the parent, you have trained them that you have time in your day to do this, that you’re available. And so they’re going to assume you always will be, and that is not healthy. Okay. So here are practical tips for holding the line. Again, set a schedule and stick to it.

Rebecca Joyner [00:12:47]:
Like, I’m going to check my email when I first get to school. I’ll do a quick scan and reply to like any of the ones that are really short answers. Again, if there are any that have multiple paragraphs, I’m not going to read them. Maybe I’ll set them aside for my planning period when I can really read them longer, but I’m not going to like get my panties in a wad at the start of the day when I have like 30 students coming in for AP Biology in 20 minutes. Okay. So I’m checking at the beginning of the day and then I’m going to check at the end of the day before leaving. That would be when I would answer the longer emails. I’m setting a timer.

Rebecca Joyner [00:13:16]:
I’m not typing for more than 2 minutes. If it’s getting longer, I’m going to ask for a conference or I’m just going to go ahead and make a phone call. I personally prefer email because I like it all in writing, but I do love Google Voice, and there’s other opportunities here. But I love Google Voice because it’s free and you get a phone number, and then you get an app on your phone that can be set on do not disturb or like turned off, you know, and it’s also on your computer. And that way you don’t have to be like stuck in your classroom if you would rather make the conversation like on the go, even though most of us have hands-free driving nowadays. But you can also record calls. Check the consent rules in your state. Like, you might have to put a disclaimer about like, the call will be recorded, but then it’s great because then you have that record also.

Rebecca Joyner [00:13:57]:
But like, we’re like, I’m talking 5 minutes max per email of like, I’m reading it, I’m thinking about a response, I’m responding within 2 minutes. That’s a 5-minute total activity and then I’m moving on. Okay. We do not have time to be spending more than that. You have so many other things to do. Alongside that, we’re not going to respond to someone more than once a day. So if I see something in the morning and I respond real quick to that, and then I see that afternoon that they’ve already replied back to me, unless it’s like an, okay, great, got it. Like I don’t look at it because I’m not going to train them that I’m available multiple times a day.

Rebecca Joyner [00:14:28]:
Now, if you feel like you’re like, well, I have time to respond right now, then schedule the response, write a response and schedule it to go out at 8:00 AM the next day when you said you will also check emails and then have that be from there. That’s like your response. Also, I will say, if you feel emotionally triggered by an email, like you open an email, you start feeling, you start reading it and you start feeling a lot of feelings, whether that’s rage, shame, defensive, sad, embarrassed. Like, I don’t know what those feelings might be. Could be a combination of all of them. Draft a response. Do not send it. Sit on it for at least 12 hours.

Rebecca Joyner [00:15:04]:
Give it a night’s rest. Come back to it with a set of fresh, less emotional eyes. I have always found that I, when I respond quickly to something, I’m always so much more emotional. And we do not want to be emotional in email. We want to be factual. We want to be encouraging and we want to have boundaries in the way that we approach our inbox, but also in how we actually respond to emails. Again, practical things, use inbox when ready. Another practical thing is have a script that you use of staying positive, sticking to the facts, not engaging with crazy.

Rebecca Joyner [00:15:35]:
Doing your best to not take things personally. Rule of thumb is like, you’ll never regret being kinder. You may regret being harsh and more defensive. So a couple episodes that will really equip you with this— there’s a few. Episode 70 is a conversation with my former chemistry teacher, and it’s called It Isn’t an Attack on You: Dealing with Difficult Parents. He has some excellent scripts there. Episode 195 is with another guest, Mandy Farrar. It’s a simple and effective process for parent communication.

Rebecca Joyner [00:16:02]:
It’s Excellent and equipping. And then also episode 207 is one that I did about dealing with combative parents, like those really hard ones, 6 tips and 2 warnings. So go back and listen to those episodes. They will give you scripts and they will give you outlines and they will really, really equip you. And then the last practical thing I’ll say is set up that autoresponder for every school break, every weekend. That’s at a minimum. If you wanna set it up during the email day too, I think that’s great. I personally did weekends and like, School vacations, and then had this signature in my email of like, this is when I’m teaching.

Rebecca Joyner [00:16:37]:
I think all the time can be a little bit annoying if you have one on all day, but you can also say like, oh, I’m teaching and I’m engaging young minds right now, teaching them the wonderful world of science. If you’re looking with help, check XYZ or ABC. And if you have a different question, I’ll get back to you when I do my once a day school email check. You know, another thing too is like in summer. If you’re like, I can’t go all summer without checking my email, well then you can set up an autoresponder and say, hey, these are the 3 dates I’ll be checking email. And you can check like every 3 or 4 weeks and then move on. Okay? So please y’all, take some first action steps today at a minimum of becoming unavailable. That is what I want you to do first.

Rebecca Joyner [00:17:17]:
Then if you’ve already kind of done that, let’s be clear on when you are available. And that’s something we’ll talk about more in future episodes. So stay tuned for that. And come back, come back the next 2 weeks for more New Year, New Boundaries. As we, we’re gonna talk about setting boundaries with parents and students more specifically in 2 separate episodes. And if you have a coworker or friend who you’re like, they could, they could really use this pep talk, send them this episode, like forward it to them and let them listen to this conversation. And if you wanna access those other episodes that I mentioned that would really, really help you with these conversations, head to itsanrocketscienceclassroom.com/episode252. Again, your action step today.

Rebecca Joyner [00:17:56]:
Take those first steps in becoming unavailable and removing these things from your phone. Okay? That’s what I want for you. And if you’ve already done all that and you want another action step, you can leave a review for the podcast, especially if you’re excited to set some new boundaries for this new school year. All right, teacher friends, that wraps up today’s episode. If you’re looking for an easy way to start simplifying your life as a secondary science teacher, head to itsnotrocketscience.com. rocketscienceclassroom.com/challenge to grab your Classroom Reset Challenge. And guess what? It’s totally free. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I’ll see you here next week.

Rebecca Joyner [00:18:32]:
Until then, I’ll be rooting for you, teacher friend.