For many people, being a mother is just another part of their life. What tends to be ignored, however, is how some mothers balance their careers like teaching while also being a mom. Especially if the children are young, or in a lot of activities.
Ashley Jadwin has taught at Bellevue West for seven years, teaching both Physics and Physical Science. She currently has two kids, an almost four year-old, and an almost one-year old.
Jadwin said that balancing home and work for her involved setting firm boundaries. She told her students that if you email her in the evening, she’s “Mom” at that point, and not their teacher. She said that doing so made her more focused in school and in classes, along with being a lot more intentional. She said if she thought she wouldn’t have the time to grade it, then she assumed that her students wouldn’t have time to work on it.
“Oh, I think I became a lot more mindful when it came to assigning stuff,” Jadwin said. “I think it also made me more understanding of my students when, like, ‘Oh, you’re involved in all of these activities.’ So I try to be more mindful that everyone deserves to have that time outside of school to themselves.”
Jadwin said that she was only able to take off seven weeks of maternity leave for her children, due to the time lining up with breaks. The seven weeks she took off went unpaid, but that didn’t mean her time off was unworked. Jadwin expressed her frustration for this, due to the fact that she had to provide lesson plans for the days that she is absent.
“There are times I basically was writing the curriculum and everything for days I knew I was not going to get paid for, so you’re still doing all of that work up front,” Jadwin said. “So I spent my entire summer writing my maternity leave stuff unpaid.”
Theater teacher Jennifer Ettinger echoed Jadwin’s sentiments on maternity leave.
While Ettinger said she appreciates the fact that our country has a maternity leave policy, she doesn’t appreciate the fact that it’s unpaid. Ettinger said that she went as far as to go into work sick just to save up sick days to have paid time off.
“You can’t always save up sick days,” Ettinger said. “And I was doing things like, you know, trying to come to school sick and pregnant so I would have enough days to still be paid for part of my maternity leave. I didn’t get paid for a lot of my maternity leave, both with my first and with my third, because I just didn’t have enough sick days to do it.”
Ettinger has taught for eight years at Bellevue West, teaching Intro to Theatre, Intermediate Theatre, Advanced Theatre, Performance Studies, Stagecraft, and Theatre Production and Management. She has three kids: a seven year-old, a four year-old, and a six month-old infant.
Ettinger said that a work and life balance is something that she’s still working on. She said she thinks it’s “very hard”, especially with her job. She’s not here only during school hours, she’s here often past that until 6 p.m., and even here on some weekends.
Part of the struggle of maintaining a work-life balance for Ettinger is the fact that she’s in charge of six classes, along with many after-school theatrical productions, like this year’s fall play “Harvey.” She “tries her best” to keep her work life and personal life separate, but with things like after-school rehearsals, she tends to get home later.
“I get home at six and my kids start getting ready for bed at 7:30 so, like, I have an hour and a half to really, like be a mom and make them feel like a whole day of my love just in that hour and a half,” Ettinger said.
Ettinger said she does try to create a sharp line between work and personal life, making sure that she puts her family above her job and giving her all towards her family, without neglecting her job here. She wants to make sure that she’s spending enough time with her kids, and being a good wife and mother and friend, while also being a good teacher.
“I have students for four years, but [my children] are my life,” Ettinger said. “They’re my always, so I want to make sure that I’m giving them my all.”
Jennifer Sedlacek has taught for twenty-four years, currently teaching Spanish II. She has four kids, a fifteen year-old, a thirteen year-old, a twelve year-old, and a seven year-old.
Sedlacek said that, in maintaining a work life balance, she had to try to consciously keep school at school. There are times that she will work at home, but she often tends to just wait and get it done during school hours. Instead, she focuses on everything that needs to happen at home with her family at night, or during the weekends.
“But I keep really good watch of my calendar, and I know exactly what is happening every single day for everybody,” Sedlacek said.
Everyone has their own way of doing things, with some people preferring a more rigid schedule, but she said she tends to like some flexibility within reason. And with her kids being in so many activities, having some flexibility with the schedule can help for events. Her fifteen year-old is in football, her thirteen year-old is in cross country, her twelve year-old is in football as well, for a different school, and her seven year-old plays soccer.
“The logistics of everything, it’s that’s mostly my calendar is crazy, but also I know it’s exciting and good for them to do,” Sedlacek said. “They definitely make it work in the end.”
