Before I started teaching, one of my biggest concerns was fitness. In my "youth" (referring to my elementary to high school days), I was quite active, with sports every day pretty much all year round. In college, while I was definitely not as fit and active as I had been, I still had access to the gym, mandatory PE classes (and one particularly memorable modern dance class, thank you, best-teacher-ever!!), ridiculously cheap zumba classes (shout out to my fellow zumba-ers) and even the park for leisure running. All of these fitness opportunities for my taking-if I was not fit, it was 100% due to my lack of discipline.
As a new teacher, on the other hand, exercise did not seem to be an option, primarily due to the immense work load (and long hours at my school). Despite urges from our COO to maintain a healthy work-life balance and carve out time for personal priorities, having a life outside of work seemed to be an ideal, not reality (and even if I did have time for personal priorities, exercising plummeted quickly in rank). For the first couple of weeks, the extent of my fitness ranged from walking to and from train stations, to chasing little children around the school.
Shortly after I started working, I realized that one way to "stay fit" was to just not eat lunch, which is easy if you're a classroom teacher since you're essentially "on" all day (stay fit is in quotes, since studies have shown that it's actually more detrimental to deprive your body of food, intentional or not). It was unlikely that I would not eat lunch, since food is such a huge part of my life. I was still stuck in a fitness rut.
Fitness tip #1: make time in the day to eat, even if it's just a little snack.
Luckily, our school has one awesome dance teacher, and she offers a weekly zumba class (for free!) for all adults in the school building. Though only 45 minutes a week, it's a real workout (both muscular and cardiovascular), and releases much-needed endorphins on a Monday evening.
Fitness tip #2: make time to work out on a high-stress day. It feels awesome to do something for yourself, and lets you step away from a school mindset (even if only for 45 minutes).
Today, I experienced a new type of workout-strength training by books:
I look like a turtle!
In last week's TFA newsletter blast, there was a post by an organization that had recently received a large donation of books from McGraw Hill. These books were deemed unusable for their purposes, and thus they reached out to TFA. I, being a first year teacher, jumped at this opportunity to get anything that could possibly help my students, and scheduled an appointment to pick out some books today. What I thought would be 7-10 books turned out to be way more than I could have imagined. Because I was the first one to swing by, I had a huge assortment to choose from. In all, I picked up about 25 books for my kiddos. AWESOME. As an added bonus, they had a bunch of big books (essentially enlarged versions of books, on average 2-3 feet x 2-3 feet) for me to take too! Serious win. With a whopping 7 pound backpack, plus a few big books in tow, I made the trek from Brooklyn to Long Island through the rain. I was pleasantly surprised by how out of breath I was when I got to my doorstep. I anticipate some aching muscles tomorrow as well. Free books and a workout? Double win.
To give some perspective, here's a picture of the shell relative to the New York Times.
Fitness tip #3: add some extra books in your bag to get some cardio and strength training.
All that to say, today's events have inspired this post, which will hopefully inspire all you (and me) to find time to squeeze in some fitness in your busy lives.
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