Terrence Foushee - On finding balance as a teacher (clip)

Kathryn Wall (KW): If you [Gillian] have any questions, I’d love for you to jump in, and also, if there’s anything you [Terrence Foushee] want to add before we wrap up that would be great.

Gillian Kepley (GK): You had mentioned a while ago about your sleep schedule, and stuff like that, when you were first starting out as a teacher, and I’m always really interested to know how people recharge from jobs that are so demanding of your energy. So how did you, even now in your role, find yourself recharging to still be enthusiastic about the work?

Terrence Foushee (TF): So, that’s a great question. To be honest as a teacher, in my teacher role, I don’t think I ever really learned a lot about balance. I didn’t take a lot of days off as a teacher. I would say, I think in my first two years I might’ve taken one to two sick days, and they were legitimate sick days. I took none of my personal time, none of my annual leave. I think that especially when you’re talking about equity, I think a lot of times, especially because there is such a small minority of Black male teachers, I think that to a certain extent, when you have a Black male teacher that might be doing somewhat well at his job, start adding more and more responsibilities and I felt like while I was at Northwood I was taking every opportunity given to me and it was really hard for me to find balance of sleep. But, I think exercise was one of the things that helped me rechange or, I guess, deal with some of my anxiety when I was teaching. I think in this role, my wife has been someone who helps me recharge, who helps me think, “Alright, you need to take some days off, you need to take some time for yourself. What do you need? Where can we go? What is the meal that makes you happy?” So even if it’s not taking a week off, what are the small things outside of work that make you happy? And I’ve worked to identify that for myself, and she’s helped me think about that process. I love that. That was a great question, because now that’s going to make me think more about how I’m recharging and recentering myself.