It’s always important for partners and spouses to understand each other, but it is also often a challenge. There are additional issues specific to a number of professions that can also significantly affect a relationship. Spouses of police officers, first-responders, and military for example, are often faced with relationship challenges. One surprising group of partner/spouses that often bring work-specific particularities to their relationships is teachers.
Whether your partner is a public school teacher or a university professor, there are a few things they need you to understand about their work; things that affect their lives and their relationships.
There is no such thing as ‘quitting time’
Some people work 9-5, others work shifts or clock in and out. Most people, regardless of their work schedule, look forward to the end of their shift when they can call it a day. Teachers are often seen as lucky, enjoying shorter work days than average. Many are able to leave their institutions in the early afternoon. Few teachers have to go to work on weekends or late at night. What teachers need their spouses to understand though, is that they are seldom, if ever, truly ‘off’ work.
Not all of a teacher’s true work is done in the classroom or even in the office between or after classes. Not only must they allow time for lesson planning, they are also required to grade tests and reports, and do endless research. They often hold themselves personally responsible for the future success of each and every student they encounter. Teachers do not simply end a day of work. On those few days when the material workload is completed, teachers are often still mentally present at school and in their classrooms.
Your teacher-spouse may be home doing laundry or cooking meals, or even seemingly relaxing with a book or the television. Please understand that there is unseen processing going on inside their minds. Sometimes they want to talk about it, perhaps more often they don’t. It is there however, and it is not easily turned off.
Your kids are not their only kids
As much as personal family is first and foremost in a teachers’ lives, there will always be a special place in their hearts for their students. Concerns about students will never stay out of your home, even if they are not spoken of. This doesn’t mean that there is any less love in the home. There is more. There is a level of care that lies below the surface though, and it is important to understand that and not challenge it.
School breaks are not really holidays
Teachers work significantly fewer days per year than average. They have a winter break, a spring break, and often a very long summer break. These breaks are not really holidays. As with the evening and weekend time that is mentioned in the first point of this article, these school breaks are often filled with essential preparation and research for each upcoming school session. Good teachers do not simply wing it. The classroom can be a battleground, and students of any age will walk all over an unprepared teacher.
Additionally, school breaks are much needed recuperation periods for teachers. Teaching is not commonly considered a physically demanding job, despite spending hours standing or walking in a classroom, writing in unreasonably large lettering on a blackboard or whiteboard, and projecting their voices into the furthest corners of sometimes very large rooms day in and day out. During the school terms though, teachers do not rest. They often work every day on very little sleep. What little down-time they do get is usually permeated by lingering computations, lesson explanations, and individual concerns about each of their students. Teachers run on 110% power throughout the school year, and the breaks they get are the only time they can let off on the throttle slightly.
Everyone is their student (yes, even you)
Just as teachers don’t clock out when they leave the classroom, their classroom doesn’t end with the boundaries of one brick and mortar building. Teachers never really turn off. A benefit of this is that they are always in teach-mode with their own kids.
Teachers’ children are not necessarily smarter. Although there is evidence of a genetic component to intelligence, there are far too many other factors in play on any individual to make a blanket statement about inherited ‘smarts’. What we do see a pattern of though, is the effect of the teachers’ mindset and experience on their children. Teachers are often experts in pretty much anything your kids can throw at them. They also instill in their children a strong sense of the value of education and the importance of working hard and trying your best.
To a teacher-parent, every incident they encounter becomes a teachable moment. With their own children, the need to act on this is strong, and many teachers’ kids will tell you how often they are lectured by their teacher-parent. Depending on the teacher, the urge to teach a lesson or explain the logic or moral of any given situation is often not stifled by societal boundaries. Teachers will frequently treat strangers’ children as their own students. Spouses and other family members are also not immune. If your teacher-spouse doesn’t lecture you or correct your grammar, attitude, or behavior, rest assured that they are holding back. They do hear your mistakes and correct them in their heads.
Words are really important
Words are the building blocks of language and the foundation of communication. Most teachers, especially those of academic subjects, are highly attuned to words. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but many great battles have been started and ended on the strength of only a few words. Do not underestimate the power of your words on your teacher-spouse.
Have you ever felt a sudden, completely inexplicable explosion of your spouse’s anger? Are you sometimes left with a giant proverbial question-mark hanging over your head as you watch the back of your teacher-partner abruptly striding away from you in frustration? These incidences are often the result of the (likely unintentional) unfortunate use of the wrong word, the wrong phrasing, or the wrong intonation.
This does not mean that you need a dictionary in order to keep your spouse’s temper in check. It simply means that the power of words is nothing to meddle with.
For example, you have just told your child that “Mommy will turn the TV on for your right after I go.” You are simply trying to get the whining to stop long enough to get baby brother out the door so you can drop him off at daycare on your way to work, while the other children are home for spring break. Your spouse, standing at the door to see you off raises her eyebrow at you and reminds you that the children generally don’t get to watch television during the day, and certainly not until after breakfast is eaten. “Of course,” you mutter as you kiss her goodbye.
Wha-bam! The door-slam shakes the house spectacularly. You stare at the still-vibrating wood in dazzled wonder.
Sound familiar? What happened? Words. Powerful words. What you failed to foresee was that your briefest comment was filled with deeper meaning to your teacher-spouse. Of course was not an agreement, or an apology for having forgotten the house rules. In this situation, Of course was a challenge to parenting policies and a bold statement that you do not agree with them. In those two simple words, your spouse hears a litany of meaning that you probably hadn’t intended.
What does it all mean at the end of the day?
Relationships are like a long complicated dance. As soon as you feel like you have found the rhythm and flow, the music changes tempo. Just when you think you have mastered the steps and have stopped awkwardly trampling on each other’s toes, the floor shifts or the beat changes, leaving you stumbling to find your footing again. When your partner/spouse is a teacher, they may seem to always be ahead of you, or a step behind. They might anticipate the new tune or even initiate the change themselves. Sometimes they look like they are smiling and energetic, but their legs are secretly shaking with exhaustion.
All relationships require constant vigilance. You support each other in varying ways, often lifting each other up but often taking turns leaning on each other for support. When your partner/spouse is a teacher, the indications of their needs and feelings may be uniquely subtle. If you are able to understand some of these particularities, you might find the shifts and transitions of the music of life a little bit easier to manage.