Working from home tips from the Maths Pathway team
Who would have thought that teaching would ever be a profession that could be done from home? We didn’t.
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Photo by Christopher Gower on Unsplash
Who would have thought that teaching would ever be a profession that could be done from home? We didn’t. Yet here we are, in the midst of a pandemic, preparing to teach our students from our dining tables and studies.
For many teachers working from home is really daunting. Not only is it a new experience, it’s made complicated by new routines and new technologies that we have to learn to work with.
The team at Maths Pathway gets it. We’ve been there before. We battled with technology and stumbled through best practice. But after a couple of years we’ve become quite good at working from home and many of us do it regularly. So given this will be the new normal for many of us, we thought we’d share our tips with you. We hope they help!
Avoid distractions
After 9 years of working from home before joining Maths Pathway, I probably qualify as some type of WFH professor or ninja. My tips are:
- Get noise cancelling headphones!
- If you find yourself tempted by news and social media you can add entries to your ‘hosts’ file to redirect you to a blank page. It’s good to not encourage those dopamine connections. You’ll be surprised how often it happens unconsciously.
Geoff Fletcher, Software Engineer
Maintain healthy habits
Fresh air is vital. A lot of buildings have top of the range ventilation systems and it’s likely that you aren’t running your air con all the time. Try to keep windows open (if it’s not too cold!) to keep your mind alert!
Make sure you take a lunch break, preferably away from your desk. Without work mates or a general office vibe of people “going to lunch” you might just sit in front of your computer and take a short lunch break. This is compounded by the fact you might be finishing a Netflix series on the same computer, which means you are looking at the same screen all day! Try to make your lunch break have something other than your computer in it.
Philip Ardeljan, Web designer/UI Specialist
Set boundaries
Working from home has become pretty normal for me — I’ve been doing it for the past 7 years. My number 1 tip sounds pretty basic, but it can actually be hard to achieve. You need to create clear boundaries for yourself and your family between your work life and home life. This is so important. When the clock hits 5pm, allow yourself to leave work there. Even if there’s just one more thing to do. Often one more task can turn into another half an hour of work that eats into time with your family. So set your boundaries and stick to them!
Tyson Daoust, Head of Partnerships
Use technology that works for you
There’s plenty of technology out there that’s designed to make working from home easier. But in reality, a lot of it can actually make your life harder. Experiment with new programs, but don’t feel tied to them if they don’t work. Just move on and try something. That’s what my team has done. We now use a program called Monday to manage our tasks and collaborate on projects; Zoom for video calls to start off every morning; and Slack to communicate throughout the day.
Dan Raica, Head of Marketing
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