It wasn’t long after being named North Carolina History Teacher of the year that Justin Ashley started noticing signs of burnout. He knew he needed to make some radical changes in how he handled his work and personal life.
In The Balanced Teacher Path, Justin shares his personal story—illuminating how easy it is to give your job everything you’ve got and leave yourself with nothing outside of school—and shows new teachers and veterans alike the self-care techniques they can employ to create work-life balance and prevent burnout.
With equal parts humor and wisdom, Justin analyzes four key aspects of every teacher’s life—career, social, physical, and financial—and offers practical advice to bring these areas into sync, reigniting a passion for teaching in the process.
The Balanced Teacher Path is available now.
Unique and exceptional, The Balanced Teacher Path is impressively user-friendly in organization and presentation, making it an ideal and highly recommended addition to personal, school district, and teacher education collections.
―Wisconsin Bookwatch
I purchased the book for my daughter who is a first year teacher. I just retired after teaching for 33 years. I was not ready to retire and feel passionate about encouraging people to teach. My older daughter is a teacher as well, and the ideas outlined in the book are great for teachers at all stages of their career. In fact, I convinced my husband (a marketing director of a hospital) to read several chapters. He immediately saw helpful ideas for leading a balanced path. It is a great read with practical advice to bring career, social, physical/emotional and financial aspects of life into balance.
-Mary, starred review
As an education reporter, I read a lot of books that are a chore to get through. This one was just fun; Justin Ashley is a skilled communicator with a sense of humor. While this is aimed at teachers, most of his advice will strike a chord for everyone. Who hasn’t worried that excellence in a career demands giving up a personal life, or dealt with toxic colleagues, or tried to stretch a paycheck? At one point I got so absorbed that I was confused when I came across classroom-specific advice; I had forgotten I wan’t the target audience. There’s no single thunderbolt insight here that you’ve never seen anywhere else —and Ashley gives full credit to his wide range of sources—but this kind of book is all about delivering the message you need at a time you need it in a way that gets through. I suspect this will reach a lot of people in exactly that way. It’s an upbeat book, but it also delves into how deep the personal damage was when Ashley let his life get out of balance. I think a lot of people can relate to someone who’s candid about facing depression and drug dependency and coming back from it.
-Ann Doss Helms, WFAE news reporter
Justin Ashley 