Hey, I'm Natalie, founder of Primary Focus. I was an elementary school teacher for 10 years and I spent half of that teaching kindergarten, those five and six year olds. Now I create content and spend my time helping parents and educators navigate all things elementary school. So you can follow along with me on social media by subscribing to my weekly newsletter, breaking down education news, and more tips on how to work with kids.

And of course, right here on YouTube where I post my weekly videos.

I've been out of the classroom for about 10 months now. I'm filming this in mid-April, and it's been a really interesting amount of time. I've been wanting to vlog and talk about this more, but there's been so much to process and reflect on how my life has changed, but also just a lot of new things to take in.

I thought I was gonna be one of those people that stayed in the classroom for 20, 30 years and made an entire wonderful career out of it. I was so committed to this that two years before I left the classroom in 2020, I finished my master's degree from Johns Hopkins and I have no regrets on getting that master's degree.

But I say that to show just how much I, I thought I was going to continue teaching, not realizing that I only had two more school years left in me,

so I had started this YouTube channel about a year prior and had continued uploading videos. I really loved doing it even on weeks where I was really overloaded and had a lot going on. I was so committed to keeping up with my content calendar and my schedule

So my husband encouraged me to take a chance on myself, and so now I run primary focus full-time

I do consulting work to help education businesses with their data , product research, writing, blogs, I work with parents and I work with educators to help give them tips , I make content, I run a newsletter, .

I feel this renewed feeling in myself that I really wanted to talk about in this And right now in April, I'm, I'm feeling a really stark contrast to where I was a year ago, and I wanted to spend some time talking about that.

I'm filming this on April 11th. This time last year I was teaching full-time, my kindergarten class. I knew that I was going to resign, but it was those last couple months cuz I had committed to stay through the end of the school year.

It's just kind of an intense, busy time at school, but it's also a really fun time of year. I also was at the end of planning my wedding. We were married April 9th last year. Mike and I had a marathon wedding planning session.

We got caught up in everything covid,. Just coming to the end of it and like finally getting to the wedding, but feeling so exhausted because we had been in this limbo of, should we, shouldn't we, what are we doing?

So we really were tired by then. This time last year, I, I wasn't sleeping. I'm a person that always has my appetite and I lost my appetite and was not eating that much, and I was just, Not in a great place and I was really, really tired.

And you know, when you've resigned from a job and you're still going to that job every day, that is hard too. Just dragging yourself to that, knowing you're near the finish line, but you need to continue to come forward. You need to continue to be professional. It was a lot.

And I look at my life this week, I've been thinking about this a lot and, this, this week has been completely different and it's been so.

Mike and I, celebrated our anniversary and celebrated a year of not wedding planning, which was incredible. What an incredible feeling to not be wedding planning anymore.

also was working a lot over the last week. It was the end of quarter one, which I can't believe I think about things in quarters now.

I spent about a week and a half really looking over data, planning everything for this next quarter, reflecting on things. Doing a lot of the behind the scenes things, and it's a lot to manage.

It's a lot to think about. But I felt so content and fine and not stressed doing it, and every time my mind started to get a little heated up, a little tired, I could just simply switch tasks or take a break and it would be fine.

It feels so much more balanced as I look back at last year and this year at this time.

So these are three big ways that things have changed for me, that I think might be relatable to other people too.

And the first is, I'm not stressed, I feel like I've gotten years back on my life with the way my stress levels have changed. I just had no idea. I was constantly stressed. Right. I, I felt like, I was a person that couldn't manage problems.

I felt like I was a person that stressed out easily. And what I never really realized is that if you're not stressed, you're about here. And me, when I was not stressed, was about here. And so when something happened, my cup was already running over and so I would just be here. Any small thing really would just take me over the edge and get me really stressed out and nervous.

I feel like I'm here back at a low stress level, and when things happen, I just handle them. I didn't know how stressed I was, I wish I could just go back and give myself a hug sometimes. And I wish I could tell myself when I was just getting into the workforce this is not how things are other places.

The joy to me of just shutting my laptop at five o'clock, or, this morning I went and I got my nails done at nine 30 on a Tuesday morning because I can get the appointment then. And so I'll work a little later this afternoon. It's just incredible to me to have my time and own my time and feel like my time is valued and respected.

The second thing is I feel so much freer and a lot of that is because I am off of the school calendar.

I was so attached to the time and date. I actually used to think that when you went to a doctor's office and you had to write the date down.

When you checked in and people asked what the date was, I thought they were just filling dead air. I thought it was a conversation thing people said to each other. It never dawned on me how many people are walking around and don't know what the date. teaching kindergarten, you know, we sang a song for the months of the year and for the days of the week, and we did calendar time and that was a chunk of my day was just orienting the children to the calendar and what day of the week it was.

And so it's so hard for me to even fathom that somebody wouldn't know what the day of the week was when I could tell you the dates of every Friday in February.

And now all the time I find myself not knowing the date

my New year's used to be every August, I would literally make my New Year's resolutions every August. And when January came around and people were talking about resolutions, Every year, I would just reflect on the ones I made in August and recommit to them.

It is very odd for me to now think about things in quarters. I remember I actually had to look up the dates for each quarter in 2023, and I was so embarrassed when I, when the answer I got was just a list of. Quarter one, January, February, March, it's just that simple. It doesn't have to add up to a certain amount of days. It's just like, yeah, three months at a time. It's seasonal and it's, it just makes sense.

I do make my own schedule. I do work for myself, but I think a lot of jobs that teachers would go into, even if they were still having to ask for their PTO and put in a head to miss time, I still think you would feel a lot freer.

The amount of things that I realized that I put on my husband to handle because I. It was immense, all sorts of things. I was never the one that could call the insurance company to get something handled. I was never the one that would be home when you know, the AAC person comes to fix the air conditioning.

A lot of those things leaned on him cuz it was so much easier for him to get that time off of work or come in an hour late, whatever it was For me, it wasn't just asking for the time off, it was also creating the sub plans. Even if I had to step out for a phone call or something, whoever's coming in to watch your room needs to have directions on what to do.

Now I just handle my business and keep it moving. You know, like the other day I ended up having a doctor's appointment and it ran kind of long next thing I knew, the whole day was kind of a wash. . I just worked a little bit on Saturday and I got everything done that I needed to. Things are gonna get done and it's gonna be fine. And I, I love it. It makes me happy.

And so the last thing is I'm healthier. I really hope this is a benefit that other people would be able to feel too. I'm lucky enough to be on my husband's health insurance. I've been able to take care of health needs that I had and handle those things so much more quickly.

I had this issue with my lower back and my hip causing me a lot of pain and I just went to pt, I went to physical therapy and I was able to commit to the appointments.

I had tried to do these things before. Either committed over the summer when I can make appointments more easily or just kind of let it go because it was hard to consistently show up to something without having to constantly be writing sub plans. I mean, the amount of effort it took to take time off of work was just not worth it to me.

My lower back and my hip feel great. Now I know the exercises to be able to take care of myself. And what I'm gonna pair with that is I'm actually a person who works out now working out, used to be the first thing that I canceled, and now I'm a regular in classes.

I used to always cancel my workout if something had to give, if I needed to fit something else in, it was always the workout that went.

There were a lot of days that I came home from teaching and I. Lay on the couch.

I love that I'm a person that works out now. It makes me feel really good and it keeps me really strong. It, it takes care of my body.

I think I'm pretty good about going to the doctor, but I do think a lot of teachers are not. It's just like such a hard thing to take time off of work. I essentially just went to the appointments that I really needed to go to. You know, you take care of the dentist, you go to your annual appointments. But, the extra things that I didn't need, I didn't do, and one of those was going to the optometrist to get my.

Eyes checked up and I, I wasn't a person that needed glasses. The last time I had went to an eye doctor was in college. But, You know, here we are 10 years later and what I found out is that I really needed glasses and I have, I have glasses now, and I, I wear them.

I'm not wearing them now cuz I'm a terrific example of somebody that does a good job wearing their glasses.

I guarantee you, if I was still teaching, I wouldn't have gone to the eye doctor yet. I just wouldn't have.

It was too stressful to go get the healthcare that I needed because that also meant writing all of the sub plans and trying to schedule on the easiest day for me to take off, trying to find a sub.

Just all of those things that go into place to take some time off of work.

These are three ways my life has really changed

I'm curious if you've left the classroom, what are ways that your life has improved or changed and what are some of the things that you are enjoying with your time now?

Thanks for watching Primary Focus. I hope you subscribe to this channel and if you wanna join my newsletter that comes out every Tuesday, I've got the link in the description below. My name's Natalie and I'll see you next time.