With this project, we wanted to bring a solution, a relief to our fellow teachers, who are teaching children in their classes as well as their own children at home. And because we know that the same situation does not apply only to the Czech Republic but to the whole Europe, we prepared the BALANCE THE DISTANCE project. We wanted to bring practical examples of good practice from foreign countries and work together with our partners on a guide for teachers so that teachers will know what is the best way to balance their work and personal life and especially what particular tools can help them to balance the work and personal life.
We applied for this project because we can see that our colleagues-teachers are getting more and more tired throughout the pandemic and that the whole situation has a bad impact on their mental health. In general, it is possible to see more and more teachers who are suffering from any mental health issue, from burnout to depression. Primary school teachers have to teach from home, and in case they have their own small children they have to learn with them as well. This means that teachers can hardly find the balance and divide the personal and work time. And this leads to mental health issues, burnout or it can lead to the point when teachers leave their profession. However, this does not apply to the teachersparents only, but to all teachers in general. So we collect experience from the foreign schools and distribute them among teachers in order to help them out with the right functioning example to provide first aid to teachers who find themselves in a difficult situation. During the implementaion of the project the COVID19 pandemic was fading and everything started to return to its original state, so we decided to focus more on work-life balance itself, because this topic is and always will be extremely important.