By Michael Rosenberg, Teacher, Stratford School There are few professions outside of teaching that can empathize with the struggle of being an educator. As a teacher, our days in the classroom can be a physical and mental roller coaster. Then at day’s end, stacks of papers await our pen and stickers, and Bay Area traffic awaits our draining commute home. Facing these issues, the recent addition of a child, and a move far from my campus have increased my need to find balance. However, wrestling with a reasonable balance of work and personal life has been a struggle for most of my career. Knowing that I had to restructure my life to fit my new struggles, I decided to reevaluate my work and personal life balance. I began this process by first mapping my day which included commute time to and from work, prep-time, and hours spent at home. By experimenting with my commute to work, I found that leaving fifteen minutes earlier allowed me to avoid most of the traffic. This al