Anxiety and stress have always gone hand and hand. On the blog, I have written about the natural anxiety and worry that comes with being a classroom teacher for years. Many of my posts mention waking up in the middle of the night thinking about lesson plans, feeling like I can’t get ahead of my to-do list, or wondering how to fit it all in to achieve the ever-elusive “work-life balance.” Then, I became a mama, and a newer level of worry took over. Anxiety is a natural part of life. Tapping into the fight or flight response, anxiety is one of the most natural things that someone can feel. However, when unchecked, it can also make life more difficult. Some people seem to worry more and some less. Some people cope better with stress and worry than others. No matter where you are on the spectrum of anxiety, a notebook or journal can be a useful tool to calm a busy mind. This post includes a video overview of 5 different strategies for responding to anxiety including grounding, timed release, squared release, making a creative music playlist, and growing your own thought garden. You can also go a bit slower and look at the description of the exercises in detail.

In the midst of summer break, I wanted to take some time to discuss the number of teachers who are leaving the profession as a whole. There is a mass exodus of teachers who are retiring early or leaving positions due to the work load, the toll of the past school year, and the general atmosphere that is education in the current social and political state. It is also now the norm when I run into people I haven’t seen in awhile to ask me: “Are you even returning in the fall?” The assumption is I would run from the experiences of the past 2020-2021 school year. The prediction is that I would leave teaching, and if I said that I wouldn’t be returning in the fall, I would be met with an all-knowing look of “i get it.” I acknowledge that the teaching and education job culture and climate has reached a critical mass of unrealistic expectations that are demeaning and unhealthy. However, this isn’t the first time many of us have contemplated leaving the field of education.

The idea of leaving teaching is one that I have spoken extensively about on the blog for many years. The first post sparked many of the other posts that really got my blog going back in 2017. I spoke about the paper load and the time spent outside of the classroom on teaching-related tasks. The second main one addresses why I stayed teaching for over 10 years (at the time of the post publishing) and continued to come back each year. I said in that post: “I hate the amount of paper and workload we have, the criticism that teachers face, the growing pressure to “fix” the achievement gap, standardized testing, stress and stress eating, the absurdity of sub plans, and the growing anxiety we feel related to work.” This was before the pandemic happened and virtual learning took place.

As a teacher, it is easy to find yourself in a state of being pretty negative at school. Not necessarily with the students, but with other teachers and staff in the building. The cycle of negative talk-particularly negative teacher self-talk- is one that can consume school buildings in various spots, in entire hallways or sections, and in entire buildings. It manifests into people not wanting to come to work. Think about it like the culture and climate of your brain. The thoughts that we are thinking when we wake up, the ideas that cross our minds throughout the day while we are making millions of decisions, and the contemplations that we feel driving home are all indicators of who we are as people and where we are at in terms of self-care and belief about our work. Simply, we are our thoughts. This post is all about the connection our thoughts have to our actions and bodies. If we can talk about negative teacher self-talk in a way that helps combat fatigue and negativity in the workplace, we have a shot at changing our point of view. First, recognize the signs of negative teacher self-talk in yourself and in others:

1. Significantly reduced patience with classroom management (Quick to snap)

2. Increased levels of stress and anxiety

3. Trouble sleeping or waking up with a 3 am a to-do list

4. Taking work home to your significant other or family in a counter-productive way or bottling up completely about the issues at work to appear like you are fine

5. Lack of creativity or energy in lesson planning or delivery

6. Not wanting to get up to go to work for repeated days in a row

I’m not sure I knew that summer burnout existed before this year. There are a ton of possible reasons as to why I am feeling this way. Perhaps, it is the residual burnout from spring online learning, the haphazard end to the school year, or now the impending question of what is to come of the fall. Maybe it is all of the above. Maybe it is more. As I wake up each day to uncertain conversations about what should take place versus what needs to take place and nobody seems to be in agreement with anybody else, I find myself doing a lot of listening and observing. I also find myself wondering how to plan ahead for what I know will be a hard school year this fall.

But, I am certain that this summer burnout is something that I know other teachers are dealing with as well. I see the posts from others each day. I carry many of the conversations with me as I speak with other families, parents, and teachers about what they think of the fall. Many are afraid. Many are overwhelmed. Many are just confused. Summertime is normally the teacher’s time to thrive. Even in the past if I chose to teach summer school, I would be writing every day. I would be reading tons of books, and I would be doing a lot of planning in the form of dreaming for the fall. I normally have a “summer stack” of books that I happily go through and think big in terms of changing how I do business or trying to be a better teacher.

But, I am tired. More than tired.

The title of this post isn’t serious. I know you are tired. If you are teaching, you perhaps have hit a wall called the “November Blues.” These are the feelings you get waiting on Thanksgiving Break. Everything is starting to settle down. For me, the first round of testing is done, routines are established, the first round of parent-teacher conferences are over, and the second set of grades will be due soon. The expectation of who we are in my classroom is going strong. There is still work to do in terms of lifting literacy, inspiring new thoughts, and building capacity for compassion, but we will get there. While November is when everything starts feeling stable, it is also the first time in the year when I often suffer from “paralysis of the mind” or teacher burnout. 

This post outlines the emergency response to helping you calm your teacher brain. This is what worked for me in a big moment like this example, and also in small moments when I feel like everything is piling up. Both types of moments can call for a teacher to scream, “TIME OUT,” and take a moment to breathe. This isn’t the first time I have written about teacher stress, but I wanted to share what worked for me when I was having a particularly difficult time dealing with the amount of stress.

When I first started working on this post, I looked up synonyms for anxiety. Not that I needed a definition, I just was curious what would pop-up on the page. The word that stuck out to me the most was mistrust. As English Teachers and teachers in general, we mistrust ourselves based on our profession workload because it is a.) overwhelming and b.) important work. We come to grasp that we can never achieve perfection, and for many perfectionists, this means in our minds we think we are settling. Teacher anxiety does not apply to just English Teachers alone, but the volume of paper and grading that is specific to the teaching of English creates an interesting dynamic where we often feel behind, tired, and downright depressed. I am not putting on the table that other subjects do not have grading issues, but there is a special place in my soul that dies a little when I take 76 MLA research paper rough drafts home to grade.