The idea of passion projects is not new. However, the idea of the passion project being the medicine we need during tough or uncertain times is an idea that becomes relevant and clearer as we move forward year after year. I was having a conversation with teacher friend, and we talked about the importance of having ideas that “set our brains on fire.” In other terms, having hobbies, goals, and dreams that we think about with as much interest, happiness, and concentration as possible. These are the ideas that get you up at 4 in the morning…in a good way. As teachers, the idea of learning and discovering new things is one of the reasons why we teach. We like to see the lightbulb moments in our students. The ah-has. The moments of change that we find meaningful. But, we often forget that learning is something that drives the inner motor of the teacher, too. 

This post outlines 10 ways we can find our own light.

It is time we find what feeds us especially right now with all of the school closures.

And even more so, after the closures. Because something that anchors me through all of this is the idea that we will come out of this somehow changed for the better. Passion projects are activities that we find meaningful because they feed into two parts that are essential to our teaching: Mindfulness and productivity. Mindfulness in a way that feeds our sense of calm, sense of purpose, and who we are and want to be. Productivity in which teachers need something that pushes them to not just be busy, but busy with intention. We are natural multi-taskers. We are magicians with time because we make the impossible happen each and every day in our classrooms.

And now it seems like the magic may be gone for a while.

I have been talking to my teacher friends about something that naturally occurs each school year: Each of us will end up with at least one tougher class than the rest of the classes. This might be an advanced class that is really concerned about grades, a class that struggles with engagement or behavior, or a class that seems to constantly be at odds with each other. We have all seen the teacher memes or posts that highlight many of these ideas:

Your most challenging student will never be absent.

Dear teacher, I talk to everyone. Moving my seat will not help.

When a student asks to go to the restroom, just seconds after their best friend.

Welcome to teaching! When salaries are low, and everything is your fault.

When you find out that your worst-behaved student…has 3 younger siblings.

There’s no tired like teacher tired.

The sayings are true. We are tired. We are constantly making minute-by-minute decisions, and we are genuinely exhausted. Instead of dreading a class, I would like to offer some ways to turn that class into one that you love again. Nobody wants to be miserable. So, if some systems are put into place for both the teachers and the students, then the parameters are setup to safeguard your happiness as the leader of the classroom. You are no longer controlling chaos, but perhaps enjoying being in front of 30+ middle schoolers (at least in my position) again. This post offers 25+ tips that are designed to revise and edit classroom systems, reframe negative thinking, and insert more love and joy into your classroom for each and every hour. Take what you need. If you are struggling with a particular hour in your day, maybe you try one or two of these tomorrow or next week.

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 am always on a mission to find more comfort and joy in life. Naturally, I became more curious about how I could infuse my classroom and the act of teaching with more comfort and cozy as well. I stumbled upon the word “hygge” on Pinterest after posting a few photos of rainy days, coffee cups, and twinkle lights as backgrounds. I love all things cozy, but the idea of taking this idea of coziness and comfort into the classroom didn’t hit until I started to read more and post more about hygge. I really don’t envision my classroom at school being filled with candles and everyone sipping peppermint tea like we are at a cafe, but I do see how some of the mantras from the practice of hygge can transfer over into the classroom and create an atmosphere of happiness. I think it is also important to consider the importance of comfort and cozy in the role of online learning. While I know many of us can’t makeover entire corners of our homes and online learning classrooms, some of the ideas in this post can apply to make ourselves feel a little more at ease while teaching from home. Hygge is about comfort. I am hoping that some of the ideas with hygge in this post lead to more happiness in my classroom and home, and therefore, lead to better wellness for me and my students.

According to The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living (The Happiness Institute Series) by Meik Wiking, “The word hygge originates from a Norwegian word meaning “well-being.” For almost five hundred years, Denmark and Norway were one kingdom, until Denmark lost Norway in 1814. Hygge appeared in written Danish for the first time in the early 1800s, and the link between hygge and well-being or happiness may be no coincidence” (ix). Let’s start with how you pronounce hygge. To sound it out, you would say “hue-guh.” Like the hues of the sun and guh rhyming with duh. Hygge is “about an atmosphere and experience, rather than about things” (vi). In short, hygge creates an atmosphere of calm and comfort in everyday things and experiences we all identify with naturally, and then these feelings create a sense of happiness.

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 move to online and distance learning has been a rollercoaster ride of emotions, feelings, and actions. I have simultaneously felt like I am not doing enough, and then in another moment, I am trying to tackle all of the things to make myself feel better, more productive. I am asking myself,

“Are you reading enough?”

“Are you writing enough?”

“Are you thinking enough about what matters? The work that has to be done when we go back?”

“Are you sleeping?”

All of these are check-ins with normal routines and behavior. However, we aren’t in a normal routine or behavior mode. This is something different. I have noticed that many of my first reactions to emails, news feeds, blog posts, and videos about distance learning come with “knee-jerk” reactions that make me feel well,...like a jerk. I started last week working purposefully to get myself out of negative reactions immediately, and then focus on the positive aspects of all situations.

During the course of the past month, I have watched other teachers and people in education take on distance learning with full force. What teachers are doing is powerful. The expectations and protocols to move online and the variances from district-to-district are also stifling. Some are being asked to do too much, other teachers not as much. The moral compass of all of this begs the question, what is right in all of this? My answer would be whatever is best for children and creates a positive response in both you and your online classroom. This blog post outlines how to use your journal to shift to positivity, and it uses many negative reactions as writing prompts to get you thinking about your own mindset.

Sometimes we need to make our own positivity.

The TED Talk tagline of “ideas worth spreading” is a powerful message about sharing the power of the human voice to transform the everyday experience. Whether it is Luvvie Ajayi urging us to step outside of our comfort zone or Shonda Rhimes telling us to slow down and enjoy the power of play, we learn from shared human experience. A TED Talk is a teacher. A voice that can reach out and inspire others to feel something different or think about something in a new way. Teachers are living TED Talks each day. However, the work of being a living TED Talk in education can be exhausting. The work we do is heavily reliant on our communities and each other when we feel like we are tired, discouraged, or on the edge of burnout. This post is a collection of 10 TED talks that are compiled for the purpose of inspiration to the classroom teacher or person in education who needs to find a small nugget of truth to feel rejuvenated and refreshed. The small “ah-has” are where we find the strength to continue to find meaning inside and outside of our classrooms.

I should warn you now that the underlying theme of this post is that teaching is tough, and while we all know this we have to keep encouraging each other to thwart off burnout and exhaustion. My goal is to always find ways and different approaches to making this fight easier year after year. It is interesting to me that I will research teacher books, listen to podcasts, study teacher websites, go to conferences, and then realize that sometimes the answer is where I’ve known it has been all along. It’s been with me. Self-care has always sounded corny to me. But, if you break self-care down into you must literally take care of your own self to flourish. Then, self-care does not seem unreasonable or indulgent. Self-care sounds like a buzzword, but it is a necessity in all aspects in order to keep teaching in classrooms year after year.

Teachers must build themselves physically, intellectually, emotionally, and mentally to continue to go back into their classrooms each day. Many of the reasons in this post have become my “whys” for when I step onto my yoga mat or push myself in a workout for 10 more minutes. I originally posted this almost two years ago in January 2018 when the opportune time to realize that we needed to make “resolutions” or changes was upon each of us again. I started rethinking exercise in October of this school year. While I started a draft of this post, and I have intentionally not wanted to revise and redraft because of the utter fear of holding myself accountable. Also, a certain aspect of imposter syndrome sets in. I feel like I have little expertise in trying to get “in shape” or follow any really fitness regimen. However, I have tons of experience in burnout and feeling like I can’t do another lesson plan. I have always been a teacher and a student of learning, but we all have things that we aren’t naturally good at-and being a student at those things is what matters.

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.

The conversation about teachers leaving the field of education is a real one. We hear the statistics early on: Teachers leave within the first five years of their career, new teachers struggle with anxiety and depression, the field of education is shrinking as a whole, and so on. The problem is all teachers feel all of these things at every point of their career. Teaching is hard. All the time. If it were easy, everyone would do it and attempt to do it well. But, we exist among those that are self-labeled as crazy for doing what we love to do. We are all going to have mornings where we don’t feel like going, where we drag ourselves to the doorstep of our buildings just to hold on to our coffee cups tighter. But the bottom line is, there are so many good things about this job that make a teacher want to keep teaching. And the truth is that the silent urge to constantly quit all the time is a friendly reminder we are doing the hard work. I often will scroll Indeed just to see what is out there or to feel like I have professional options. However, I have been faced twice with the option to leave, and I cannot do it.

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.

I love and hate the self-help book section. It is packed full of gems like Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, and many others that make the wheels in my teacher-entrepreneur brain go crazy. However, I also have visions of myself as the teacher that is seen staring at the self-help book section in a bookstore with a crazed look in her eye, teacher bag thrown over their shoulder, dark bags under each eye, that just seems in need of...help. How many of us can relate to this image as we struggle with the teaching profession as a whole and the day-ins and day-outs of being a teacher? Enter in why I picked up this cute little blue book by Penquin press. I was tired, and it seemingly seemed to address a question I ask myself all the time:

Is teaching my purpose in life?