Using Physical Wellness Strategies to Battle Teacher Burnout

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.