Different Ways to Deal with Teacher Burnout
This Isn’t Tired. It’s I Am Thinking About Leaving Teaching.
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.
Even through all of these issues and reasons, I have always stayed in the classroom.
Then, in the past school year, I became a mama.
While I am planning on returning in the fall, the idea of teacher burnout is real enough underneath normal circumstances. I will be honest: I have no idea how to handle the workload of teaching while also being a present parent. I am trying now to set aside any visual of how I think it is going to go. I don’t know. I do have a plan for my own personal return to work, but the other myriad of issues from above on top of that? Yikes. I know entering the new school year will present a host of issues as we return to full-time in-person learning for the fall for the first time in over a year.
Covid-19 procedures and protocol.
Students in need of social-emotional learning and feelings of normalcy.
Navigating building a love of reading back into my classroom where even I have felt the impossible burden of not wanting to read through school closures.
Returning to work and the actual building after working from home for a year.
This fall will be year 12. Burnout is inevitable. My fear for the profession as a whole is if we don’t prepare now for the what we know is to come anyway, we are going to be predisposed to leaving the profession. This post is a roundup of all of the posts I have published over the years related to burnout. If you need a self-pep talk, start with “Stopping Negative Teacher Self-Talk” or “10 TED Talks for the Teacher Who Needs a Pep Talk.” If you need to find your identity in the form of a hobby, start with “10 Inspiring Teacher Passion Projects for the Soul.” If you happen to need some immediate zen, I would click on “The ABC Guide to Teacher Hygge” or “English Teacher Anxiety: Using Our Own Tool’s to Quiet Panic.” There are other posts throughout the years where I stopped and talked about different ways I was trying to get myself out of the burnout zone. If you don’t know where to start, start with any one of these posts.
Because you need to know you aren’t alone in feeling tired. And the school year hasn’t even started yet.
12+ Posts on Teacher Burnout
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.