I was a few years into my teaching career when found myself in a line outside of thick conference doors waiting to get into a session entitled, On the Verge of Burnout? I was curious, who were all these people, burning out? Teaching was great!

Finally, after waiting a few minutes, I touched the shoulder of the young woman in front of me and asked if she knew what the hold-up was, why weren’t they opening the doors? She replied that indeed they had opened the doors and this line was the overflow for standing room.  Overflow? I should have seen the writing on the wall then—things were not looking good for teachers’ mental health. That was over a decade ago and it seems things have only gotten worse.

Fast forward fifteen years in my teaching career. Honestly, we are barely a month in and I feel the weight of an entire school year upon my shoulders. There is just too much; too much to teach, too much to manage, to juggle, to collect data on, to make fit. I am feeling the burn of being a candle lit at both ends.

I know I am not the only one. A Quality of Worklife survey was conducted by the American Federation of Teachers in conjunction with the Badass Teachers Association. Over 30,000 teachers took this survey and the results are staggering in many regards. Perhaps most striking was the finding that 89% of respondents were enthusiastic about their profession at the beginning of their career, while only 15% remained enthusiastic at their current point in their career. Where is our enthusiasm going and what can we do about it?

I have been thinking a lot about this question as of late. I began my teaching career as a single mother with a newborn baby. Within a few short years, I was undertaking my Masters and moving across the state to teach in a new school. And yet, I was still madly in love with teaching, even with all of that personal stress going on. What was so different then as compared to now?

After reading the rest of the survey, I think I have an idea. Early in my teaching days I had held my baby in my arms and promised her that I would leave school at school and be there for her 100% of all the hours I was not at school. I was her only parent and I was not going to short change her. I felt so strongly about this that I was able to do just it absolutely guilt free.  There was no “school” out of school. 

Now? I am no longer a single parent and I have more children, but they are older and more self-sufficient. Teaching has changed too. So much intentionality and focus must go into each lesson to meet state standards. There feels like there is so much more on the line beyond academics as well. We are tasked with making a difference in our students’ lives. I have felt the increasing weight of all this responsibility and I am bringing my work home with me every day. I constantly have school on my mind and am in a flurry of motion. What should I do about so-and-so? How should I open tomorrow’s lesson?  What should I do about this kid? How can I help that kid? 

They say teaching is not a job, it is a lifestyle. I am beginning to see where many teachers (including me) need to take a step back and reevaluate our lifestyle choices. 

There is a lot of movement in our state surrounding Social-Emotional Learning for our students. In the months to come, I will be delving deeply into these changes and their impacts in our schools and our classrooms. It is wonderful to see our state be so progressive on this front. But I am also beginning to see and feel the imperative need for teachers to manage their own inner worlds through strong self-care in order to meet the needs of our students. Google “teacher self-care” and you will come up with hundreds of ideas on how to take care of yourself. Great ideas for sure! It is a wise person who starts where you can make a difference and moves forward from there. 

Yet, self-care can only get us so far. We need to address the real root of what is at play; lack of time to do our jobs while at our jobs.

That is why, beyond these measures, it would be helpful if our state were to do more to address the work environment for teachers in regards of time in support of teachers’ social and emotional health. One place the state could begin would be to allocate more funding for prep time in a teacher’s day. Currently, state law holds a teacher is to have at least one prep period a day. For many, this is 45 minutes of uninterrupted time to grade papers, call parents, plan lessons, reflect on previous lessons, update classroom websites, complete paperwork, attend PLCs, and so on. In other words, complete a workday’s worth of additional work at breakneck speed and then be ready to hit the ground running again when kids come back in the room. 

Not so great for a teacher’s mental health and impossible to achieve. Hence, the workloads that find themselves coming home with us; workloads that are not sustainable. It is not fair to make impossible demands on people simply because they are the kind of people who would go above and beyond to do what is right in serving others. 

I am vowing to take a sabbatical from bringing my work home this year. I will let you know how it goes. For you see, teaching may be a lifestyle, but it has to be a lifestyle worth living.