02. Teacher burnout is a BIG problem

If you started in order, and read my first entry, then you know that I have been very conflicted about leaving the teaching profession. In fact, my current plan is to rack up a bunch of debt in student loans and then decide whether or not I really want to leave my beloved school. In 2025 when I am finished with schooling, I will have been at that school for a quarter of a century! I always thought I would graduate from there and move into retirement. ... and maybe I still will. 

But I've been burning out for the last three years. And pre-pandemic I was a believer that if you can't be a good teacher (there are only some great teachers!), then you should get out. But I've been mediocre the past two years and when I step back and look at why, it has so much to do with the influence of the pandemic on me. There is only so many forms of stress a body can take before she just can't do well. 

If I step back for a moment, I am so proud of all the work I've done in the past three years. I have really hung in there and been there for my students. I have continued to do some great teaching around writing and other ELA skills (a student whose first language wasn't English changed me--I no longer say language arts, nor would I say I teach English--which I understood before that point because when I told a cab driver in Montreal that I was studying English at university, he said, "But you speak it just fine.") ELA stands for English language arts. And if you didn't read my first blog entry, please know that I have no desire to use proper grammar, or any other silly ELA 20th century style proper usage. I am using all those skills in grad school, and that's plenty for me!  Also, I'd like you to either kythe with me (anyone? Madeline L'Engle?) and join my brain in its grand journey of too many thoughts in any given moment, or just get a big laugh out of the meander you can't quite follow. Just, please don't judge. I'm trying something here.

My point at the beginning of the last paragraph was that I have done a lot of good for students both academically and certainly socially. I was told in a note at graduation from a parent that I was part of saving a life I didn't even realize needed saving. I know that in our graduating class last year and this year there were far far too many students who contemplated and attempted suicide in the last few years. Heartbreaking. Take a moment to put one or two hands out over your heart as you read this. Send out love to the universe, to all the broken hearts and souls, and now rub your hands together rigorously for a moment or two and then put the warmth of your hands back over your heart for some regeneration. I am sending out love to you and everyone else as I read this. In the end, I think it can only be love that will save us.

Oh, and so now I'm ready to write blog entry no. 3  That one will be a school assignment, so you will get to see the formal side of my thoughts about teacher burnout. [note: I changed the way I did that assignment, which was to write a letter to your representatives about an initiative you cared about]

More love. More deep breaths. I'm wishing you good sleep, eats, walks, talks, and hugs. Take care of yourself.