It’s no secret that teacher burnout is a common topic in the education world. In this video we are getting clear on how to deal with teacher burnout, what is teacher burnout, how to avoid it, and how hustle culture may be causing you to burnout early.
It’s no secret that teacher burnout is a common topic in the education world. In this video we are getting clear on how to deal with teacher burnout, what is teacher burnout, how to avoid it, and how hustle culture may be causing you to burnout early.
Hey there, teacher Bestie, and welcome to today's podcast. I'm your host, helena Haynes. I am a coach for new and first year teachers and I'm so excited that you are here. So you've seen it all over TikTok and all over social media about teachers feeling burned out, especially this time of year, and you're wondering what is teacher burnout and is it something that I have? Well, today we're going to be diving in about what teacher burnout is and how to deal with it. So, with that being said, let's dive in. Hey, teacher Bestie, my name is Helena and I'm the creator of the present teacher podcast. I'm a first year teacher coach and in this podcast you are going to learn everything from simple, actual classroom management, social learning and teacher wellness strategies. You know that impact you want to make in the classroom, or we're going to make it happen here, all right, so let's dive into the content.
Speaker 1:So let's first talk about the definition of teacher burnout. According to psychology today, burnout is a state of chronic stress that leads to physical and emotional exhaustion, detachment and feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment. So, essentially, burnout is where you start to feel extremely stressed out. You start to drug work, and it's something that is very common, especially around this time of year. That's why I really wanted to talk about it today. So, while we are talking about burnout, I thought it would be helpful if I shared my story about my experience with teacher burnout. So it was my first year of teaching and I had reached burnout. It was winter break and the first couple of days I slept through my break. Now, when I mean I slept, I'm not joking. I laid in bed and I slept for two or three days and I remember sitting up in my bed looking around the house and instantly started crying because I realized just how frazzled I was feeling and I had never reached a tired like this, even when I was working full time and going to school.
Speaker 1:Well, around this time, a lot of things I started to notice was I would come home and I would start to disassociate, I would start spacing out and I wouldn't, you know, interact with my family. I was just so mentally and emotionally exhausted that I just couldn't take on any other thing. I just wanted to space out and not think about anything. My feelings, my emotions, I felt like I was completely numb by the time I got home and it felt like if someone else asked me to do another thing for them. I felt like I was going to explode. I was snappy at my family. I felt sick all the time.
Speaker 1:I remember especially my first year of teaching. It felt like as soon as I started to get better, I started to feel sick again and I was extremely exhausted and, deep down, I started to feel like a failure. I felt like I had failed myself because I thought teaching was supposed to be easy because I liked it so much, I was supposed to be a natural at it, and that was far from the truth. I felt like I was never good enough. No matter how late I worked, how hard I tried, it wasn't enough. And I was always thinking of the future, of what I should be doing, what I should be prepping for, how hard I should be working, and then I would criticize myself on past decisions like, oh, I shouldn't have said it that way. So this is what burnout looked like for me.
Speaker 1:So that January I went to therapy and I realized, to therapy and going to a psychiatrist, that I was actually diagnosed with depression, anxiety and burnout. And, of course, the first thing I did is I googled it. I googled all these symptoms and there were little to no resources out there for teachers. Not a lot of teachers were talking about this. This was pre COVID, and so I didn't have a lot of people to go to other than my counselor.
Speaker 1:But I continued going to counseling and during in May, when my kindergartners graduated, I felt defeated. I felt like I have been battling this thing for months. But I'm not ready to give up on teaching. I love teaching. I don't want to give up on this. What do I have to do to change this around? Because I see the teachers around me doing it, meaning I can do it too. So I decided that you know what I'm going to do the ding thing. I'm going to figure out a way to make it work.
Speaker 1:And so I did, and I'm happy to say that since then, my life looks completely different. I feel well rested. I come home and I'm in the moment and happy to do so. I'm not feeling emotionally rustled, I'm excited and I can hold space for my family members. I'm happy to serve others now and my cup isn't over full or completely empty where I can't take one single thing or one extra thing. I'm happy to serve others and I'm not spread too thin. I haven't gotten sick in a while, typically only once or twice a year. Nothing like when I first started teaching, and I'm happy to spend time with my families and that inner voice that I talked about earlier. It's completely changed. I'm proud of myself, I know that I'm doing the best I can and I'm happy with that. Life now feels full of ease and effortless, and I want to add this note in that you're going to get there too, and we're going to talk about how to get there today.
Speaker 1:But if you didn't know that this was possible, it is, and I know this is something that not a lot of teachers are talking about. That's why I wanted to get on today to talk about that, because it's something that I've talked about on other people's podcasts, but not necessarily on my channels or my shows. So I wanted to jump on and dive deeper. So we talked about what teacher burnout is. Let's talk about the typical signs and symptoms you might see or find when you are trying to figure out if you're in teacher burnout. Now I want to add a little extra care. So I know I'm not a medical professional. This is not medical advice. I highly recommend that you do your own research and seek medical help.
Speaker 1:But here are just some general ideas of what burnout looks like and what the typical symptoms might look like. Again, everybody's body and person, every person, is different. So typical signs of burnout can include exhaustion, detachment or spacing out, disassociating, spacing out emotional dysregulation, where you feel like a roller coaster and you're snapping all the time, finding it harder to perform simple things. You're forgetting things, you are finding it hard to remember to do the littlest things like brushing your teeth or packing your lunch. Maybe you're sleeping too little. Maybe, instead of sleeping a lot, you're having the opposite and you're hardly sleeping at all. And the final one and this one's going to hit deep is love, self worth. So this is where that inner voice of yours isn't always the nicest and, if anything, you're very self critical of yourself. So those are the typical signs and symptoms of teacher burnout.
Speaker 1:So, with that being said, let's talk about how do we get there. It's not like the first day we start teaching and then the second day we're immediately burned out. It's typically a gradual thing. So let's dive into some different causes. This is not all of them, but I wanted to go over the top causes of teacher burnout.
Speaker 1:So the first reason you might reach teacher burnout is because you're not focusing on the now. This is something that my counselor helps me realize. But if you're wondering too much about the future and what's going to happen, it's going to be harder for you to be in the moment. You're going to be constantly thinking about things you need to do in the future. Oh, I need to get that done. Oh, I didn't get that done. I need to get that done for tomorrow or I'm so behind. When is it going to get easier? And you feel like you have to work harder and harder to get to the future, get to the place you want to be, where you're happy, and, on the flip side, instead of focusing too much on the future, you can actually focus too much on the past. So this could be, you know, maybe like I talked about in my story, about how you think to yourself oh man, I really messed up that lesson, or I should have said it a different way, or I should have done this differently.
Speaker 1:A picture I want to invite you to paint into your mind, to help kind of bring this forward, is I want you to imagine that you and maybe a sibling or a friend are playing with silly putty might be aging myself here, but you have silly putty and you have one end and your sibling has the other, and you're slowly walking backwards and it's stretching farther and farther and farther. Well, what happens when you take too many steps? It eventually snaps in half. The same thing happens with teacher burnout and not focusing on the now, when you are focusing on two different directions, you're stretched too thin and eventually break in half. Where you break, it breaks. So that is one reason why what causes teacher burnout?
Speaker 1:Let's talk about another reason that you may reach teacher burnout, and that is high demand of work. This is nothing new, but teaching isn't what it was before. Even when I first started teaching, it's completely changed. It's not the same when I started, but and here's the big but but that doesn't mean it's not possible. You have higher expectations of yourself. You there's, you know, and there's higher expectations on teachers right now. Your expected to do more now than ever, but there's still a way to manage all that and to get things done ahead of time so you're not drowning and constantly chasing these long to do lists.
Speaker 1:This reminds me of one of my leaving work on time clients. She was a new teacher in her first five years and she was working a ton. She was working on the weekend, she was the first card there, oftentimes one of the last cars to leave. And last year she reached the major burnout. She was exhausted. She didn't know she could continue. She loved teaching but everything else was getting to be too much and she wasn't sure if she could teach another year. But I'm happy to say this year it's completely changed. She's loving life and it all comes down into the systems that you incorporate into the classroom.
Speaker 1:I'll talk more about this later, but I want to remind you that it is possible. If it's possible for her, it's possible for you. That reminds me of another client of mine inside of my program Leaving Work on Time. She was a veteran teacher. She was an experienced teacher over 10 years of teaching and she really enjoyed teaching. But she was still working a ton and she didn't have those boundaries in place and she had actually a side business that she was trying to get up off the ground but she couldn't find the time to balance both. But I'm happy to say now she never takes work home teaching work home on the weekends. Instead, she's out there and can I just say she is killing it with her business and she loves teaching. She said the last year has been one of the easiest and most fulfilling years of her life and if it's possible for her, it's possible for you too.
Speaker 1:So the second reason why you might reach burnout is the higher demand on work. It's not that you can't get it done, it's just now. We need to evolve with the amount of work we're expected to do and set up, evolve our systems to accommodate that. And again, I'll talk more about that later. But the third reason why you might be reaching teacher burnout is being in a state of dysregulation or stress for long amounts of time. So when you're stressed out for long periods of time, it chemically changes the way your brain works. You are stuck in this flight or fight mode and it takes a while and it feels like you're just surviving and it takes a while to unlearn what you are doing in the meantime to survive. So that is the third reason why you might reach teacher burnout. So, with all of that being said, just as a recap, we talked about what the symptoms might look like in your life. We talked about what might cause you to get there.
Speaker 1:The third thing we're gonna talk about is what to do if you have it. You might think to yourself okay, this sounds a lot like something I might be dealing with. How do I get out of this? So a couple of things to answer that question. The first thing is I always suggest seeking help. I am not a medical professional, as I said before, but one of the best things I did in my journey is I went to counseling and I'm not afraid to admit that. I know there is such a big stigma these days around mental health and I wanna break that mold by being transparent about my journey and my mental health journey. So I feel really called to talk about this. So hopefully this aligns with you and a message you need to hear right now.
Speaker 1:But Getting help isn't selfish. The longest time I didn't want to get help, when I first started teaching, when I felt all the symptoms because I was ashamed. I was ashamed, I was embarrassed, I wondered what others would think of me and I felt like I was wasting time on myself, that I was being selfish and I did not have the best inner voice. I wasn't the kindest to myself internally and now I'm my biggest cheerleader. I get to cheer myself on and that little voice inside gets to say I'm proud of you, you're doing a great job. It's okay to take a break. You did your best today.
Speaker 1:So I know I'm not society tangent, but I want to invite you to hold this reminder in your heart that it's okay to get help and it's not selfish to do so. So the first thing I suggest to do if you feel like you've reached teacher burnout, is to first get help. The second thing I want to invite you, with your permission to do, is to be wildly aware, aware of your thoughts that you're having Now, when you're going, throughout your day. I want you to just listen to that inner voice of yours and notice those times when you're thinking, having a negative thought like this is going to be hard, or teaching always has to be harder that behavior I can never. I can never be good enough to handle that. So when you hear these thoughts, I don't want you to face them with criticism. I want to invite you to face them with curiosity. So instead of thinking to yourself oh man, I can't believe I had that thought. That's so silly. Instead I want to invite you to be curious.
Speaker 1:So if you're curious about your mindset, you get one step closer to figuring out how to get closer to that teacher. You know deep down that you are wanting to be, that you are capable of being. I like to think of it as the game of clue Again, totally might be aging myself. So when you get closer, when you find a clue, or when you figure out one of those negative mindset or those negative inner voice, you get one step closer to figuring out how to be your most awesome self, and that's a lot like clue. So when you recognize that you're having a thought, a limiting thought that's, you know I can't, or that's not possible, or this is so hard, something like that I want to invite you, with your permission, to think yourself for bringing yourself that much closer to being that person you want to be, to have that awareness, to recognize that thought, because once you figure out what limiting beliefs you have, you can then change them and flip them and work on them to then become and live that happy life at the end that you know you're capable of having. So, as a recap, the two ways so far to things you should do if you're reaching teacher burnout is first to have get help and the second thing is to be wildly aware.
Speaker 1:The third step that I want to invite you to do is mindfulness. So mindfulness and is to be in the moment, and this is the whole goal or the whole purpose of why I created the present teacher. When I first created the present teacher, it was more for me because I had such a hard time with my diagnosis of anxiety and depression, of being in the future and being in the past or not being in the moment. And so the present teacher mindfulness, it's being in the moment. Instead of sitting here talking to you and thinking about what I'm making for dinner, I'm just here. Instead of eating my lunch, grading papers and thinking about that soon, I'm just eating my lunch.
Speaker 1:So it's easy to get in the future and past, especially if you have a diagnosis, but when you're in the moment, it is easier for you to focus on gratitude, and what you focus on you bring more of. So if you think to yourself all the time, life is hard. If you notice yourself thinking that internal thought, with curiosity, life is hard, this has to be hard, this is difficult. I can't do this that you are setting yourself up to have more hard things come your way. Instead, I want to invite you to get excited, to be excited and life gets to be easy. So when you're in the moment, you can be thankful and think to yourself as you're teaching, you're just teaching, and you get to look around at your kids and think, man teaching gets to be fun. Instead of, you know, working on your prep and doing five things at once, maybe you just focus on lesson planning today and you think man teaching gets to be fun. Just be effortless. Discover more ways to create that in your mind and in the moment and you're going to bring that more into your life.
Speaker 1:So here's how you can implement this. When you eat your lunch, just eat your lunch and think to yourself thank you, thank you that I get to eat my lunch in silence, thank you for having a smell, thank you that I get 10 minutes or five minutes to yourself. When you go to the gym or take a walk, just be there and thank yourself for having this opportunity and thank the world for providing this opportunity for you to just be. Thank yourself for hiding in your room for silence in your lunch, like I do, and just be in the moment and thank yourself and thank the universe for that opportunity. So that is another way to get out of teacher burnout.
Speaker 1:And the final way to get out of teacher burnout is something I like to call take five. Now, I didn't realize how powerful this method was, or the strategy was, until I shared it with one of my teacher friends here online and she shared it with her, her family, online, and it was amazing to watch it change her life, and I've gotten messages from that community on how they've implemented it and it's completely changed theirs too. But essentially, what it is is you're going to take five minutes to yourself every day. That's it five minutes a day. So think of something that you like to do. This could be listening to music. It could be creating a podcast, like I am, or a YouTube video. It could be reading your favorite book.
Speaker 1:But before you do this, ask yourself every day, take some time and ask yourself, or dare I say, several times a day, do a body scan and energy scan and ask where am I at from a scale of one to 10. One being the world is on fire. A 10 being the world is amazing and I love life. So take some time to ask yourself that and then, once you have your number, so let's say, today I'm an eight or a nine. Ask yourself, okay, what do I need to do to be at a 10? Okay, ask yourself, what do I need to do to go up a level?
Speaker 1:Now here's the part that many people miss. Ask yourself what you need to do and then do it. I know, but oh, hear me out. So imagine going to a friend who's upset and you ask them what can I do to help you? They tell you what they need help with or something you can do to help them, and now imagine just sitting there and staring at them and not doing it. Well, the same goes for when you check in with yourself and you show up for yourself, and then you don't follow through. Be the friend to yourself that you would wanna be to others. So throughout your day, at least once a day, you can even set alarm on your phone that says take five. But ask yourself where am I at right now? What can I do to go up a level? It could be something like going for a quick five minute walk on your prep or on your lunch or after work, listening to music, listening to your favorite podcast, moving, drinking extra water, taking, you know, five minutes to just sit in silence, whatever it is. Ask yourself what you need to do and do it. Show up for yourself, because when you are showing up for yourself, you are then able to follow through and show up for others that much more. So take the five minutes, it's gonna help you throughout your day, all right.
Speaker 1:So the final note I have on Teacher Burnout is about hustle culture. You don't need to hustle to be a good teacher. So imagine this you are walking into your classroom in the morning, you open your door, your coffee, your favorite coffee, is in your hand and you smile because you look across your classroom and everything is perfectly set up for this school day. You set your coffee down at your teacher desk and you look down at your to-do list and it's get to-do list of three things that you get to do today. That's it. Everything else is done.
Speaker 1:You show up in the morning, or kids show up, and you are excited, you're energetic and you are grateful and you get to be in the moment and teach your kids and be there and you get to notice those powerful moments, those moments that your kids make connections and the light bulb moments start going off and, at the end of the day, your classroom is clean, your items are set up for the next day, you're not staying late it's 3.15 or 3.30, right at contract time and you leave your teacher bag at your desk because you don't need to bring it with you. In fact, you haven't had two for weeks and you smile to yourself and you're just full of gratitude because you did that. You got to teach an amazing day and you feel like you are stepping into that teacher that you know you are a capable being, that inner teacher inside you, the reason you've started this whole journey, and you quietly think to yourself I'm proud of you, you did a good job today and you think I'm so grateful that this gets to be my life and teaching is way easier than I thought now that I know the how. So you think to yourself teaching gets to be fun, because it does. Teaching gets to be fun, teaching gets to be easy and teaching gets to be amazingly powerful. And you are capable of that without reaching overwhelm, without hustling, and just to prove it to you, I mean, I have, and so many of my clients have completely changed their teaching career because they have decided I'm ready. I'm ready to figure out how to make this happen. I'm ready to be that teacher. I'm ready to live a life where I love it. I love teaching. I stay in this profession if I want to, if I get to show up, I get to be that inner teacher. I am capable of being.
Speaker 1:So if you want to dive in deeper into the how and you are ready for this, if this is a full body yes, heck yes I wanna invite you to check out a couple of things. So the first thing I want to invite you to do is check out our Ready Set Prep Challenge. In this challenge, I'll walk you through everything you need to do on your prep to set your day up for success. So you can show up in the moment, so you can have those moments where you're just teaching with ease. You don't have a mile long to do list. You get to teach without the overwhelm, without the hustle. So that's the first thing I wanna invite you to check out. And at the end of that challenge, if you feel like, yes, this is exactly what I've been looking for, I wanna keep learning, I want to dive deeper, at the end of that challenge, I will invite you to join.
Speaker 1:If it feels right for you to join us inside Leaving Work on Time, just like the two other wonderful clients I mentioned earlier and went through that program. In this program I show you how to leave work on time, leave work at work and to live your life outside of teaching with ease, without guilt, just a full body. Yes, this is living. This is why I'm here. And the other resource I wanna invite you to check out is the classroom management challenge. So inside this challenge, I show you how to manage the most common disruptive behaviors, like talking in class, not following directions, and how to get clear on your teaching style and how to incorporate it in the classroom so you can become a master or a pro at managing your classroom. And at the end of that challenge, if you feel like, yes, I wanna dive deeper into these systems classroom management is just one of six systems that I teach and if you wanna learn about the other systems and how to become a pro at that, inside the present teacher circle I show you, step by step, how to master all those systems so they are running on autopilot. All right.
Speaker 1:So that wraps up our episode on teacher burnout and I want to end this episode with some gratitude. Thank you for allowing me to be part of your journey. I am so grateful that you took time out of your day to come join me, to come listen, to come, hang out, and I hope you gain something powerful from today, and I would really love it if you could let me know what you thought of today's episode and then, as always, remember that we are stronger together and I will see you next time, teacher Bestie. Bye, thank you so much for joining me on today's episode. With all the love in the world, helena AKA the present teacher, see you next time, teacher Bestie.