Teacher Burnout is real. It happens to the best of us and can rob us of enjoying our careers as much as we once did. It can also negatively affect the quality of our lives. Last week, on Teacher Care Now Facebook Live, we discussed burnout and how teachers can work in a culture of burnout and not recognize it. Burnout is a form of stress and exhaustion that is easy to experience. Teachers are nurturers by nature. We are very good at putting the needs of others before our physical, mental, and emotional health and wellness. However, when we reach burnout, it can be difficult to overcome without support. Most teachers do not realize when their body’s are experiencing burnout. This can lead to habitual burnout, the last stage of burnout that we learned about in our last blog post, Countdown to the Next Break. If you have not read that post, I encourage you to read it before continuing on. In this blog post, we will discuss 5 ways to reduce teacher burnout.
1. Practice Mindfulness
Last week, your homework was to find time everyday to practice being in the moment which is another phrase for mindfulness. This could be done through a 5 or 10 minute breathing exercise or meditation. You could lay on the bed before getting ready for the day and focus on how your body feels. You could also do it at work when you have 5 minutes to yourself. You can turn off the lights, and put your head down on your desk, listening to some soft music, and listening to your body. Our bodies will tell us what it needs, if we only listen.
This is important to do because we live in a culture that rewards production and when we are focused on all of the things we must do, it is easy to ignore the signs that our bodies are telling us. If we focus on the warning signs when they are subtle, we can prevent them from becoming major health problems later.
I suggest practicing mindfulness at least 3 times a day. When you first wake up in the morning, it is very important to take an inventory of how your body feels. Sometimes when we are burned out, we sleep until we must jump out of bed to avoid being late for work. Sometimes we wake up feeling exhausted. We go through the motions of getting ready for work and getting into the building, while neglecting our body’s’ cries for care. Have you ever been at work and thought to yourself, “I don’t even remember getting here today.” This is a sign that you are going through the motion and are not fully present. It is hard to be in tune with your body and at your best when your day is a blur.
Practicing mindfulness helps us to clear our minds and focus on the present. This helps us to find little present moments to enjoy and it can help improve the quality of our lives. It also helps us to take our minds off of the stress that we may have been experiencing long enough to reset our focus on what we are doing right now. Doing this will help us concentrate on our current task without the weight of previous tasks on our minds.
I suggest making some time to be in the moment a part of your bedtime routine. I suffered from insomnia. No matter what I tried, it was hard for me to fall asleep. My mind was constantly focused on the needs of work. Practicing mindfulness several times a day gives our mind and body the opportunity to relax and wind down from more stressful times of the day. It will help you when it is time to rest your mind and body for the night.
The 3rd time of the day that I suggest you practice mindfulness is before your most stressful time of the day. That may be before a particular class period, as soon as you get to work, or even after work before you go home. This will help you to deduce the cortisol levels in your brain from previous activities and reset your body before a period in your day that you must be more alert. Doing this regularly can reduce the stress that you may experience so that you have more energy throughout the entire day.
Other good times to consider practicing mindfulness are lunch time, during your planning period, and right after you get home from work. Practicing being in the moment 3 times a day is a good start. The more you do it, the more you can reduce your stress level, concentrate on the task at hand, and increase your productivity. Therefore the more you do it the better. You may not have 30 minutes to practice yoga each day, but you do have some 5 and 10 minute blocks of time that you can practice mindfulness. It will help decrease burnout and improve the quality of your day.
2. Disconnect from Work Everyday
Have you ever thought to yourself at work, “I feel like I never left this place yesterday.” This can be a problem when we do not disconnect from work each day. Everyday we must learn to take off that teacher apron. Our job should be an 8 hour activity. For most teachers it is not. As we know all too well, a teacher’s job is never done. This can make it harder to disconnect from our work. When we leave work it is important to “leave work, at work”.
I previously kept my teacher apron on 24/7. Every time I went to the store, I thought about what I needed for my students. When I watched movies with my children, they always had to tell me the main idea of the movie when it was over. My job took over my life. I had to learn to disconnect from the role of a classroom teacher. It was hard, but vital to my health and wellness.
Everyday, we must be involved in activities that will make us forget about our jobs. We do this by practicing being fully in the moment in whatever we are doing.
If you are making dinner with your family, your students should not cross your mind. If you are singing along to your favorite song, let your hair down, and get into the moment. Have fun, close your eyes, and sing and dance as if you were at that artist’s concert.
We do not get paid enough to take our work problems home. When we do not disconnect from work, we are working for free. Calculate how much money you make each week then each day. Divide that number by the actual hours a day that you work, think about work, and work from home. I calculated this one day and my pay was about $2.15 an hour. This helped me to experience a mindset shift.
Needless to say that I have learned to disconnect myself from work as soon as I head to my classroom door on my way to the parking lot. The school system can no longer afford me after hours.
3. Get 7 to 8 Hours of Sleep
Everyone knows that adequate sleep is necessary to function effectively each day, but few teachers are getting it. We see the effects of students in our classrooms who have not gotten enough sleep. Why do we think we can defy science and operate at our best without adequate sleep? We can put on an act that we are alert and energized in the classroom, but science has proven over and over again the long term effects of sleep deprivation. Some of those effects include:
Memory loss
Mood changes
Weakened immunity
Trouble thinking and concentrating
Increase risk for diabetes type 2
Increase risk of accidents
Increase risk of heart disease
Increase risk of high blood pressure
Increase risk of psychological disorders
Weight gain
Poor balance
Low sex drive
Decrease quality of life
None of these effects enhance our role in the classroom. If you are not getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night, try to start getting at least one more hour of sleep each night.
4. Improve your time management
All teachers have the same 24 hours in a day as everyone else. What we do with them can make the difference in being burnt out or being alert, energized, and excited about the day. When we manage our time well, we can free up time for more important things in our lives.
In order to do this, we must plan our week. The same way we plan lessons at work, we must plan our personal lives. That can start with deciding what we are going to wear to work for the week on Sunday or Saturday.
I wash clothes on Saturday and when I am folding and hanging them up, I am also deciding what I will wear for the upcoming week. This eliminates decision fatigue in the morning. I do not make unimportant decisions in the morning. All of my clothes are ready for the week and no energy is lost on these small, yet important tasks.
I also prepare my breakfast for the week on Sundays. This also helps with decision fatigue. Every morning, I have the same breakfast, a blueberry smoothie. I poured my two proteins in a container along with the other powders that I needed: flax seed, green powder, hemp, beet, and oats. Each morning, I take out the milk, frozen blueberries and spinach, a container of power, and mix them up together. It takes less than 5 minutes. I start off my morning with 2 servings of vegetables and 1 serving of fruit. I have been doing this for over 3 years and I love it!
When my children were smaller, they always had a hot breakfast before going to school each morning. I would make enough pancakes, waffles, breakfast burritos, etc. for the week and freeze them. All they had to do was pick what they wanted to eat and warm it up. The weekends were reserved for more time consuming breakfasts.
Time management is an important process to reduce teacher burnout. We will dedicate one blog post a month to the topic of time management.
5. Start a Gratitude Journal
Some things teaching will not be fun. There will be times that we do not like our jobs, but
dwelling on the negative aspects constantly can increase depression and make it harder to recover from burnout. A gratitude journal is a habitual way of recording things we are grateful for. Writing down 3 to 5 things each night can focus our minds on the positive aspects of our lives. I suggest writing at least one positive thing about work everyday. Doing this will help the positive areas in our day stand out.
Research in positive psychology suggest that practicing gratitude may increase:
Overall feelings of happiness
Increase dopamine in the brain
Increase motivation
Reduce depressive symptoms
We can always find things in our life to complain about. It is important to remember that there are many people in the world who have it worse and we have a lot to be thankful for.
Teachers are an asset to every community. We are valued, supported, and respected by Teacher Care Foundation Inc. and if no one has said it today, thank you for all that you do.
We want you to be at your best physically and mentally. We hope this post on reducing teacher burnout helps.
If you are in need of greater support, check out our Resources and TCN911 pages for more support.
Share with us other ways that have helped you reduce burnout.
