I’m worried about our teachers.
This is the third consecutive school year that teachers’ work has been impacted by the pandemic. They’ve not only had to pivot continually, but they’ve also supported their students through a season of collective trauma that has made learning close to impossible.
Truly, the pandemic has taken its toll on all of us, in more ways than we can even identify yet. (Healthcare workers, I see you. And small business owners, first responders, ministry leaders, frontline workers, and so many others–your work has required more than anyone knows these past couple years.)
But I’m especially worried about our teachers.
A friend told me what one teacher said recently that echoes what I’ve heard so many educators express this fall: “I’m May-tired, and it’s only November.” It’s no wonder, when I think about all the past year-and-a-half has required of them:
Teachers have been cheerleaders, technology wizards, family therapists, problem-solvers, mental health advocates, creative thinkers, and leaders in what it means to pivot on a dime.
They’ve absorbed the frustration and anxiety we’ve all experienced, often receiving the brunt of kids’ big emotions in the form of more extreme, even physically disruptive, behaviors. They’ve responded with grace and stability and kindness, even when they had every right to throw a temper tantrum out of their own overwhelm.
They’ve paved a way for families to navigate school years where none of the rules applied anymore and everything felt upside down and messy and confusing. They’ve held our hands and told us we can do hard things, even when we wanted to quit.
They’ve modeled courage, charging forward no matter how much trepidation or overwhelm or exhaustion they’ve felt inside.
Through it all, somehow our teachers have found a way to bring joy and fun and love to their students every. single. day.
All that on top of a job that was never easy to begin with.
Educators are some of the most passionate, hopeful, hard-working people I know, the kind who chose their career because of the potential impact, not because of the size of their paycheck. Outside of a pandemic, their job is stressful enough; they face the constant challenges of meeting all students’ needs with limited resources, pressure from state testing, insufficient paid time for preparation, and professional development requirements that often feel more like hoops than help.
Our teachers are carrying a heavy load, and I’m worried about what it’s doing to them. I’m worried because I’ve been there–and it broke me.
Striving to Keep Up
For years as a teacher, I pushed myself too hard, ignoring my body’s limits and normalizing excessive stress. I prided myself on taking on more than I should, unaware of my subconscious need to prove that I was competent, valuable, and worthy of the leadership roles I’d been entrusted with.
But I could never work hard enough to quiet the inner critic who continually warned me not to let anyone down. My work ethic was driven by my passion for my students–most definitely–but also by a compulsive need to uphold an image that others would respect and even admire.
I couldn’t keep it up.
Several years into my career, I finally hit a breaking point. As hard as I pushed, my job had snowballed into an impossible concoction of too much responsibility and too little time or support. I had been stretched too thin for too long, and burnout had taken its toll on my body, my mind, and my heart. My nervous system pushed back in the form of crippling anxiety, physical exhaustion, and emotional volatility–my body was screaming for rest.
Even though something clearly needed to change, it was humiliating then to admit I couldn’t keep running at such a frenzied pace. Taking a break felt like failure, even though my mental and physical health were deteriorating.
I couldn’t see then that my burnout made total sense.
Slowing Down from the Outside In
At the request of my husband and friends who loved me, I finally took several weeks off work to rest and recover, slowing down long enough to start sleeping again. It proved difficult to unravel myself from my role at school–my performance had long wrapped itself around my identity as the measure of my worth. Slowly though, my mind stopped spinning and my heart stopped racing as I untangled myself from the patterns of workaholism I had set.
I began learning to pay attention to what my body had been telling me all along.
Then, with two months left in the school year, I returned to work, struggling to resume a pace I could no longer sustain. My insides had changed, but the impossible demands on my time hadn’t lifted. Depression settled in like a fog, my nervous system overwhelmed by the combined pressure of my job, finishing my Master’s degree, and preparing to move to a new town that summer.
It would have been a lot during normal circumstances, but my emotional exhaustion meant every task required Herculean effort. By the time we unpacked in our new house later that summer, I had nothing left.
I never went back to teaching.
Looking back, I feel deep compassion for myself as a young teacher who genuinely wanted to change the lives of her students through whole-hearted devotion to her job. I can see now that I was giving everything I had out of an earnest love for my work, but I hadn’t yet learned to listen to my limits by paying attention to the clues my body was giving me.
By not listening, I forced my body to get my attention in louder, more noticeable ways.
I wish I’d known then that I didn’t need to perform for anyone, or to pretend I had unlimited energy to give. I wish I’d known I didn’t have to sacrifice myself to make a difference. The older version of myself wishes I could go back and tell the younger me a few things.
5 Things I Wish I’d Known as a Teacher:
1. It’s okay to admit it’s too much.
I so desperately wanted to perform at a high level, it didn’t occur to me to set limits by saying I couldn’t take on more than was already on my plate. I wish I would have been more honest about how I was really doing so others would know when I needed support.
2. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone.
My lack of boundaries often came from wanting to earn the approval of school administrators, colleagues, parents, and even my students. I wish I could tell myself I was a better teacher than I knew, that my impact was already greater than I could imagine.
3. Pay attention to what your body is telling you.
I was so used to pushing through the days, working through lunch, going to the bathroom only between classes, drinking coffee to keep myself going–I didn’t even know what I needed. I wish I would have learned to eat when I was hungry, go for a walk when I needed a reset, and go to bed when I was tired. I can’t help but wonder how paying attention might have allowed me to learn sooner how to care for myself.
4. Be brave enough to ask for help.
No one means to let someone slip through the cracks–schools, like most organizations, simply have too many moving parts to keep track of how each person is really doing. I wish I would have spoken up when my workload exceeded the time I was allotted to do my job, instead of absorbing the extra by sacrificing all of my much-needed downtime. I wish I would have asked for support instead of digging in deeper and working harder, to my own detriment.
5. Fight for your health like your life depends on it.
I wish I could have understood that self-care isn’t self-indulgence–it’s protecting the one and only life we’ve been given so we can offer ourselves freely, from a place of wholeness, to those around us. By ignoring my own wellness, I was only able to give parts of myself away, leaving me disintegrated and fragmented.
To my teacher friends, I hope these words serve as a reminder that your work matters so very much–and so do you. Your sacrifice is not invisible. We see you and can’t tell you enough how grateful we are for how you’ve held us all together.
But please, please do whatever it takes to care for yourself as you care for our kids. We need you. And we need you to show us how to care for you, too. Your one and only life is worth it.
Teachers, if we could do anything to make you feel supported right now, what would be most helpful?