I came home from school nearly every day this week with that deep tiredness that you feel right down to your bones.
It has never been this acute or severe in my 18 years of teaching.
A colleague pulled me aside in my first year and said, “teaching maybe the only profession in which your responsibility on the first day of the job is the same on the last day of the job.” He was trying to get me to realize two things: First, that there is an unrealistic expectation put on new teachers because they are thrown right into the deep end of the swimming pool. There is no wading in from the shallow end. Second, you don’t pay your dues early in your career to have it easier later in your career. The job stays the same, so buckle up for the long haul.
I’m not running on adrenaline like I was in my first few years of teaching, but why does the job feel more challenging and exhausting now, 18 years in the classroom, than those first few years?
I am still passionate about my subject and still love way in which I can connect and inspire students through lessons, but this level of fatigue is really getting to me.
As this is happening, I am mindful of what it is doing to me as a teacher and a person. I’ve caught myself in moments when I’ve become cynical, felt overwhelmed, and experienced deep exhaustion. I’m trying to figure out what is at the root of it all. What has changed in teaching and what has changed about my teaching that is causing all this?
Here’s what I’ve realized:
COMPETENCY INEVITABLY LEADS TO MORE
When I began teaching, I had a full teaching load and I coached a middle school basketball team. In time, I worked to become successful at both. That success led me to become an AP teacher and varsity coach. I worked hard again, rising to the new challenges, and in time I became successful at both. I began on to take on extra work within the AP community, serving on the test Development Committee, building a Facebook community, and hosting Twitter chats. In time I learned to handle it all and started a chess club at school and became a building rep for my teachers’ union. I found ways to manage that, too.
Each time I reached a level of stasis, I believed it carved out a space for something else. Being able to handle what I had at the moment filled me with the belief that there always was a newer and high manifestation of myself out there if I added something else to the mix. With each new addition, I only saw the benefits — it would open a new scope of students for me to mentor, it would deepen my content knowledge, it would bring stronger connections with other teachers. This is what made it exciting and promising. All I saw where the potential benefits, but none of the costs.
But in Essentialism, which is the best book I’ve read in the past five years, Greg McKewon asks, “What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance? What if instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?”
He encouraged readers to give themselves permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone. He believes that when that happens, that is when you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.
I need to realize that saying no to things isn’t a sign of weakness or an admission that something is beyond your ability. No recognizes there are limits, and anytime those limits extend, it thins out something that is already dear.
AS CHANNELS INCREASE SO DOES THE COGNITIVE LOAD
When I began teaching, the primary method of contact between teachers and students was a quick conversation after class. It was actual interaction, not virtual, and I used my voice to express sincerity and empathy while also processing what my students were saying, reading their body language and non verbal cues. All this transpired within the school day, which meant that when the day ended, the communication ended. These conversations easy to decode tone and mood. Now, the channels of communication have increased exponentially, and almost always the method is virtual. This is not just true of my communication with students, everyone is resorting to virtual communication — administration, guidance, even advertisers. I am bombarded with messages all throughout the working day. Yet, it doesn’t ending there as messages come in at all hours of the night. Some of the time stamps I see are deeply concerning, coming well past the point where anyone should be communicating.
As communication has become so cheap, ubiquitous, and impersonal, it has also lowered the bar for access. Anyone, whether welcomed or not, can get to my inbox. This has not only created information overload; it has created access overload. Part of each day’s necessary evil is to sift the handful of meaningful messages from dozens and dozens of spam. It is, as one of my colleagues so accurately calls it, “death by a thousand papercuts.”
I need to realize that I am resigning myself to a system that is taking me away from my true talents as a teacher. Success as a teacher does not come as a result of replying to emails and Google Chats as fast as possible. Instead, what I need to do is use my energy to set up a system that prioritizes in-person, sincere, and necessary communication while diminishing its virtual counterpart.
MY CREATIVE CAPACITY HAS DIMINISHED
When I was in my early 30s, my children had such basic needs in their infancy. They needed to be well fed, well rested, and loved and comforted in between. This allowed me the mental bandwidth to handle the simplicity of those needs, while still providing the space for me to think creatively about my lessons and units. I could, after they were put to bed, explore the internet and research authors, be inspired by great ideas, and synthesize it all into new ways to reach my students.
While those basic needs still need to be met, there are a bounty of other concerns that go along with raising kids as they get older. The activities increase, the homework increases, the schedule increases, and, of course, the worry increases.
Since they take up so much more of my mind, this has left me with little time or energy at the end of the day to get lost in the means methods to develop spectacular lessons. I wish I could scour the AP Lit Facebook community and be inspired by my colleagues. I wish I had more time to read the newest best sellers and consider how I might bring them into my classroom. I wish I had the time to let my mind wander to through an idea and become fascinated with it.
But I can’t.
My children are my priority.
While I do look back on those days with such nostalgia for how energizing and fun it was to have an idea the night before and execute it the next day in the classroom, it has also made me fear that I am slipping as a teacher. It has made me doubt if I still burn with the same passions.
I need to realize that those days aren’t fully gone. Unlike 10 years ago when I first pushed myself to be a more creative teacher, I now have a warehouse of great teaching ideas that is well stocked and furnished. It is one I should be proud of. Not everything needs to be new every time.
