Teacher Burnout: How to Find Balance and Purpose in a Challenging Career
In this blog post, we'll explore the issue of teacher burnout and how educators who are struggling with their year can find balance and purpose. We'll discuss the importance of self-care, setting boundaries, and crafting a teacher mission statement to help teachers navigate the challenges they face.
Teacher Burnout
Teacher Burnout has been steadily increasing along with teachers leaving the profession. 2021 survey by the Canadian Teachers Federation found that 97% of participants experienced increased physical, mental, and emotional workload, and job demands during the 2020-2021 school year. 58% of teachers reported feeling stressed “all the time,” compared with only 36% of the overall Canadian workforce. 79% of Canadian educators felt their stress levels had increased over the last five years as a result of work-life imbalance and just as many (85%) felt this imbalance was affecting their ability to teach. On average, Canadian teachers work 50 to 55 hours per week. 30% of teachers new to the field resign after only five years of teaching.
In Quebec alone, there were 8,558 teachers infilled teaching positions in September 2023. As teachers, we know exactly why that is. Increased workloads, increased student needs and behaviours, and the decreased of parent involvement, and consequences for students at school just to name some of them.
As teachers, we know that we are doing everything we can to meet the needs of our students but we need to realize that our education system is broken and unfortunately not getting fixed anytime soon. We need to focus on balancing our teaching responsibilities and take care of ourselves first.
Balancing Teaching and Self-Care
Balancing our teaching responsibilities are so difficult because we are constantly concerned about our students and the ongoing to do list never is finished. We need to change our default mode to ‘me first.’ I realize this is so opposite to what we have been taught and what we do as educators but we cannot take care of others if we aren’t taking care ourselves first. We need to prioritize self care for ourselves so we feel our best to take care of others:our students and our families. We need to play with self care options and find out what works for us and incorporate it in our daily schedule.
I’ve consistently found this challenging and struggled to keep up with self care so I created …
This is a daily journal that helped me decide my self care strategies I was going to do daily to keep me feeling good. It also helped me and can help you cultivate positive habits. It includes daily reflection sheets to assess your emotions and well-being both in the morning and evening, ensuring you stay on track and thrive. Also at the end of each month, it prompts you to engage in a comprehensive self-reflection exercise to assess your progress and set new, achievable goals.
Finding Purpose as a Teacher
As teachers we have soooooo many jobs and things we need to do throughout the day. Edutopia says we make about 1,500 decisions per day, which can lead to decision fatigue, a situation in which the brain is so exhausted and overloaded with decisions that it either looks for shortcuts or stops working altogether. Holy, I feel seen! No wonder we are exhausted and don’t want to decide what’s for dinner each night!
We need to figure out what our purpose is as educators. What fires us up, what is the reason we wanted to become an educator to begin with. When we teach to our passion, we inspire our students and connect with them with joy for learning. Teaching our purpose also helps our mental health because we are focusing on what we believe is important.
Through discovery with my Year-Start Mastery: Empowering Teachers for a Purposeful and Balanced School Year Course I determined that my purpose is forming relationships with students where I can call them on their learning, or self sabotage and push them where they need to be. I also love hands on projects in the classroom and getting my students to make and create so they surprise themselves with what they can learn.
What fires 🔥 you up?
Setting Boundaries in Education
Setting boundaries is something I never learned about until recently and never thought about when it comes to education but if we want to maintain our passion for teaching, our health and our career we have to set and maintain our boundaries.
In my Year Start Mastery Course, I walk you through not only how and what Eduboundaries are, which ones you may need, but I also give you a ton of examples to help set you up for success.
Here are my Eduboundaries that I’ve set up for this year. I’ll be honest, I need to continue working on maintaining these boundaries.
All educators know that burnout due to the education system is a real thing that is happening to us, our colleagues and educators throughout the world. We need to take the power back and think ‘Me First’ What self care strategies, boundaries, and focusing on your purpose can you set up to help protect your energy?
Let me know in what fires you up and what self care strategies you are going to commit to in the comments below!
