It’s the End of School Year. You’re Tired. What’s a Teacher to Do?
Jenny Grant Rankin most recently taught at Columbia University and
has lectured at institutions like the University of Cambridge and University
of Oxford. She has a Ph.D. in education and writes books for educators like
First Aid for Teacher Burnout: How You Can Find Peace and Success 2nd Edition
and Sharing Your Education Expertise with the World:
I recently researched what “post-pandemic” teachers have found to
successfully fend off burnout, and those who proactively reduced sources of
stress within their control (instead of only practicing coping strategies for
the stress) experienced greater enjoyment and sustainability in the
profession. The biggest-bang-for-teacher efforts in this area involved
reducing grading time in favor of planning highly engaging lessons (which
meant fewer behavior problems, less academic intervention, etc.) and in favor
of getting the personal time teachers consistently sacrifice.
Multiple
sources revealed that even amid a total overhaul in how teachers delivered
instruction throughout the pandemic, allocation of teacher time to grading
remained relatively unchanged throughout COVID’s course and is reported to
take up 20 percent to 50 percent of teachers’ time, leaving them overworked
and more likely to burn out. This is largely because few teachers enjoy
grading. An international study uncovered “too much grading” as one of
teachers’ three biggest sources of stress, and multiple studies revealed
teachers hate grading. Yet 92 percent of teachers agree or strongly agree that
they have control over determining how much homework they assign, so this is
something teachers have the power to change.
Some of the many
reasons to reduce grade-requiring assignments include:
- Assignment
grades tend to be less beneficial to students than a teacher who is refreshed,
energized, and able to deliver a life-changing lesson that engages all
students.
- Experts like Joe Feldman and Doug Reeves recommend
focusing only on most recent work instead of grading everything and averaging
the scores over time.
When feedback is a day or more old, as is the
case with most grading, that feedback is more like performing an autopsy on a
student’s learning instead of an impactful operation.
- As experts
like Denise Pope of the Stanford Graduate School of Education have cautioned,
there is limited correlation between homework and student achievement (though
reading a book of choice at home is beneficial). In fact, students overloaded
with homework experience exhaustion, sleep deprivation, stress, and loss of
time for family and enriching activities.
- Experts like Feldman
and Reeves also make the case for eliminating homework in the name of equity,
since students have drastically different home environments in terms of
technology, adults’ presence or ability to help, time away from
family-supporting jobs (e.g., some students are entirely responsible for their
younger siblings when at home), ability to afford tutors, supplies, and
environment conducive to concentration. Consider that:
Even in May
of 2020, when many parents were working alongside students from home, only 6
percent of teachers reported all (and only 23 percent most) of their students
had adults who could help them with schoolwork.
Even nine months
into distance learning, after districts had some time to remedy access issues,
73 percent of teachers reported that their students’ lack of access to
technology or reliable internet was a somewhat (43 percent) or very serious
(40 percent) obstacle during online instruction, and 87 percent of teachers
reported that limited access to a quiet learning environment was a somewhat
(47 percent) or very (40 percent) serious obstacle for students.
When
teachers deem grading to be unavoidable, they can recoup some time if they
leverage grading technology, favor rigorous projects over “traditional”
worksheets, have students self-select their best work if using portfolios or
journals and only grade that, only grade key parts of assignments, or rely on
rubrics to indicate feedback instead of writing out comments. However,
teachers who critically rethink their grading practices (in light of findings
that grading is of limited benefit to students, hogs much of their precious
time, and is one of the greatest contributors to teacher stress) will find it
much easier to stay positive and energetic for years to come.
teacherswhorankin
‘Turn
Off Phone Notifications’
Amber Teamann is the director of technology and
innovation in Crandall ISD, a fast-growing district outside of Dallas:
Automate
your digital boundaries.
This self-care tip is courtesy of devices
that make it all too easy to be attached 24/7 to our work emails, calendars,
and textable expectations. Boundaries are SELF CARE. More than 3 in 5 remote
workers say they’re more likely to reply immediately to an email from their
boss or team (63 percent) than to a text or DM from friends or family (37
percent), according to an article published by Slack.
Your choices
define what is OK and what isn’t OK. When you respond to an email at 9 p.m.,
you’re letting that person know that you’re available … and while that may be
true occasionally, … it can quickly become a pattern or expectation. Show
yourself self-care by setting an auto-reply on your emails daily from when you
leave until you return to work. Ninety-five percent of texts will be read
within three minutes of being sent. What is so important, professionally, that
it can’t be answered while you are on the clock? Turn off your phone
notifications or at least set them within hours that you are OK with.
whatissoimportant
‘Reignite
Your Passion’
Morgane Michael has been an elementary school educator with
the Greater Victoria school district in British Columbia, Canada, since 2008.
Find Morgane at smallactbigimpact.com, listen to her KindSight 101 podcast,
and follow @smallactbigimpact on Instagram and @SABI21days on Twitter:
Many
of us are feeling overwhelmed in our important work as educators. Just staying
afloat during a pandemic feels like running a never-ending marathon. Many
administrators, educators, paraprofessionals, and students are at a breaking
point.
According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of
America, people across North America are displaying higher than ever anxiety,
depression, and, even worse, suicide rates. The COVID-19 pandemic has only
made those challenges worse.
Drawing from the latest research and
my own teaching experiences, I’ve identified five easy approaches to reignite
your passion and well-being—reflect, reframe, refocus, reconnect, and reveal.
In each section, I offer one simple practice you can incorporate into your
daily life to help you thrive and overcome the effects of burnout!
Reflect
Understanding
ourselves and reflecting on our state of mind is an essential component of
replenishing ourselves.
Daily Emotional Check in:
Take some time to name your
feelings every day, even multiple times per day.
1. What emotions
am I feeling right how?
2. Where do I feel it in my body?
3.
What do I need right now?
Reframe
Even in some of the
most adverse situations, educators are expected to be flexible, positive,
adaptable, competent, and knowledgeable, dedicating themselves to meeting the
needs of their students, no matter the circumstance. Within our capacity for
self-awareness, we must make room to audit our internal narratives so we can
recover quickly from adversity.
Write Yourself a Letter:
Take
a moment to write yourself a letter, reflecting on some of the following
questions.
What are some of the biggest challenges I’ve had to
overcome? Who helped me stay strong? What were some of my favorite self-care
approaches that kept me afloat? What am I most proud of as a teacher?
Take
the letter and hide it in a conspicuous place until you need the reminder of
your own resilience.
Refocus
We all have deep-seated
dreams that reside within us, and there comes a time when we must take a good
look at our lives to determine what we want our story to be. Refocusing is
your ability to take stock of those dreams and to recalibrate your compass in
such a way that you can step into the life you’ve always hoped to have.
Goal
Reset:
Write down a goal that is important to you. Make a game plan to
achieve the goal. Enlist the help of friends and family, find ways to carve
out time, and don’t forget to articulate how achieving the goal will improve
your life.
Reconnect
Humans are neurobiologically
designed to connect to one another. The good news is that, with intention, we
can develop excellent communication skills, with strong boundaries, and
connect meaningfully to those around us.
Seven-Day Gratitude Text Challenge:
Text a friend about one good
thing that happened each day for a week.
Reflect on your level of
connectedness and gratitude by the end of the week.
Reveal
“Oh,
I’m not creative.” How many times have you heard someone refute their own
creativity with a sense of scientific conviction? Here’s the thing—we are all
born creative. It is only in adulthood that some of us lose the childlike
capacity for divergent (creative) thinking. Inviting a sense of play and
creativity into our daily practice is an integral method for reconnecting to
ourselves.
Try New Things:
Decide that you’re going to commit
to a new activity or experience.
For example, take a cooking class,
take a pottery class with a friend, or take out those old watercolor paints
you’ve been meaning to play around with. It’s not about the product you create
but more about the process.
If you’ve ever had days where you
questioned your efficacy as an educator, parent, spouse, or friend, you are
not alone. If you simply feel overwhelmed and headed toward burnout, think
back to the five R’s to inspire you to reignite your passion and purpose,
tuning back into the fullest expression of who you are and create essential
self-care practices that can empower you to show up for your students, family,
colleagues, and friends in a meaningful way without compromising your
wellness.
writdownagoal
‘One or Two Solid Friends’
Wendi
Pillars, NBCT, has taught “K-gray” for nearly three decades, both overseas and
stateside, in military and civilian contexts. She is the author of Visual
Impact and Visual Notetaking for Educators. Find her on Twitter @wendi322:
Other
than making sure you have at least one or two solid friends to lean on, here
are tried and true personal practices that help me stay above the fray and
maintain motivation:
Find a project.
We are teleological
beings, which means we work better when working toward a goal, when we have a
target. As we take consistent steps of progress toward that target, that
forward motion—no matter how small—keeps us motivated. Even though it may
sound like you’re adding something else to your plate, think of one target
goal either with your students or personally that you can incorporate. Then,
track your progress and make a game out of that consistency.
Focus
on energy management rather than time management.
As teachers, we are
unparalleled task masters and time managers. What we need help with is energy
management; it doesn’t matter a flip if you’ve got every minute managed but
have no energy to greet your day with joy and gusto. Energy management comes
from getting enough sleep, finding times to move throughout the day, reducing
mindless screen time, and increasing more mindful nutritional intake. It’s
worthwhile to invest in your own energy; for me, when I’m struggling is when I
get back to these basics, make sure they’re solid, and reset.
There’s
no such thing as perfection.
Acknowledge that you’re not going to be the
first perfect educator and there’s no certificate or cheesy trophy to acquire.
We all know we can always do more, so learn to say, “That’s good enough”.
Don’t equate “I’m not enough” with “I did the best I could with what I had”
(and that can be personal stamina, resources, student motivation, etc.)
Reflect,
don’t ruminate.
Take your negative thoughts off loop and as ridiculous as
it sounds, find a way to celebrate what does go well. (I like a mini fist pump
and a quiet yessss!) LOOK for what goes well, write it down if you can, and
know that those smaller wins definitely add up enough to sustain you when you
hit a dry spell. If there’s not a “win,” reflect on what happened and what you
would have or could have done differently, then let it go. Your mind needs the
respite.
It’s all BETA.
Showing up even when you’re struggling
takes courage, and just getting to your classroom in the morning might be your
win. There is no single way to teach, no “best lesson” that works for every
single student or objective, so we have to show up with an experimenter’s
mindset. It’s the only way, and it means failure is part of the process. Talk
to students about what you’re trying to do to add an extra layer of
metacognition and life lessons.
Comments
Post a Comment