29. Five Signs You're Headed for Teacher Burnout

Teacher burnout is for real. With the high expectations on teachers and the teacher shortage, the stress that teachers experience daily is the fast track to burnout. In this episode, we will cover the five signs that signal you are headed for burnout - but there is hope. We as teachers are capable of not only overcoming burnout, but living lives where we don't have to feel downtrodden and empty at the end of the day.

Coming October 8: Teachaholic: The 7-Day MindSET Shift to Conquer Burnout, Build Life-Changing Boundaries, and Reignite Your Love for Teaching will be available in paperback and on Kindle on Amazon. It's how I overcame burnout and continue to teach full-time, without letting teaching call all the shots.

You can join the Teachaholic Launch Team here!

If you want to get a head start on the book, download the 20+ page Teachaholic Action Guide to begin your journey back from burnout here.

Learn more about the book at www.erinsponaugle.com/book

Get your copy of Teachaholic: The 7-Day MindSET Shift to Conquer Burnout, Build Life-Changing Boundaries, and Reignite Your Love for Teaching at www.erinsponaugle.com/book.

You can download the Teachaholic Action Guide to begin your journey back from burnout here.

Download your FREE checklist, The Great 88: Rules, Routines, and Expectations to Go Over and Over, and feel confident establishing classroom management.

For more resources on classroom management, time management, and preserving mental well-being to avoid teacher burnout, visit www.erinsponaugle.com.

Find more upper elementary classroom resources by visiting Next Chapter Press on Teachers Pay Teachers.

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Transcript

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Being a teacher isn't what it used to be. The good news is you don't have to figure it out on your own. If you're looking for truth, inspiration and tips for success in the classroom and beyond you're in the right place it's time to turn the page to the future of the profession this is the next chapter for teachers podcast Hello, everyone. Welcome back. I'm Erin Spinaugel. Welcome to the Next Chapter for Teachers podcast. If you're joining us for the first time, and if you've listened before, welcome back to the podcast. It's been a while. I had to take some time off. I had some things happen last year that were unexpected, and I had to reprioritize some things. But here I am, and I have a very important announcement at the end to share with you. So who am I? If you have forgotten or if this is your first time listening, my name is Erin. I have been a teacher for 23 years, 21 of which have been at the same school. I currently teach elementary art. I've taught grades three, four, and five as well. I started this podcast in 2020 in the throes of the pandemic because I was stuck at home and I was teaching online and had very little contact with the outside world and I was also coming out of a very dark and stressful time as an educator and I was looking for a way to share what I had learned about staying in the classroom and able becoming able to manage my time better so with few options because it was the pandemic and couldn't go out and talk to people I started my podcast and I'm looking forward to getting it back up and going and starting this next season with you, which I believe is season five. It's been a while, but I think we're at season five. So what I want to talk to you about today is how you're doing, because I know for a lot of people, this school year has come in hard and fast and is leaving a lot of people feeling that this is going to be the year that does them in, that it's too much. much. There's been so much added. There's so much going on in the world. In addition to just being a teacher and dealing with the ins and outs of the classroom every day, that burnout is on the horizon coming at you at the speed of light. So what we're going to talk about today is some of the things that you can be looking for to tell if you are headed for teacher burnout. So we use that word a lot, burnout, teacher burnout. What exactly is burnout. So this is how I would like to think of burnout. Burnout is when the stress from teaching eats you from the inside out. It's like you go into complete shutdown. You feel depleted. You feel like you have nothing left, not only for your classroom, but also for yourself, your family, your ambitions. You are completely burnt out. You have nothing left for anyone. And that's really scary that we are at this point in education where so many teachers are walking away or feel that they have to quit because they have nothing left to give or they can't be effective anymore because we need good teachers. There's a teacher shortage and kids need good teachers, but kids also need teachers that are not on the cusp of at their breaking point, which is what we see happening. And our Our kids deserve better and our teachers deserve better. If teaching is a profession that deserves to be treated with the respect that it deserves, we have to make sure that our teachers are getting the support that they need. And that's not happening. And there are a lot of things that are out of our control as educators. But the one thing you can control is how you respond, how you respond, how you prioritize things. You can control your mindset. Now, that's not to put it all on you because there are things that need to change in education sooner than later. But you can change how you internalize things and how you respond and how you make yourself a priority. So we're going to talk about five signs that show that you're headed for teacher burnout today. And these are all signs that I experienced because I am a burnout survivor, friends. I am about 90 years ago today that's probably about nine years ago went through or hit hit a brick wall as far as burnout goes and I can assure you that these are all things that I have felt these are all things that I have had to overcome and find a different way of doing things because of them and I have come back from wanting to quit teaching or feeling like there was no other option but to get out of the classroom to really loving my job again and seeing the hope and the purpose that we can have in the classroom, but we're going to have to fight for it. And you are going to have to make some changes in how you do things. And when everything changes, something will change. But if nothing changes, nothing changes. So one of the things you can tell if you're headed for teacher burnout is exhaustion. So this is not just you need to lay down for a little bit. It's not even the teacher nap you might need after school. Not even that. It's when you just feel like your body is completely out of steam and this is physical where you feel like you physically can't do anything else you come home you sit down you're done you're really done you're not moving but it's also the emotional exhaustion because we deal with so many emotional issues as teachers during the day the ups and downs of the classroom and the needs of our students and that leaves you drained too and when you have finally poured your cup out to the last drop you are emotionally depleted as well. So when you are exhausted, you don't just feel tired. It's like your entire body, your wiring is on the fritz. You might feel anxious. You might have feelings of dread. You might kind of catastrophize and think, you know, what's the next bad thing that's going to happen? The worst thing about exhaustion is that once you are exhausted, your body's immune system has broken down enough by that point that you are more than likely going to get sick you know that that does not do your body any favors and we are already in a environment in the in a school where the viruses and the bugs are just in full force already so exhaustion is more than likely going to lead to at some point that you're going to get physically ill as well so another sign that you're on the edge of burnout is detachment this was a big thing for me. And it actually kind of really scared me when it started to happen because I was someone who was very committed and very enthusiastic. And I started to just feel very negatively about the classroom. I didn't enjoy the things that previously gave me a lot of happiness and purpose in the classroom. I no longer wanted to participate in them. Nothing felt good. Nothing about the classroom and felt that it was giving me hope. And I didn't feel like, I was gonna talk a little bit more about this in a second. I didn't feel like that I was necessary for my students to be successful. I really felt that I was not a part of the game anymore, that I had served my time and my purpose and that I had nothing left to give. But I really felt that detachment of just, it just wasn't a part of me anymore. And it wasn't a part of the profession that I used to really enjoy. So along with that goes the lack of motivation. As a teacher, you've got so many things you have to keep track of and things you need to focus on throughout the day. If you don't keep moving, if you don't keep meeting the deadlines and the expectations, you get very far behind very fast. So when a lack of motivation creeps in, that stack of papers might sit there all week. You might have things you need to plan for. They don't get done. There might be things that you know that you can get done in 30 seconds, a minute, five minutes, and they just feel like Goliath. They feel like there's no way that they can be overcome or taken down. Probably not the best word. They're taken down. Take it down. But everything feels overwhelming and undesirable. You don't want to do anything it all feels like too much even the simplest smallest things so instead of tackling them just to get them over with they just accumulate and they accumulate and they accumulate and suddenly you might have been a person who was always on top of things and then you are like it's like a new person has inhabited your classroom or your body you know you just nothing is getting completed or completed in the same manner that you would normally do because you have depleted yourself of motivation. So there's three. And number four. Now, I want to preface this by saying this can also be a sign of other ailments besides teacher burnout. But it definitely is something that happens when you are in the throes of burnout. And that is brain fog. So I've experienced brain fog a little bit more recently because I'm in my 40s and things are changing. I'm getting older. But brain fog is also a clear indication that you are headed for burnout. So when you have put your body into the throes of burnout and you are on the fritz, your thinking starts to feel like your head's in the clouds. So you might have been a very focused person in the past, but it becomes much more challenging to concentrate and to stay focused on the things that you normally could do without any problem or do very quickly or you're very very good at responding and keeping on top of things everything starts to feel a little foggy it might take longer to complete the things that you've done for years like your lesson plans or getting around to writing emails or planning a field trip because you feel like you're in a haze and when I first experienced this I was really scared it was probably in my mid-30s when I really started to hit the the burnout as a teacher and I remember feeling feeling this way and just being terrified that, you know, I'm not the same person anymore, something has happened to me. And what was happening was that was burning out from how I did things and how I internalize things. But brain fog is absolutely a sign that you are headed for burnout. The fifth thing we're going to talk about today, that can be a sign of burnout is increased irritability. So let's talk about this. As teachers, we have to keep our cool a lot. We've got colleagues, we've got students, you can't just say what you want to say whenever you want to say it. It's just we develop a way to address people, address kids, and that is appropriate for our environment. When you become burnt out, you become increasingly irritated, or the little things start to really, really irritate you. So you might have been very good in the past with handling classroom issues or the kid who does the little things that just kind of aggravate you over time. I mean, we're humans and they're humans and things happen. But you might get more set off or you might respond more harshly to issues in the classroom or with your colleagues because your brain and your body has had it. And that lack of patience is off-putting to your colleagues or can be upsetting to students when you're not, you know, you have a shorter fuse. But it is a sign to you that things need to change in your life when you become increasingly irritated and less able to emotionally regulate your feelings because you have not attended to your own needs as a teacher and as a person. Because at the end of the day, teaching is about people and we are people too. That often gets left out of the discussion when things are planned and things are expected of teachers that we're people we are just people at the end of the day trying to figure this out as well so Where am I going with all this? Because I have been thinking or planning for a long time that I wanted to create something that could help teachers, that could lead them to making a better way through this profession. Because, you know, we can quit if we feel like we need to quit, if this is not what we're meant to do for 30 plus years. I mean, or not 30 plus years, however long you intend on teaching, but we've got to do something to retain teachers and to help the teachers that are in the classroom and are planning to stay to be healthy, happy and whole. So I've written a book and this book has been a long time coming. Like I said, there were things that happened in my life last year where I had to attend to my own health and change my priorities. But I have managed to pull this together. And on October 8th, Teachaholic, the seven-day mindset shift to conquer burnout, build life-changing boundaries, and reignite your love for teaching will be available for purchase. And I'm kind of, I'm excited about this because I'm so excited to share it with people and to share solutions and things that they can do regardless of their situation, regardless of how chaotic things are in education right now, things that they can do to improve their lives and improve their classroom environment. I feel like I'm going to do some, you know, this could help people. And that makes me, that makes me feel like I've kind of done something that fulfills my purpose as an educator. But it's also my story about how I've gotten through burnout, how I've gotten through the hard parts of being a teacher in the classroom for over 20 years, and come away from it, or come out of the burnout with a better outlook and a better way of internalizing things so that that I can be not only the teacher that I need to be for my students, but also the person, the wife that I need to be, and as well as, you know, fulfill my own goals and needs outside the classroom as well. So if you are interested in being on the launch team for Teachaholic, which comes out October 8th, I will drop the link in the show notes. I also have created a Teachaholic action guide or the tag that will help you as you go through the book with different reflection questions and ways to organize your thoughts and internalize what the book is about so that we can make changes and we can keep teachers in the profession, not just because we need them, but because we want them to live and teach in a way that is healthy and lets them fulfill their purpose. So just as a review, signs you're headed for teacher burnout, exhaustion, physical and emotional, detachment, you're just losing your interest in teaching and the things that used to bring you joy in the profession, lack of motivation, you just can't get yourself to do the things you know you need to do, even if you've done it for years and years, brain fog, everything just feels so It feels kind of thick and fuzzy and you just can't get through things like you used to. You're slogging through and you're irritated. You're short. Your fuse is next to non-existent because your body is screaming for a break. And with Teachaholic, I am really hoping that I can help teachers make the changes they need to stay in the profession and have a healthy, purposeful life. So that is all for today. I'll see you next time and we'll talk more about how we can stop burnout and set boundaries so that we can continue in the profession that we love. That's all for this episode of the Next Chapter for Teachers podcast. If you like what you heard, be sure to write, subscribe, and leave a review. Join us next time we turn the page to the future of the profession. Until then, remember to be different, but more importantly, be the difference. And I'll see you in the next chapter.