31. Teaching When Your Life is in Crisis - What to Do

It's hard enough to prevent teacher burnout and overwhelm with the "normal" daily events of the classroom, but teaching when you're experiencing a medical or personal crisis - that's an entirely different experience. Teaching when your life is falling apart, like a soft-shell taco, is enough to make anyone feel hopeless and incompetent. In this episode, you'll get five quick reminders about giving yourself grace, prioritizing what matters, and making decisions when your life is in turmoil - and you've got a classroom full of kids that need your time and attention.

Teaching when your personal life is upside down is something covered in the my free Teachaholic Action Guide. It goes along with my book Teachaholic: The 7-Day MindSET Shift to Conquer Burnout, Build Life-Changing Boundaries, and Reignite Your Love for Teaching.

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.

You can join the Teachaholic Launch Team here!

Learn more about the book Teachaholic  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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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, I'm Erin Spinagle. Welcome to episode 31 of the next chapter for Teachers Podcast. Doing pretty good here. Three weeks in a row of uh content. So I hope you've had a good week or I had a good week last week. So this will probably find you on Sunday evening or Monday morning. But today we're going to talk about, not that there we don't talk about serious things on here, but we're going to get very serious for a minute. Because sometimes you have a school year where you're not just contending with the ups and downs of the classroom, you're dealing with yourself and things that are going on in your personal life. So what do you do? How do you continue teaching when you're going through a personal or a medical crisis? So life does not stop during the school year. Stuff happens, and it may not feel like it when people talk about us on social media, but teachers are people too, and we have our own experiences and feelings and things that we have to work through as adults while we're managing a classroom full of children. So I've gone through some personal crises during my 20-plus years in the classroom. Last year, around this time, I had a medical crisis that was very jarring and put a lot of things in perspective for me. So I've experienced this and I know how much it can throw you off balance and make you feel even more overwhelmed with the demands of the classroom. When you have to take a minute and work on yourself and put your energy and the majority of your resources, physical and emotional, into what's going on in your own life, whether it's something that's happening to you personally or something that's going on with a family member or a close friend, it's really hard to do that and be in charge of your classroom and meet the expectations that you have there. So we're just going to talk a little bit of how to work through that. I'm going to keep it very general because this could this is very broad. It could be the death of a family member or an illness or a relationship issue that you are working through. So we're going to keep it kind of open and broad here, but these are all things to keep in mind and to consider if you are going through a time when it just feels like your life is falling apart. So the first thing that I would tell you or tell somebody that's teaching, that's going through a hard time, that's uh derailing their ability to be their best self personally and as a professional, is you are in the driver's seat and you get to decide what to share as far as at school what's sharing what's appropriate and what you feel is necessary. Now, obviously, you might need to tell your administrator if you are having an illness or an event that is going to keep you away from the classroom or keep you from being your best self, it would be best to to let them know what's going on. But as far as your students and your colleagues, I think you have to kind of decide what you feel you need to share and when. So if it's a what if there's a way that you don't have to tell people or keep people in the loop, then I don't see anything wrong with maybe not cluing them in unless it's something that's going to deeply affect your ability to be present in the classroom. As far as sharing things with students, I think it all comes down to what's age appropriate and what what do they need to know. I mean, obviously, if you're going through a hard time and you're you're very upset, you could just tell them that you're going through a hard time. And just like when they have times when they're having a rough day or a bad experience, adults go through those too. And it becomes an exp in a a way to show empathy or have them have compassion for someone for someone else. But I don't think that you should feel that you have to give information that you are not ready to share or not um feeling is necessary during the school day. Another thing that I would tell somebody that's going through a personal crisis or a medical crisis is that you are going to have to let certain things go. And this is hard, especially if you hold yourself to high standards in the classroom. But it it's kind of like an emotional and physical triage when your body is experiencing something that is causing them a lot of distress. It's like a like a divorce or a death. You know, your your resources are afraid to begin with. So if there are responsibilities that you have outside of the classroom, different committees, things of that nature, those are the things or this is the time where you're going to have to let those things go. You also kind of have to let go the ideal that you can have it all together because when you are patching up your personal life, sometimes the classroom has to take a back seat. And that doesn't mean that you're not a good teacher. It just means that you may not get to be the teacher that you're used to being for this year or for this moment in time. And that kind of goes into the next thing that I would share with someone going through a crisis was is that you have to run your life in the classroom and out of the classroom in what I like to think of as safe mode. So it's like if your computer has a bug or is on the fritz and you just have to have it run the basic operations. That's kind of what you have to do as a teacher. You get to run in safe mode and do the things that are basic for operating and let the rest of it go by the wayside. It's not easy, it's not fun, and it may not make you feel like you're being effective as a teacher, but sometimes life happens and we have to prioritize different things. And things will hopefully turn around, and you can go back to having the expectations that you would normally set for yourself. But you do have to take that moment to run in safe mode and give yourself first priority. And along with that, another thing that I think I have learned through going through my own crises is that you have to go, you have to allow yourself permission to not care, or at least not care as much. So I know test scores are a big deal. I know you hear that every time you have a faculty meeting, or every time you look at your data, but you have to give yourself permission to not be so hyper-focused on the things in the classroom that are going to cause you even more emotional distress than you already might all might be in. So it's not that you're not trying, it's not that you're not doing the things that you're supposed to do, but you may just not be able to put as much effort or the same amount of care that you would normally do as you would if you did not have other things going on. So we have to not care as much, meaning that we're not going to put our emotions and energy into it as much, because you need to focus on getting your own life back on track. And that's okay. I am telling you, that's okay. Another thing that I would tell you, if you are having your life fall apart at the seams, is to keep something predictable. So when you feel like everything is out of whack, or if everything is indeed out of whack, there's no there's no guesswork there. It is out of whack. Keeping something in routine or predictable gives you a semblance of control. So if there's a certain thing that you do in your room or a certain process or procedure, keep those things. Don't don't let the routines and the things you have in place to allow your classroom to run smoothly, don't let those go away. Go by the wayside. Those are one of those things that help you run in safe mode. If there are things that you do outside of the classroom that you can still maintain through this crisis, keep them up. Or things that you do to help you get ready for the next day, don't let those go because those help you have some semblance of normalcy during this time. And the last thing that I would tell you is if you are going through a very difficult time, is to ask for and accept help. You know, as teachers, a lot of us are ultra-independent. I know that I am ultra-independent, and I'd rather just handle my own business and not involve a lot of people. But when you are going through a time when your everything is upside down and you feel like you are losing your grip on everything and everyone and the things that you have come to know and love, you have to ask people for help or ask people for things that you normally may not ask them for, as far as extra time or assistance or the ability or the opportunity to leave at a certain time to go take care of things. It is not easy for some of us to ask for help. And if somebody, and if you've decided that there are certain things that are appropriate to share with colleagues or with administration, if help is offered, you need to take it because that little weight off your shoulders is probably a bigger weight than you think. Those little things that someone is willing to do for you or allow for you, even if it's never something that you would ask for at any other time, those can be a lifesaver and those can be a way for you to take a step back, breathe, and be able to get things under control. So just to review, this is gonna be a shorter episode today, but but that's okay. Sometimes if you are going through a hard time, you need something that's gonna be fast and effective. So share the things that you feel are appropriate or necessary. Don't feel that you have to spill all the beans or share things with your students or with colleagues that you're not ready for them to know about. Let go so that you can do your emotional and physical triage for yourself. By let go, I mean special things that you put a lot of effort into or that you feel are necessary, or different uh committees or things you are uh an interest in. Sometimes those are the things that you have to take a break from so that you can focus on what's taking precedence. Run in safe mode, prioritize the most important things so that you can get through the day and feel that you are having some semblance of productivity. Getting along with that is, I think I just said run in safe mode. Yeah. Anyway, uh, give yourself permission to not care as much about the things that are valued highly in education right now, because that doesn't have to be your focus when everything else is falling apart. Keep your routines, keep some predictability, keep the things that going that if you have been working towards uh eliminating burnout or preventing overwhelm in your uh life in and out of the classroom, don't let those things go and let everything fall apart as far as that goes. Those things are the things that may get you through this time. And then lastly, ask and ac for and accept help because it's in these moments when our lives are in crisis that you can often get another perspective on people that you may work with, and you can see who is really willing to step up to the plate and help you when you never would have expected it. So I'll leave you with a Robert Frost quote The only way out is through. And that is very true of any difficult time as a teacher or as a person. The only way you get through it is if the is to go through it. And it's not often a pleasant experience. It may not feel like it now, it may not feel like that for feel like it for years, but you will see in hindsight how these experiences that are throwing you into crisis shape you personally. And uh I can say looking back that those experiences that I've gone through that have flipped things upside down for me, uh they helped me become a better teacher in that I became more understanding and more empathetic towards my students and things that they go through. So that's all I have for today. If you are still interested, I'll just throw this in here at the end before we close. If you're still interested in the Teach Aholic launch team, uh Monday evening is the last time to join. I'll put the link in the show notes. If you are interested in more in uh information and strategies for getting through difficult times and preventing teacher burnout, teach a holic, my book, will be available in about 10 days. So that is exciting. But I'm hoping through that book and through this podcast that I continue to help you find ways to balance your life and get through the hard stuff so that we can not only be good teachers, but live good lives that give us happiness and prosperity in and out of the classroom. I'll talk to you next time. That's all for this episode of the Next Chapter for Teachers podcast. If you like what you heard, be sure to rate, subscribe, and leave a review. Join us next time when 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.