38. Childless Teacher: How to Avoid Burnout When You Have No Kids of Your Own

Sometimes, when you're a childless teacher, you're more prone to burnout. When you don't have kids of your own to go home to at the end of the day, it can be easy to take on more classroom and school responsibilities to fill the void. If you have ever felt less than or not enough because you aren't a parent, you'll want to listen to this episode. It's very personal to me and has been part of my journey out of teacher burnout. 

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.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:08

Being the 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, this is Erin Spinagle for episode 38 of the Next Chapter for Teachers Podcast. If my voice sounds a little croaky today, it's because I kind of lost it over the past few days and I'm just getting it back. I debated on even if I wanted to tape something. This will record something rather this week. But I decided to go for it. It sounds much better than what it did. So just a programming note. I think I'm going to take a week off, and then we will resume with the finale of season four when we return after that. Alright, so on to today's topic. I'll be honest. I have put off doing this episode for a while. I won't say quite how long, but it's been a while. And it's actually a topic that I thought about putting in my book, Teach a Holic, that came out last month. And I went back and forth and debated about it and decided to leave it out. But I cannot ignore its impact that it's had on my teacher burnout journey. So I thought that I should maybe just start by talking about it in a podcast episode and take it from there and just see what the response is. So I'll just cut to the chase instead of being vague about what this is about. I am a childless teacher. Meaning, I don't have any kids of my own. I'm not a mom. I come home to my four kitty cats and my husband. And that's that is my family and my house. Why am I bringing this up now? Well, the the childless teacher debate or comment rather came up with a political person last year. I won't talk say their name or give them the any more airtime than they've already had. But a comment was made about childless cat lady teachers, even. I mean, I checked all the boxes for that one. And yes, it might have been crass and rude, but it also kind of hurt to hear that because that sounded like they were talking right to me. So being a childless teacher is a little bit of a sore subject. And that's another reason why I decided to leave it out of the book talking about this and its role in burnout because you're supposed to teach from your scars, not your wounds. So I decided to not give it more airtime. But the more that I think about it, it really did have an impact being a childless teacher on my burnout journey and in some ways contributing to it. So since I can't stop thinking about how it influenced my career and my decisions in teaching, I thought it would be a good thing to just kind of talk about this. And I'm sure there's someone out there that also has felt or experienced the same thing. So a comment was made very early on in my teaching career. Our school was in the midst of a baby boom, if you will, and the comment was made that they thought that having a child of your own made you a better teacher. Because how you handle things in school is different when you are rocking your own child to sleep at night. And it was not meant to be condescending, this comment at all, but it really made me feel bad about myself. And that's a me problem. But it really cut through my soul and what I thought of myself as a person and as a teacher. That's just my truth. Not necessarily that anyone anybody was trying to make me feel that way, but just that it's just how it impacted me. So here I am, childless teacher, in a school full of people that are most definitely not childless. And I felt like I had less worth than them because I wasn't a mom. So, how did that translate to what I did in the classroom or how I conducted myself in and out of school? I felt more responsible, actually. I felt that I needed to do more, not just because my colleagues had families they were going home to, but also because I felt responsible for doing more because my colleagues had families or were trying to start families. And I also felt like I had to do something to prove my worth, to prove that I was worthy of uh being called a good teacher because I was not a parent myself. So I became the go-to person to do a lot of things. And I remember also one time I got saddled with some commitments because something happened at the last minute with another teacher, and I could tell the teacher kind of felt bad about the fact that I was going to be picking up the slack, and the teacher turned to me and said, Family comes first. So it's understandable family does come first, but my interpretation of that is because I did not have a family of my own, in this respect of having kids of my own, that I was less, or that my time was not as important. So yeah, this is this contributed to a lot of my feelings of self-worth, feeling like less of a person, and then feeling that I needed to do all the things all the time as a teacher. And even when the good things happened in my life, like when I was come, you know, commended for doing a good job in the classroom, I felt that the accolades were not as worthy of receiving on my end because I wasn't a parent. It's like, oh yeah, I'm able to do this and I do a good job, but maybe it's just because I'm not a mom. Maybe that makes me more able to do these things, whereas somebody else has more to contend with. So I questioned my own aptitude a lot. So what does this mean? If you are out there and you don't have children of your own and you're a teacher, what do you think? Does being a parent make you a better teacher? Or does being childless have an advantage to it? So maybe it is good, like I said that I left it out because I do have some guilt and sadness over this. But the point is, is that some at some point in your career, this may be you. Maybe when you're starting out teaching, you don't have kids, or you might have kids, but you might have an empty nest where your children do not live at home or do not they aren't as dependent on you anymore. So I guess what I want to say through this, or why I'm choosing to bring this up today, is I feel like I want to put out there that if you are a childless teacher, you are still a human above all. You are still a person with feelings and a purpose. And it can feel like a heavy load to carry when you are dealing with loss or infertility or something that is holding you back from having a child of your own or having a family of your own, when you are teaching children all day long and you're responsible for their well-being. But it's also hard when you feel like you need to pick up the slack, or or if it appears that you are expected to pick up the slack because you aren't a parent, or you are not responsible for children when you go home in the evenings. So here's how I would address this, or how I my perception of this. Just because you're not a parent doesn't mean the expectations of you as a teacher. Your your job description doesn't change because of that. You have the same expectations, the same accountability on you as your colleagues. Nothing is really easier for you with your job expectations. The role is not of teacher is not less on you just because you don't have kids. So you are still putting out the most the same input as someone who is a parent, even if you are not a parent yourself. So I've talked about this in Teach Aholic a lot, but it got to a point when I was in the throes of burnout where my whole life revolved around the classroom, and everything I did was in some capacity school related. So that wasn't good. And I have worked very hard to fix that over the years. But you know, when you're an a childless teacher and you don't have children to go home to or family expectations in that way when you go home, uh you might feel that you should still be doing things for school or you should take on more things to make up for that that are school related. But what I have learned from my experience is that living life and having interests and experiences outside of teaching really not only enhances your life, but it enriches your ability to reach the students in your classroom as well, having experiences and doing things that have nothing to do with teaching. Like when I got into illustrating and publishing children's books, that didn't really have anything to do with being a classroom teacher, but it gave me an outlook and interactions with people that were not teachers that really has improved my ability to teach and to interact in the school system. So your interact your extracurricular activities do not have to be school extracurricular. You don't have to fill up your time and your hours outside of teaching with school stuff. It can be things that you have time for, and maybe you do have time for those things because you're not a parent. But that's okay, and that doesn't mean that you uh aren't as worthy as someone who who is. And to add to this, just because you're a childless teacher does not mean you deserve the more challenging class year after year after year. I uh have uh had some classes that have been around taught fifth grade that were not so easy, and that's okay. You know, sometimes we have years where the class that we have is maybe not the class that we expected, and we grow and we learn from that. And there there are things that I had experienced from with students that were not easy over the years, but expecting a classroom teacher to always have a certain amount of issues just because, well, they're you know, so and so's a mom or so-and-so has things after school with their family. Well, but you're a person too, and not passing that around wears down your ability to be able to meet all the needs of the students in the classroom. You don't necessarily have more uh bandwidth just because you're not a parent. So, how did I get away from this line of thought? I will tell you, I I do struggle with it still a little bit. But it actually took my own mother and my family helped me realize that I had value as a human being that superseded being a teacher, or whether or not I would ever have kids of my own. So just because you're not going home to another set of kids that are yours doesn't mean that you are less of a teacher. Your ability to teach does not equal your ability to parent. And you know, teaching is a skill set that you learn and acquire over time through experience. So uh maybe your response to things or you would have a better understanding of how things would be with that child outside of the classroom if you were a a mom or a dad, but it doesn't mean that your ability to teach is diminished in any way. So I myself may not be a mother, but as I just said, I do have one who helped me see the light when I was going through this. And I would like to think that I embody a lot of her better qualities and I've been able to apply those to the classroom as a teacher. You know, I'm being patient, uh thinking things through, listening. You know, I we've all had an experience with a maternal or a paternal figure that has influenced how we interact with kids. So whether or not you're a parent doesn't mean that you don't embody the qualities that a parent would have to be able to nurture a child in your room. And I think that we all in some way play the role of a parent when we are a teacher, that our students look to us for comfort and guidance outside of just the academics, and that we're able to do that in ways that we don't realize will impact our students until maybe way later on in life. So, along with what I was saying about how to avoid burnout if you're a childless teacher and you are feeling that you have to do more and be more to make up for that, there's a comment that is often said, and I will bring this up in another podcast episode. But the comment that's made a lot, that's meant to be good. The intentions are good is but we're a family here at school. And I I know the intentions are good, like I just said, it it is meant to be a good thing or meant to be that we people care about each other and that are looking out for each other. But what's also is meant by that is you know, we do what we're asked to do when someone wants us to do it, and we don't say no. That is also the connotation behind that a lot of the time. And the problem with we are a family is that family can look like a lot of different things to people. And family, depending on your life experiences, might trigger different emotions. You know, not all families are supportive and loving and nurturing. And the conflict that I have with that statement is, you know, you want to go, you know, if people want to be home with their families or want to value their families more so than school, you know, that doesn't mean that certain other certain people should be picking up the slack or having to take away from the family that they have at home, even if it's not children, uh, to make that happen. So I feel like that becomes a toxic statement, especially if you are someone who is trying to create a family outside of school. And to me, family is sacred. It's confidential, it's security. And school is more to me a community. I mean, you are replaceable at school, you are not replaceable at home. If you leave your job at school, you'll they'll re they'll advertise your job. If something happens to you at home, they're not gonna advertise for you. So you have value outside of the classroom and the school, and it can become a very it can become like almost like a hamster wheel at school because we become so engrossed in everything that's going on all day and what we deal with with our students. But you are a full and complete person outside of that, and that full and complete person will exist whether or not you ever become a parent of your own. So this was a heavy topic for me to bring up today, but I couldn't get away from thinking about it and from feeling that there was someone out there that maybe needed to hear this message too, to feel that there was somebody else out there just like them that wonders if they are everything they are meant to be. And my response to that is you are, and you have potential, and you are going to reach and help people and help students' lives more than you'll ever realize whether or not you're a mom or a dad. 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.