40. Help for When Colleagues Are Upset You Say No and Set Teacher Boundaries

Not everyone is going to be thrilled when you start setting boundaries as a teacher, even if your goal is to avoid burnout. Colleagues may feel hurt or disappointed that you don't take on the extra tasks you have in the past, or that you are prioritizing other things over the classroom. This upset can make you feel as if you are in the wrong or as if you need to go back to how things were when you were doing it all.  Listen to this episode for the seven things to keep in mind when coworkers aren't happy about your decision to leave the teachaholic mindset behind. It's not easy, but I promise that if you stay the course, better days are ahead. 

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 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. Hello everyone. Welcome to episode 40 of the next chapter for teachers podcast. I'm Aaron Spinagle. We have made it to episode 40. Wow, that's like a milestone to get to that point. Thank you if you've been a listener to the next chapter for teachers podcast since the beginning. I really appreciate it, especially this year or this past season where I've been uh launching Teachaholic. Uh, your support and your listenership has certainly been helpful to getting a message out and spreading the word. And we're gonna go back and talk a little bit more. We've been talking some other topics concerning teaching and classrooms lately. We're gonna go back here at the end of our season because programming note, this is the second to last episode of season four, and then we're gonna take a little bit of a break for the holidays and come back in January. But I'm gonna come back around now and I'm gonna talk again about preventing burnout and dealing with the consequences of burnout or avoiding burnout rather, when perhaps not everybody else is on the same page as you. So let's talk more about keeping ourselves from ending up in a place where we no longer want to be a teacher or no longer can sustain what we were doing in the classroom. And we are making these changes, but just because we make the changes, we do the work, doesn't mean that it's going to be, and then they lived happily ever after. No, because we are not a singular force in our schools, we work with other people, and other people are indeed impacted by our decisions and our choices. So, what do you do when you start making changes to make teaching more sustainable and to keep yourself from burning out? But the people around you maybe don't feel the same way. They are not at the same point as you, or maybe they're very offended that you are choosing to stop doing things, go home on time, choose something else, change. It's not going over well. And sometimes this makes people want to stop doing the things that are keeping them from burnout because they feel that they are in the wrong or that they're doing something wrong, or this can't be right if everybody, or it feels like everybody is mad at you. So I get it. I'm just gonna say if you're saying, Well, I started making changes, or I decided to go home at this time, or I'm not doing this this year, and now so and so won't talk to me. I get it. I have lived this and I have come out on the other side. And I would not have written Teach a Holic if I didn't believe that you too could come out on the come out on the other side and reap the rewards of having a different mindset. So let's get into this. I get it that we all want connection and approval from our peers and our colleagues. I do too. I want people to like me. I don't go looking for a fight or looking for people to uh ruffle their feathers. We want approval, we want validation from those that we work with. And when you work in a school, you spend a lot of time together. Not that you wouldn't spend time in other professions, but it does become very close-knit. However, I do feel that that can contribute to some of the things that we allow to go on or the things that we allow about teaching or accept about teaching. And we've got to fix it because we can't continue on this way, and we deserve to live healthy, happy lives. The holidays are a hotbed of emotions. I've talked about in other podcasts how the holidays are not always a happy time, not just for your students, but sometimes for the adults that are in our school building. Sometimes there's a lot that we're processing as well. But if you are someone who has chosen to do less so that you could be more, either to your students or to your family, sometimes it gets a little more heated at the holidays when everybody seems to be doing more and maybe you are, it appears that you are not. I have lived through that too, friends. I understand when the expectations are high and it feels like you are slacking off, even if you are just choosing better, that it can make things kind of tense. And that tension doesn't make anybody feel great, but it's a process and you can get through it. So if you're going home on time or if you're declining extra tasks, and you feel that you are ruffling feathers or disintegrating relationships, you want to listen. You'll keep listening here. Nobody likes change. Nobody likes to have things or have people not be the same predictable predictable way that they have been for years. No one likes that. And it's always makes us do a record scratch moment where we're like, wait, what's going on here? This is not what I'm used to. But it's a fact of life that people change or situations change. We live, we learn, and we grow, hopefully. You hope that we can grow. But that tense environment or that season where people are learning to accept how things are going to be or what you are choosing to do differently, it can be tense, it cannot feel well, and it can make you want to run back to your old ways of doing things to please everyone and being the yes woman or the yes man, if there are any men that actually listen to my podcast. And I, if there aren't, that's okay. I'm cool with that. But you shouldn't feel like the bad guy, even if you do. It's natural to feel like, oh no, that I've done something hurtful to someone when you say, I'm sorry, I can't do that, or you're not able to keep doing the same things and you choose not to pick the same committee up that you always have. But if you don't make somebody mad, if you are not the bad guy in somebody's story, at least for a couple, a couple chapters, are you really making changes? Because what we need in education, what we need to do as teachers, is we need to flip the script. We need to do what is sustainable for us, what is enough so that we can go home and still have some bandwidth and gas in our own tanks to give to our families and give to ourselves. You know, teaching cannot be the thing that completely empties our cup every day. There's got something's got to give. That's the whole gist of this uh teachaholic movement, is that we have to change something so that we can make teaching a career that people can do for long periods of time without being burnt out, disillusioned, or unhappy, because that's not a good place to be. And it's not good for our students to have to deal with that, with the aftermath of what we experience. So it's okay if you're making people a little upset. I'm just putting that out there. And I have gone through all of this when I started to make changes to what I did at school and what I was going to take on extra and what I was willing to do outside of school hours, I did not make everybody happy. In fact, I made a lot of people upset. And it was not fun, it was kind of scary because I did not have the confidence that I should have had then. I certainly have it now, but I didn't have it about nine years ago. It's not fun. I'm gonna put that out there, it's not fun. But I will say this, it was necessary. It was necessary to go through the weeds and go through the yuck so that I could find peace and that I could create something that would allow me to stay in the classroom. And had I not gone through that yuck where people weren't happy and people kind of thought that I had abandoned them, or people just took it all the wrong way, and we're gonna talk about how you can't control what people think here in a minute. If I hadn't gone through that, I wouldn't be here now talking to you. It took big changes, big courage, and big steps to change things and to get where I'm at today. And it's worth it, and I believe you can do it too. If you reteach a holic, you will learn how you can start making changes in just seven days. Just putting that out there. So here's some things to remember when your colleagues are upset with you because you are saying no or setting boundaries, and they feel that they're being wronged, or they feel that you're not being a good teacher or a good team player. These are some things that you need to remember to get through that experience and get through the yuck so you can get to the other side. Because there is another side to it. I promise there's there is a better side. Good times are ahead. This is the first thing you need to remember, friends. Not everyone is on the same chapter as you in life. Not maybe not in the same chapter as teach a holic, but they're not going to be in the same place emotionally, mentally, uh, life stages. We're all in different places. And some people may never be on your chapter or get on the same page as you. I mean, it's sad, but there are some people that are going to live their entire lives or do their entire teaching career as a teacheaholic. And it's sad, it is unfortunate, but it is the truth. However, when you're making changes and other people don't understand it or they're upset by it, it's because they're not in the same place as you. They either have not come to the realization that they have to start doing things differently if they want to feel better about their career or their job or their life outside of school, or they're just not in the same stage of life. I mean, as a 43, almost 44-year-old teacher, I think about things differently than somebody who's 23, 24. I think about things differently than I did when I was 20 years younger. That just is, you know, logic. Okay, so people are going to interpret your choices differently. That's that's okay. That's normal. And it's okay if people are upset about that because they're just they just don't understand it yet. Sometimes you just have to accept that that's the case, but it's not you that's the problem, it's just the reality of it. Not everybody is going to be where you are or be ready to take that step. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't take it though. So another thing that you need to remember, number two here you are going to have your eyes opened. This is an eye-opening experience because you are going to realize who actually really cares about you when you can't meet everybody else's expectations, or and I hate putting this out here, feels kind of wrong here at the holidays, but I'm just gonna say it. When you can't fit their agenda. Yeah. Yeah, friends. Uh when you are no longer helping somebody get what they need, sometimes they back off and they don't really want you in their lives like they did before. You were you are going to see who's a true friend and who truly cares about you. It's eye-opening, it's a reckoning, but it's also necessary. Because I think we we all deserve to know who's really on our side and who really cares about us for us and not for what we can do for them. And I know schools, that's it's an ecosystem. There are people that you're close to, there are people that you work with and they're just your coworker, but they're not somebody that you're gonna tell everything to. I personally feel that we need to have greater boundaries between what we share personally at school and what we uh give of ourselves personally at school, but that's a whole other podcast episode. Um but yes, you are going to see some shocking or hear some shocking things when you start speaking up and taking care of yourself. It is unfortunate, but it is the reality. And it will probably be one of the most helpful things to getting through the other side of the brink of burnout. Move on the number three. So, number three. People are allowed to have these feelings. So people are allowed to be upset with you if you are no longer going to help them out with their project or your their committee. People are allowed to be disappointed that you aren't staying after school for something anymore, or that you aren't taking a student teacher like you normally do. People can have their feelings. It's okay. You're allowed to have your feelings. I mean, that's why you're deciding that you don't want to be burnt out, or you don't want to get to the point where you're burnt out. But it has nothing to do with you. How people feel, most of the time, it really has nothing to do with us. The people that we feel that, oh no, I've done something that it's no, it's it's usually not you at all. Usually it's something that they are dealing with internally. It goes back to number one here about they're not on the same chapter. Usually something that they've got to work out. And guess what? They do have to work it out. Just like you've had to work it out and get to this point where you're gonna make changes so that you can do the best for your students and do the best for yourself, they're gonna have to do the same thing. They're gonna feel some things, they're gonna be angry, but it's for them to work out. You're not a part of the problem there. That's on them. It's not for you to jump in and try to fix their feelings. It isn't. They're adults. And they've gotta they've gotta earn that too. Doesn't mean that you should be unprofessional, it doesn't mean that they should be unprofessional. Because nobody here is saying, hey, don't do your job. I'm just saying, hey, we've got to start doing things differently if we're gonna continue to be teachers for an extended period of time. So it's their perspective, it's their journey. You're gonna have to let them live it and feel it. All right, next one. Four. I really put a lot of thought into this. It might just sound like I'm just talking off the cuff, but I really did put a lot of thought into these because I know this is hard when people that you work closely with are not happy with you. I get it. I really, really get it. Okay, so number four. Back to people are allowed to feel what they feel. You do not need to over-explain yourself or accommodate or justify your choices or modify your boundaries to make other people better, to make it better, to smooth it up. You don't need to do that. That's totally that's unnecessary, and it's actually going to defeat the purpose. It will not make things better. Okay, it's just going to weaken your resolve. It's gonna make it look like you're not really being serious, and maybe you don't really mean it. Maybe you're just, you know, having a bad day or a bad whatever, a bad week, month, year, it is. You don't need to over-explain, you don't need to justify your choices to try to make other people understand. People will understand as much as they are able to, or what they're ready to at any one given time. You don't need to add to that. Now, if someone wants to ask, ask you, you know, why don't you do this anymore? Or why are you not staying after, why can't I find you after 3 30 anymore? You can tell them. I mean, sure, there's a there's no problem with just telling them, but you don't have to overtell them or try to make them see it your way, because they probably won't see it your way if that's a problem, if they're not there yet. But there's no there's just no need for that. That's a that's energy that you do not need to expend. And part of this is channeling this whole avoiding burnout process is channeling our energy differently and into different things so that we can live healthier and happier, not just for ourselves, but for our families and for our students and for the future. Because there's gotta be more than just this hamster wheel of stress and fatigue. And I know you can get to the other side of it, but there's no point. I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I've lived it. You do not need to just go back and try to make things better and explain yourself. It doesn't usually have that effect. And that's okay. Because people are allowed to feel how they're gonna feel. So, as previously stated, I already said this, I'm gonna say it again. Something else to keep in mind. I have not once said to not do your job. No one is saying don't do your job. Uh be a professional. Uh you and this is probably the most important time when you are making changes like this to avoid burnout, to be professional and to fulfill your your obligations and duties that you must do for your students, that you must do as your uh uh position as a teacher. Be there for the kids. That's why we want to teach, right? We want to be there for the kids. We want to do things for the kids that benefit the kids. Nobody said, don't do things for the kids. We have to rein it in to the point so that we are not destroying our health and destroying our emotional and physical resour reserves for our job. So uh keep that at the forefront of what you go into your classroom for every day. We're there for the kids. We're there to do things for the kids. But all the extra bells and whistles, they're nice. It's good, especially this time of year, to do fun things in your classroom if you're all if you're allowed to. I know that's sometimes that's a thing, but there are different things that we gotta do to meet requirements and rules, and we won't that's a whole other podcast episode. But do your job. No one said not do your job. But as far as all the extra things we do that we feel we must do to martyr ourselves, that's where we need to draw the line. Moving on. The next one. One more thing you need to remember why you started this. Why did you start making changes? Why did you decide it's time to go home? And the last bus is called. Why did you stop taking your papers home to grade and just integrating them during your planning period or finding time to grade them in pockets rather than they remember why you started this journey. When people are upset, when you feel the the boat rocking a little bit, remember your end goal. And your end goal is to get back from the edge of burnout so that you can have a happier, healthier teaching career. And so that you can go home and have something left for your family and your own personal interest and your dreams for the future and your goals. You can't have everything wrapped up in your classroom. There's so much more to life than that. So remember why you went on this mindset journey to avoid living in burnout. When people aren't happy with you, when you see the faces, when you hear the comments, because they will happen, you gotta think about why you started this and what's the outcome. If you stay if you keep making the good choices. Doesn't mean you don't slip up sometimes, but storms are a part of the journey. There were plenty of storms when I started making changes to come back from being a burnout teacher. But the storms are not the destination. I can speak with complete authority on that. That there is something so much better once the clouds part. And most importantly, I know you we've all heard the saying like time heals all wounds. Time will heal the wounds that are meant to be healed. So if there are people that are unhappy with you because you are doing things differently, you're setting boundaries, you're saying no, you're not agreeing to do everything that is just put upon you and expected to do it without even asking you first. If if you are making those changes and people aren't happy, the the time will heal the right wounds. So the right people will come back to you. The right people are going to realize, hey, I I was kind of wrong for how I did that or treated you. And you might get some apologies on the other, on the other side. And the people that never get it or don't get it, well, they weren't going to get it to begin with. And that is an unfortunate fact of not just burnout avoidance or a burnout prevention, but of life. But I can tell you that things are much different for me as a teacher than they were nine years ago. And it's a good difference. And my relationships with people are much better and stronger because I did not back down. I stayed on the straight and narrow to take back my time and my life. And things are better now. And I think I, in some small way, have probably inspired other people to do the same thing, to keep making good choices, even when it's not what everybody else is thrilled about. So to recap, I feel like I need to recap these things to remember for when your colleagues, your co-workers are not happy, when they get upset, when you are saying no, setting boundaries, making no burnout the end game. Not everybody's gonna think the same thing at the same time as you or feel the same way. You're gonna realize who matters who who you matter the most to. People can have their feelings. Doesn't mean you have to go jump in and solve them. It usually has nothing to do with you. Do do not explain yourself over and over or try to make it better. Don't. You can't. You can't. You can't make everything better. Promise, promise. Keep doing your job. Be a professional. Nobody's saying don't be a professional or don't do what you need to do for the kids. Remember why you started. There is good stuff on the other side. I promise. And if you want to read more about how to get to the good stuff and to get to a point where you are far, far away from the edge of burnout, please get your copy of Teach Aholic. It is available on Amazon and Kindle and in Paperback. It's the holiday season. And if you know somebody that would benefit from reading Teach Aholic, it would be a great thing to put on your list for this year. So thank you for listening, and I will talk to you next time. That's all for this episode of the Next Chapter for Teachers Podcast. If you like what you've 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.