Next Chapter for Teachers Podcast
Whether it's classroom management or teacher burnout, this podcast has you covered. Being a teacher isn't what it used to be. The need to meet students' educational and social-emotional needs can easily overshadow your own personal needs as a person outside of the classroom, so much so that quitting teaching may feel like the only option for a healthy life. The Next Chapter for Teachers Podcast, hosted by Dr. Erin Sponaugle, covers topics in education relevant to teachers that address the stressful issues that can cloud the joy of what teaching is meant to be, while offering helpful strategies to streamline teaching and address conflicts that arise in the classroom. Topics covered are teacher burnout, classroom management, trends in instruction and assessment, and self-care. Erin Sponaugle is a teacher, author, and speaker with the experience and insight to provide practical advice to other educators. Subscribe to this podcast to get ideas and inspiration for teaching in uncertain times. For more information on turning the page to the future of the teaching profession, visit www.erinsponaugle.com.
Next Chapter for Teachers Podcast
46. BONUS: Why You Shouldn't Feel Guilty About Teacher Burnout (Enjoy Teaching Again Interview)
The winter months of teaching can leave us questioning our purpose and feeling exceptionally drained by classroom demands. It's easy as a teacher to let guilt creep in when the weight of expectations and overwhelm leads us to the brink of burnout. In this bonus episode, I share my interview with Elizabeth Peterson on her Enjoy Teaching Again Podcast about why teacher burnout isn't your fault - and what you can do to change the narrative. For more of Elizabeth's trainings and resources, visit The Inspired Classroom.
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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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, this is Erin Spinagle for the next Chapter for Teachers Podcast. And for episode 46, I believe, I have something special for you since this is a snow day week, it appears, at this point, I have a bonus episode for you. This is my interview with Elizabeth Peterson for the Inspired Classroom. On her podcast a couple uh weeks ago for Enjoy Teaching Again, she interviewed me about my book, Teach a Holic and how teacher burnout isn't teacher's fault, but what they can do to take control of how they feel and their own personal needs. So I'm gonna play that interview for you today so you have something extra to listen to on your snowy week. And I hope you enjoy it.
SPEAKER_00:Hi, Erin. I'm so glad to have you here on the podcast today. How are you?
SPEAKER_02:Thank you for having me. I'm well, how are you?
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. I'm doing very well. So tell us a little bit about yourself and what you're doing in education right now.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I've been teaching for 23 years. I've been at the same school for 21 of those 23 years. I am currently an art teacher. I have taught grades three, four, and five, with fifth grade being the longest. And I, in addition to teaching in the classroom, am also an author. I've written two children's books and also illustrated them. And I recently wrote my first book for teachers, which is Teach a Holic, uh, a book about teacher burnout. Excellent. That has been keeping me busy, but I have been enjoying looking at ways to help teachers outside of the classroom by being able to provide resources and strategies for helping them stay in the classroom and have a teaching career that does not drain them.
SPEAKER_00:Excellent. I think we are following similar paths that way. We definitely want to keep our teachers where they are. So, yeah, let's talk a little bit about um something that's really near and dear to both of us, which is teacher burnout. Not just because we've both probably dealt with aspects of it ourselves in our classrooms, but because we've seen it in so many teachers around us. And so teacher burnout, um, you know, it's it isn't just something personal that's affecting a few teachers. It seems to be a little bit more systematic. So I'm curious, what do you think are some of those overarching systemic issues in the teaching profession that are really driving burnout in teachers?
SPEAKER_02:Well, that's true. That sometimes we have personal things that will lead to burnout, but the system is set to uh not be sustainable over time. Uh, the excessive workload, teachers are constantly being given more to do with ever nothing ever being taken away. And along with that, increasing workload is the unrealistic expectations that it's going to be done, it's going to be done well, and this is going to be the magic, the magic means that fixes the issues that we have in education. So teachers are expected to be able to uh fix everything with this brand new strategy or program that's going to be the one that works. Or at least that's how it's sold to everybody. And along with that, the reason for those things is high-stakes testing. And I don't think there is anything that can cause a teacher more stress and lead to more systemic burnout than the pressure that high-stakes standardized testing puts on our classrooms.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Along with that, along with that become is the not having the resources to be able to meet those needs. That coupled with the other things that might be going on in your school with staff shortages and the needs of your students, it's just a recipe for teachers to feel inadequate and to lead to burnout.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. It's like the classic do more with less and pile things more on top of our plates and get the job done no matter what. Uh, it's it's really it's become such a tough, tough job. Now, why do you think that teacher burnout does get framed by society really as being something personal that a teacher has to, that a teacher just goes through. And sometimes it's even considered like a weakness instead of it being like an indication of a larger problem that's actually going on.
SPEAKER_02:We, whether people want to admit it or not, we hold teachers in very high esteem. Even the people that are quick to judge teachers or that will say that the teachers are overpaid, they're getting their summers off, they deserve to be held even more accountable than what they already are held accountable. The reason why that we people say those things is because deep down, they do value teachers. They'd realize that teachers are the driving force that holds our schools together. So when things don't work out or things are not um coming to fruition with whatever we are expecting teachers to do, it's easy to pin it on the teacher, kind of like pin the tail on the donkey, pin the problem on the teacher. But the thing isn't that the larger problem is that it requires all of us to play a role in what's going on to support teachers and students and the issues in public education. It takes all of us, we all have a role as just citizens of this country and members of society to help our to help the children and to help our schools and our communities do well. But it's always easier to place blame. And it's easier to place blame on the person who is, you know, we think of morally as the one responsible for shaping our children's uh lives outside of their outside of their homes.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's almost like that's that's part of what maybe even causes teachers to view their own burnout as like personal. Um, you know, I've I talk with a lot of teachers who kind of feel that weight on themselves that it's their own personal failure instead of maybe recognizing that there is a bigger picture here. Um do you think there's there's something to that?
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Yeah. There there is more there, and it will take everyone, or it will, it's going to take more than just teachers to be able to help our society, help our classrooms, help our schools uh to to be what they need to be. But as a teacher and as a woman, uh, we do kind of get put in that that place where we feel that this is our problem, that we are at fault and we aren't able, we we are not able to measure up. Enough never seems like enough.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So how how what are some of the signs that a teacher might experience um in her classroom at her school that kind of show that this is this burnout really isn't personal necessarily? Maybe there's some personal, you know, considerations with every individual um, you know, situation, but but it's actually a little bit more about um that broken system that we may be dealing with. So are there signs that a teacher can kind of look out for?
SPEAKER_02:I yes. I think when when it's when you can remove the school part of your life from it and ask yourself, who am I as a person? Like, am I happy with myself as a mother, as a spouse, as a friend? We can look at those things or look for those things in our lives that we are happy with or that we feel fulfilled and feel that we are um contributing to. And then you can kind of see that you when you subtract the school part, that it is coming from what's expected of us in the classroom and what is expected from us in the system. And also some of these symptoms of burnout, you know, you can kind of trace them that will this that trace them that it's coming from how you feel based on what's going on in the classroom. So if you feel ineffective or feel like you're not measuring up, is it that you're not feeling that way because of what's expected of you at school or what's expected of you as a teacher? More so is it what's expected of you as a parent or as a uh as a spouse. Um, sometimes our cynicism and our negativity, is that cynicism and negativity about life in general, or is it about things going on at school or about your job, uh your performance? If you feel like you're not doing as well in the classroom, but it's you have to remind yourself it's what's going on at school, it's not what's going on in your life or in all of your life. We have things about ourselves that are good and that we can use for good, but we have to get past this point where we're letting school and letting the demands of the profession wear us down and not make not allow us to contribute those things to the rest of our lives.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. So, really being able to take a step back and almost separate things out a little bit and really take that moment to reflect on is this something that I feel consistently, or is it something that I feel really just when it comes to school and my classroom and and that type of thing? That's real that's actually quite helpful. Yeah. Yeah. I would I would encourage our listeners to actually even press pause and actually take a moment to really think about that because that can really be a good um a good eye opener for yourself. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:It was for me. That was a really low point for me about nine years ago. I I I completely burnt out. So I've been teaching for 23 years, but I have had some very high points, and I've had some very bottom of the bottom of the ocean low points as well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And it really took for me when I was at my lowest point where I was completely burnt out and unhappy with what I felt was every aspect of my life, but which is contribute, which was mostly being contributed by teacher burnout, uh, really separating myself from the classroom. And what did I what did I like about my life, or what did I feel fulfilled in in life or want to pursue in my life that wasn't school related, and being able to pinpoint what was going on at school with my responsibilities, how I was putting that on myself to keep working on things or overextending myself, you know, outside the classroom. I had to make that separation so that there was an errand outside of school and an Aaron at school. There had to be boundaries. And boundaries are, as women, sometimes something hard for us to do because it goes back to that moral context that, well, I should be giving all of myself all the time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. But then what we find is that so many teachers um it it starts to really impact their emotional and their physical well-being and on their joy, right, inside the classroom, which is something that you know I love to talk about here on this podcast, right? Is to be able to bring that joy back. Um, and and that teachers feel like their creativity has been stripped from their work. And I'm assuming, but tell me, uh you're finding that as well in people that you are talking with and teachers that you're working with.
SPEAKER_02:Well, along with the demands of the classroom increasing and standardized testing, the increasing um drive to raise test scores, do or have students do better, you know, more is being automated and more is being scripted. And many teachers, you know, one of the reasons why they want to go into teaching is not only to change lives, it's because they have a drive and a desire to use their talents and use their ideas and their strengths to make teaching and make learning a fun and enjoyable and creative experience for their for kids. Yeah. And then when someone tells you, we're not doing that anymore, here's what you're teaching, exactly, word for word, yeah, that really takes the air out of your balloon. And that's a hard thing to get back when it comes to joy, is when you feel that your your your creativity and your autonomy has been taken away.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:And as teachers, as a teacher myself, you know, I'm I'm now an art teacher for students in grades three through five. You know, that was big for me in reclaiming my joy and my desire to be in the classroom was getting into art education and being able to have that or have more of that autonomy so that I could be creative and meet my students' needs and put my own personal context in it. Whereas a book in a very scripted, strict curriculum will not be able to allow that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's good. And and how wonderful that you've been able to kind of switch your switch gears a little bit and and be able to provide that for yourself. So that's great. So let's talk about your book because it just came out. It's Teach a Holic, and it discusses, yes, in length, about reclaiming control, where teachers actually can. Uh what part of burnout do you think that are is actually within our control as teachers?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I think it's important uh to recognize what is not in our control because there are things that that are it's true. We we have no control over. You can walk into your school for the for the new year and something can be completely flipped on its head. Uh we can't control the demands, we can't control the the expectations or the increasing workload, we cannot control the students we're going to get. You teach the kids you have, not the kids you want. And uh we can also we can't always control our colleagues either. You know, we it's it's an ecosystem, a school. But we what we can control is our response. We can control how we respond to those demands, the workload, our classroom, especially this time of year when the holidays are in full force. We just got through Halloween, we've got Thanksgiving and the December holidays loading. Um, we can control how we view our role and our expectations. So something I talk about in Teach Aholic are the think traps that set us up for burnout. And taking that was a big part for me, just really looking, taking a hard look at myself at you know, the martyr mentality and those things that we we kind of those boxes we put ourselves in that really limit us and um affect our mindset. We can also control, and we may not say, oh, I can't do that, I can't, I gotta get this done, it's gotta be like this. And uh but we can control when our teaching and our responsibilities stop and our personal lives begin and when they take precedence. And it's not easy to leave stuff at school. It means you gotta change how you do things and change what you prioritize, but we can control where teaching stops and where uh the rest of our life is going to begin for the evening. Yes, and that is a big move in setting our in setting boundaries and saving yourself from burnout. And along with that, we control what we what we prioritize. And that's not just school stuff. We can we need to be on that list as teachers. We need to prioritize our own needs personally and professionally, but we have nothing without our health, not just our physical health, but our emotional and mental health. And you cannot be all you are meant to be to anyone without prioritizing yourself and your own needs.
SPEAKER_00:So true, so true. And I love that you brought up boundaries. We really need to, everyone needs to really consider what's really important. And like you said, your their priorities. Was there a turning point in your teacher journey where you realized you had to take your power back, get that control back as a teacher, and and figure out what that might look like for you?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, about nine years ago, 2016, a couple of days before spring break, I was at my breaking point. And it wasn't even wasn't even really the students that I had that year. This was back when I was still teaching fifth grade. It was just everything. It was all the things that I had expected of myself for years, and everything that I had done and had put on myself and the lack of boundaries that I had that I had never established. Right. It all came to a it all came to a head. And I remember I was on the couch after coming home from teaching, completely wiped, uh, feeling defeated, knowing that I hadn't been my best self, and knowing that the kids in my room were probably, you know, the reason why they probably didn't we had the day we did was because I was not 100%, so they weren't 100%. So what do I do to make things better? I get on Instagram. It's like because social media will make everything better, and that's actually an entire chapter in the book about our mindset with social media because what we see online and what we what we our diet on social media does impact our view of what we should be doing. Everything looks very filtered and pretty and clean on Instagram or Facebook, but that's not reality. And um, even if you're not on social media, like you've probably been on Pinterest or YouTube, those aren't always any better. But anyway, I got on Instagram and I just happened to be on there, and there was a teacher that had posted a quote about if you're not able to give your best self, don't expect your students to give you theirs. And it just to anybody else, they might have kept on scrolling, but to me in that moment, it just broke me. And I felt like a failure and I felt like a fraud because just two years earlier, I had been the state teacher of the year, and I just felt like I was not a good example, I wasn't measuring up, and that I had just pretty much just made a complete mess of myself and my classroom and my life. And Was that true? No, I was just in a very poor state of mind and I was in burnout. But just going, being at ground zero there, I there was nowhere, there was no going back. I think I might have just muddled through the last two days before break. But over that spring break, I had to have a come to Jesus moment with myself about what was my life going to look like. What I could not go on like this. It was not sustainable, my outlook. And that's when I just really started to make changes and think about my thinking and what would make me happy, what would make me feel like a good teacher again? And a lot of it came down to well, what do you really want for yourselves? Like, I don't want to take all my stuff home every night. Oh, that makes me so tired. And I'm I was resentful with that. It's like, well, let's what happens if I stop doing that? Well, I I'd started doing that. It's like, well, what would happen if I if I stopped doing that? And I did have to change things and I had to prioritize differently at school and you know, re-evaluate what I was going to value as far as what needed to get done, prioritizing tasks, but it made a difference. And then, you know, eventually it was also kind of like I'd broken it, I really needed a change before I'm teaching fifth grade from 15 years. Like, well, what about if you taught a different subject area? And so I looked at middle school and and I thought, what I love to teach art. Could I what about if I taught art? So I got certified to teach art. And when an art position came open, I took it, and that was that was good. So sometimes we just need a change in our environment, and it can cause us to reignite our love for the classroom. So it was not a it was not pretty and it was not Instagrammable, let's put it that way. But um, it was a slow crawl out of a deep hole, or maybe crawl, I guess you would crawl out of a kid, you crawl out of a hole. You'd climb out of a hole. You would climb out of the hole, you'd crawl out of the hole. But once I saw the light and got out, you know, I thought, you know, other people need to be pulled, I need to pull some other people back out of there with me because there's we cannot, this is what we have currently going on education is not sustainable. It's obvious in our teacher attrition rates. You know, we teachers need help. We need something different, and sometimes that different is gonna have to come from the teacher. It may not come from the system, may not come from the people above. It's gonna take us saying this is not the way it needs to be.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Amen to that. Yeah. So, okay, so let's dream a little here for a moment. If you could redesign the education system from the ground up to prevent burnout and have teachers find more joy and success, what would you how would you go about it? What would you do first?
unknown:Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_02:Give me the keys to the kingdom. I've got some things to do. Well, the first thing, and these are all very interrelated, I think, is our emphasis on standardized testing because that has really broken a lot of teachers and the scriptedness and uh progress monitoring that goes along with that. It's it takes up a lot of time that teachers would love to spend teaching and interacting with their classrooms and their students, but they can't because they are tied up in that. So I guess the bigger thing there is teacher autonomy. I would give the teachers back their control. And along with that, control is accountability and the expectation that you're going to do your best and meet student needs. But, you know, we we treat kind of teachers like they're the, we teach, we treat our all our teachers like the worst teacher. And that's really unfortunate with the amount of control and the amount of um the lack of freedom that we give with curriculum. But I would like to see the mindset be treat people like they're good and let them prove you otherwise, because there are a lot of good teachers out there that want to do good things, but they can't because they have these uh expectations with testing, progress monitoring, scripted curriculum, and they're not able to be all that they could potentially be to their students. So that's more than one thing, but if I could pick two more, go for it. I would work to I would work to protect teacher time because teachers get their time taken away a lot for their planning periods or their lunch periods or other times are taken away from them so that they are tied up with meetings and other things that are not giving them the time to get things done at school so they don't have to take it home or feel that they must take it home in order to meet the needs of their job. So I also want to see teachers have their time protected so that they can get things done with the allotted time that they're given to uh work on those tasks without having to have it bleed into their personal life. And the other one way that we have to address that and address the teacher autonomy issue as well, is eliminating redundancy. We never take anything away from teachers, they just keep getting more and more. And so many of the things that were expected of teachers that are expected of teachers, they're they're almost repetitive. It's like we need to condense some of this and be more concise. And you can still meet student needs and document and record and show you that you're meeting standards, but there's gotta be we've got to eliminate something. So that's the that's the uh that's where I'd start.
SPEAKER_00:I like those three steps. Absolutely. Yep, and I I wholeheartedly agree with all of those steps. Erin, you are so on the right track. All right. Excellent. Yeah. So as we're wrapping up, I'm curious um if there's something you could leave every teacher who's listening, maybe with a thought about burnout, um, that could really change how they see themselves and their work. What kind of what kind of thing would you want to say to the teachers that are listening?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I'll give you some quotes from the book or some things that I mentioned in the book or that I make a point of saying in the book because they do matter and uh teachers do matter and they are important. Regardless of what is said on social media or in a Facebook post or in an angry parent phone call, uh teachers are the dis if teachers are gonna be the deciding factor for student success and achievement, and it seems like we've really pinned it on them that they are within the system, uh, we've got to consider their needs as human beings. And uh sometimes that starts with the teacher considering their needs as human beings. We are human beings, we're not human doings. We have needs just like everyone else, and that needs to be put front and center just as much as anybody else's. And uh we do have obligations, we do have accountability, but uh we also have an obligation to ourselves to create a life that we want to wake up to every morning to to fulfill what we're meant to um fulfill on this earth, and sometimes that takes that means you have to take a look at yourself and what you want to do and put into this world and how you want to do it. And this is my favorite quote from the book nothing gets better until you are ready to save yourself and you are worth saving.
SPEAKER_00:That's wonderful. Thank you so much for that, Erin. Hey, listen, tell us where we can connect with you, learn more about you, um, get our hands on your book, Teach a Holic. Sure.
SPEAKER_02:Sure. Uh, you can follow me on uh social media at uh next chapter for teachers on Instagram. Excellent. Uh and you can go to my website, aarinspinagle.com, and you can learn more about uh Teachaholic and some of my other resources for teachers. The book is on Amazon, on Kindle, and paperback. Uh, and it's ready and waiting for you to dive into. You can also, if you go to my website, if you go to aarinspinogle.com/slash book, I have a Teach a Hollic action guide for free that you can download if you want to see what the book is about. It's meant to go along with the book. It has reflection questions and resources that you can use as you read the book to help make you help you make changes uh in your teacher burnout journey.
SPEAKER_00:That's fantastic. Thank you so much for all those amazing resources that you have for teachers. And thanks for coming on the podcast today, Erin. It was so good to have you.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:All right, I hope you enjoyed that interview with Elizabeth Peterson of the Inspired Classroom. If you're interested in more of Elizabeth's resources, you can go to the inspiredclassroom.com. And if you are looking for a good read on these snow days this winter, I will drop the link to Teach Aholic in the show notes below so that you can start reading as well. You can also get the Teach A Holic Action Guide for free at my website, which is aaronspinagle.comslash book. 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.