25 Ways to Practice Self-Care and Avoid Teacher Burnout

I love being a teacher. It’s such a rewarding career, and it is such a privilege to get to be able to teach, inspire, and empower today’s youth. However, as wonderful as being a teacher is, it’s also a demanding profession. Throughout the year so many teachers feel overworked, overstressed, and underpaid. These three factors lead to teacher burnout, and alarming statistics show that the teaching profession loses many promising educators within their first five years on the job.

Take myself for example, I worked until 7:30 pm almost every weekday. I was exhausted and frustrated to the extent that I need to ingest extra nutrition or energy supplements to maintain my daily life routine. I could even walk to work the next day I worked until 10:30 pm in a row. After reflection, I suddenly realized that it was exactly called “BURN OUT”. This shocked me. Therefore, I started to consider the meaning of my life and how to keep a work-life balance.

As a teacher, it’s essential to maintain self-care. Here’s a list of 25 ways to help teachers avoid teacher burnout.

1. Keep positive notes from current and previous students in an easy-to-access folder or drawer. If you are ever feeling underappreciated or undervalued, look at these notes.

2. Make some favorable calls home. After a rough day, one of the last things you might want to do is stay after school to call parents. However, select a student who has shown improvement and make a positive call home. Not only will it make the parent’s day, but it might be enough to bring up your spirits.

3. Practice meditation.

4. Do yoga.

5. Take an art class. Some art classes even provide wine. For some people, this might be the best way to unwind after a long day of teaching.

6. Take a mental health day. Sometimes, you just need a day off. One important rule to follow when taking a mental health day is DO NOT THINK ABOUT WORK. Trust me, I know it’s hard. And as an English teacher, it’s tough not to take off a day to grade. However, that defeats the whole purpose of a mental health day.

7. Unplug! Choose a day and completely unplug. By doing so, you’ll escape the pressure from email and social media.

8. Do not add your work email to your cell phone. While it’s nice to have access 24/7 to what may seem like super pressing emails from students at 7 in the evening, those emails can wait. Either go into work twenty minutes earlier or stay twenty minutes later to handle email communications. By leading emails at school, you’ll remove some stress from your life.

9. Ask for help. Often we take on more than we can handle with blind optimism. Don’t wait until you feel so overwhelmed that it affects your job performance. Ask for help, and ask for help early on. Collaborate with your colleagues and plan together. Even if it means meeting during lunch or before school once a week, the extra support will help. 

10. Say no. It is okay to say no to people, especially at work. If you are feeling overworked and overwhelmed, the last thing you need is an extra duty or deadline.

11. Journal. I love these Erin Condren journals. The covers are so pretty, and the paper is high-quality so your pens won’t bleed through.

12. Read something for enjoyment.

13. Plan a spa day. You work hard, and sometimes you need to treat yourself!

14. Go for a walk, run, hike, or bike ride. Feeling the warm sun grace your skin will instantly set you at ease. Plus, the release of endorphins will help release some tension too!

15. Go on a picnic with your favorite people. Perhaps your favorite people include your family and children, or maybe it’s your besties. Whoever you picnic with, food, good company, and laughter will brighten your day.

16. Try a new recipe.

17. Play video games.

18. Binge-watch television.

19. Go to the movies. You will enjoy the night out and entertainment.

20. Leave your grading at school, especially over the weekend. The weekends are for you. Leave your grading at school so that you can truly relax and enjoy the two days off of school.

21. Go shopping. It isn’t called retail therapy for nothing. And while you’re at it, make sure to remember to ask if they offer teacher discounts!

22. Plant and nurture a garden.

23. Take a group exercise class. The excitement in group exercise classes is contagious. You’ll leave feeling thoroughly exhausted and refreshed at the same time.

24. Plan a weekend staycation. In doing so, you’ll get to have some quality time with the people you love while seeing your town in a new perspective.

25. If none of these help you, count all of the days you’ve been in school. Now tell yourself that for these many days you’ve been helping, teaching, and inspiring students. For these many days, you’ve been a constant in a student’s life. For these many days, you’ve made a positive impact.

Reference: https://www.thedaringenglishteacher.com/2018/07/25-ways-to-practice-self-care-and-avoid.html

10 Things Teachers Do That Parents Hate

1. Assigning homework on the weekend

My parents came to complain to my Chinese Teacher (CT) about this. They think the homework on the weekend occupied their family time.

Yes, as a teacher, I agree wholeheartedly here. Students should have their weekends free of the worry and stress of school. Everybody needs downtime to spend with their families and friends and find their passions and hobbies, without homework hanging over their heads.  

2. Lying to us about our kids

Some may call this sugarcoating to spare the feelings of the parents. Teachers do have a unique code that turns negatives into, well, not-so-negatives. For example, teachers tend to say, “Your child is a very hands-on learner,” instead of saying, “Your kid has their hands on everyone and everything in their path.”

Parents (some, not all) want and need to hear the truth about their children. This is the only way they can help correct the behavior. (Wouldn’t that be a Christmas miracle?}

3. Talking to you about how bad your child is in front of other parents

Well, some teachers are brutally honest and don’t care who hears them.

There is a place and time for everything, and most teachers respect the privacy of their families. It’s just the ones that scream, “JOEY’S MOM, I need to talk to you about how Joey peed in the water fountain today,” at dismissal time amongst every parent in the second grade. This can be mortifying for parents.

4. Punishing the whole class for the behavior of a few

Keeping kids in from recess or giving the whole class detention for the behavior of a few students often backfires and creates a poor teacher-student relationship. Parents get furious when their child is punished for something they did not do. It is the 21century now. We should avoid this weird group punishment.

5. Showing favoritism to a few students

To be honest, teachers are human, too. We have our preferences. We inevitably treat students nicer if s/he behave well in class.

Parents and students take notice in a class where the teacher has obvious favorites. We get it; some students are just easier to love. They participate, laugh at jokes, have good manners, and are easy to talk to.

But blatant preferential treatment harms everyone and can cause students and parents to distrust teachers and the school. 

7. Not giving timely feedback on tests

My parents love comments. If you are able to mention more details, they think that you are a good teacher. Therefore, you should comment based on your observation and the facts properly.

Parents love to hear how their child did on a particular test or assignment, so parents hate it when feedback comes in late. When assignments are graded a month later than they are turned in, there is no opportunity for students to improve their learning or get any parental support. Timely feedback is important and should be a top priority for teachers.

8. Ignoring parents

Teachers and parents think differently. Parents are eager to know the reply from the teachers, they may forget that teachers are human, too. We need some boundaries.

I am not talking about immediate teacher response to emails or communication; teachers should maintain boundaries. I am talking about teachers who refuse to engage with parents at all and never respond to any correspondence. Positive teacher/family interactions can be a key to positive student/teacher relationships.

9. Rewarding students for doing well on standardized testing

I have been guilty of this because the administration ties our value as educators to the results of these tests. Unfortunately, offering incentives will not change the results and will cause more test anxiety. 

10. Complaining about parents on social media

This is absolutely taboo! If we are professional enough, we just talked to each other privately.

Even though everyone needs to vent, it doesn’t feel good when an entire group of people gets blamed for some bad apples. So, when teachers make a blanket statement about parents being enablers and out of control, it feels the same as when parents blame all teachers for not doing their jobs.

As educators, we strive to have good partnerships with our families because it leads to successful students, which is our goal. Reflecting on practices that might interfere with positive relationships because parents hate them is critical to establishing a productive and collaborative learning environment. And don’t we all want that?

Reference: https://boredteachers.com/post/things-teachers-do-that-parents-hate-2

What’s up?

Recently, since B knew that I will not continue to work with him, he “freezes” me, which is nice and I don’t have to do tons of jobs. He behaves inconsistently. For example, he had no interaction with me for last few days, but when he came in this morning, he actively told me that I may need to sub for J. Therefore, I am really confused. Do I really need to talk to him about the issue or just let go?

If B still didn’t ask me to do any jobs, I would just pretend to be busy and do my own things and prepare for my Kindergarten lessons. It is just weird. I feel like he tried to calm himself and kept quiet. Do I really don’t need to mention anything to him?

B talked to me last week and said, “Pei-Hsuan, when will you come back?” with a really sad intonation. I am empathetic that he is such a lonely poor guy, but honestly, his style makes people who work with him lazy and irresponsible.

Kindy?

I subbed the 1st period and then went to the kindergarten to observe the classes,. It looked fine because I eill take over K3, which is the 6-year-old. They need a lot of movement and activities to engage their attention and participation. However, they looked Okay. I hope that I will have a smooth transition with M and perform the job well.

TBD

Since I was struggling about renewing my contract or not, I have felt unstable and lack of sense of security. Also, I do feel unfair that I needed to do so many jobs, but people around me were so leisure and casual. Then, I guess after B was informed that I am going to take over the foreign teacher’s job in the kindergarten, he only assigned a task for me, writing the exam papers. I think that he was shocked that I deceided to become a homeroom instead of working as admin with him. I don’t usually make any trouble and get people uncomfortable, but I am still wondering that when we were so busy for the speech contest until 10:30 3 days in a row, why didn’t he say THANK YOU face to face? Also, why did he just wanna give me the “leftover” coffee? I think that he is a deligent worker with easy-going personality, but his thoughts are really hard to understand.

I just asked J to add friends on Line with me and got refused. However, he did tell me that “I heard that you want to teach more. Don’t worry about here.” Now, I feel that all things at this school is weired and inconsistent. B may feel that I snitched on him or complained about the heavy workloading. However, I did not do anything. I just listened to my heart that I don’t want to do admin and I don’t want to be someone’s assitant any more. I like teaching. I am a licensed teacher. When I looked back, I feel it’s not worthwhile to sub here and there, worked until 7:00pm, and got exhausted without normal life. I need work-life balance, seriously.

In addition, I’ll observe classes in the kindergarten tomorrow for the while morning. I have lots of free time under uncertainty. However, I think that I will teach in the Kindergarten since May 26 officially and move back to be a homeroom teacher for higher grades in August.