Once upon a time, I lived in a bubble of discontent. There was always something that would steal my “happy”. It could be a student’s behavior, curriculum woes, or even losing my favorite grading pen. When I look back on it now, I see how completely exhausting it was to be that unsatisfied with my world around me. I’m sure I was exhausting those around me as well. I was just clueless to how far I dove into this pit of despair.

And then it happened.

I can remember the day and hour so vividly. I was sitting among a few of my students during a mini lesson. One particularly challenging young man laughed at a humourous comment made by another young man. We all laughed at his comment, but the sound of his particular laughter was unlike anything that I had heard from him. It was the type of innocent child laughter one might hear from a child watching a Disney movie. I could only stare in amazement because I finally saw the little boy and not the rough around the edges kid who left trouble in his wake.

That evening, I went home and shared the moment with my husband. Through tears, I explained how it affected me and how wonderful it felt to have that small moment. The next day, I found myself looking for little moments. I wanted to see the moments I was missing by being constantly frazzled by deadlines, paperwork, and the non stop routine that being a teacher can bring to a day. I found three things that day. Three small moments that brought me a little happiness. The next day, I did the same thing and found a few more small moments. It continued day after day until I found myself finding five things during my day.

Each and every day I make it a practice to silently review the five things that have brought me some bit of happiness. Occasionally, I share them with others either by talking about them or posting them on my Facebook page. Not everyday ends in sunshine and rainbows. And I still get frustrated a time or two at curriculum changes or the lack of parental support. It just comes with the territory of the field we have chosen.

It’s a challenge not to become overwhelmed with the demands of both work and home. Ruts occur. Burnout can rear it’s ugly head. However, there is true joy in teaching. If we examine the day close enough, we can find things that make us completely thrilled to be a teacher. It starts with one thing. Only one small moment can become five things in no time. All we have to do as educators is observe. I mean really observe our surrounding. It’ll change your outlook.

Teaching is emotionally intense. Along with the pressure of working with adolescents and children. There are short deadlines and an expectation to go ‘above and beyond’ every day.

Here are five factors that make burnout more likely:

Grading is time consuming. That’s nothing new. You could spend so much more time differentiating instruction and remediating if you had a little more time on your hands. Technology is here to help. Let’s talk about some of the self-grading tech resources that are available (for free!) to help you out.

The one thing I hear most from teachers during the school year when I talk to them about tech integration goes something like this: “That whiteboard/iPad lesson looks great, but I just don’t have time to create something like the on my own.”

My response to them is generally something like: “Me neither! That’s why I searched for a lesson somebody else made, then I made a few minor changes to it, and I was ready to go!”

That’s because I put a lot of faith in the PLN (Personal Learning Network). I’m on Facebook or Pinterest all the time anyway, so I take note (or favorite, share, or just take a screenshot) of great resources I see other people posting so I can use them myself. Sometimes I’ll post a resource of my own, but I freely admit to being a social media lurker.

When I think about teachers who truly influenced me, they all had one thing in common: they knew me. They understood my strengths, weaknesses, sense of humor, encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone, and took interest in my life outside of school. They cheered from the stands at my championship soccer game, held high expectations for me academically, and would never hold back from calling me out when I was slacking off.

Of course I also had many teachers who weren’t as influential – they didn’t know me. I remember sitting in their classes, staring at the clock waiting for the bell to ring so I could run off to my next class where I would get a friendly ‘Hello’, was asked how my SAT prep was going, and received a well thought-out lesson that was both engaging and challenging. I had an immense amount of respect for these teachers. They clearly worked hard to master their content, develop creative and effective lessons, and went above and beyond to form real connections with us. That is the type of teacher I want to be.

Knowing your students doesn’t mean you have to be the basketball coach or start a robotics club (although that would be fantastic). Knowing your students means understanding students’ strengths and weaknesses. Knowing what engages them most. Knowing how to push them to be the best they can be. Providing opportunities for students to think outside of the box and show their creative side. Challenging them. Treating them with respect. And of course giving the occasional high-five 🙂 You get the idea.

Remember, school isn’t everyone’s ‘thing’. Some teachers forget that the reason we are here isn’t just to teach students about DNA or the quadratic formula. Although academics might be the reason our profession exists, we must remember that we are also teaching students how to be be hard working, persistent, self-motivated, and respectful individuals – which in turn will lead students to success in life, whatever that might look like.

The November Dip is an annual occurrence in the Northern Hemisphere school year where teachers start to lose motivation before the big holiday at the new year. November is physically hard for most people in the North. You go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. The daylight hours, such as they are, are brief and shrouded with clouds.

For teachers, the high enthusiasm of year planning in early September has started to run dry. The new year seems like an age away, even as the shops play holiday songs on repeat. The students are tired, the teachers are tired. It’s a tough month. But if you know what’s coming you can prepare:

Having a whole-class conversation might seem easier than it actually is. I was in a colleague’s 5th grade classroom last year, and I watched her sit at her desk, grading homework assignments, while she instructed her students to talk about the latest CNN Student News that they watched. They walked to the front of the classroom, sat down in a circle and I watched in awe as one student took the floor and spoke, and then other students agreed or disagreed and provided insight to their thoughts. The teacher was not facilitating it at all, but occasionally jumped in to authentically participate in the conversation.

This is an advanced whole-class conversation, and in order to get to this point, there are many foundational aspects that need to be in place. First of all, as the teacher, you need to prepare the students with academic discourse, specifically guidelines and sentence frames. The guidelines are pretty consistent for all circles: one person speaks at a time, everyone’s opinion is valuable, don’t yuck someone’s yum (speak respectfully of and to all opinions), stay on topic, speak from your heart, etc. Possible sentence frames vary with each conversation. I recently had a whole-class conversation where students looked at a map that showed where certain spiders lived and in what populations, and they were prompted to discuss where they would want to live. Some frames that I used included: I would want to live____ because____. I agree with ____ because . On the map it shows so I think______. I disagree with _____ because____.

As you might have noticed, the only time the teacher was involved here was in the preparation. I teach 3rd grade and my students have not mastered having a conversation on their own, but they have become more successful. My part is usually one where I refocus the conversation, or where I add an opposing viewpoint, or change my viewpoint, depending on where I want the conversation to go. The thing about whole-class conversations is that you really never know where the conversation will go, but if you have a teaching goal, you can always end the conversation with that, as a transition into the next lesson.

Student A: “Ok, on to number 4.”

Student B: “I think the evidence shows that Hamlet is a hedgehog.”

Student A: “The evidence shows… that Hamlet is a … how do you spell hedgehog?”

The voice comes over the intercom on the plane that you sat down on just minutes ago. The common message we have heard one hundred times comes over the loudspeaker. “…A passenger should always put on his or her own oxygen mask on before helping children or other persons requiring assistance.” If only this message could come on in our homes, maybe through the tv, to remind us to take care of ourselves first in all of the other areas of our lives!

There is nothing more important than taking care of YOU – physically, emotionally, mentally, etc. Successfully taking care of ourselves allows us the ability to better support those around us from 7:30am-3:00pm Monday through Friday (and the other times as well). However, so often the days turn into weeks, the weeks turn into months, and suddenly we have lost ourselves in lesson plans and paper grading, test scores and IEP meetings, progress reports and open houses. Some may refer to the feelings that can start to arise as feeling “burned out”, “spent”, or for some even feeling “compassion fatigue”. Whatever the feeling is, many of us have felt it before. It might be before winter break, before spring break, before summer break, or with no break in sight at all. We may feel physically or emotionally drained. There doesn’t seem to be enough gas in the tank to keep us running.

What do you do to take care of you?

When I was in kindergarten, my parents went to meet with Ms. Shanebourn and brought home what I would later call a report-card. In reality, it was like the check-list you fill in at a sushi-bar: plays well with others, cleans up after snack, spicy-tuna rising sun firecracker roll.

In middle school, the list was shorter, and letter grades appeared, but there were also areas for additional remarks. That’s where I learned that I am “funny” and “a pleasure in class.”

In high school, my grade was a letter with a few electronic tics next to pre-fabbed comments. There, no news was good news.

In college, just letters. Most were good. A few bummed me out. (Darn you, Stats!)