A Classic Case of Teacher Burn-out

One of my son's kindergarten teachers burned out at Christmas time. The school hired another teacher. She didn't want the job after she saw what it entailed. Then they hired another teacher. She didn't like it either. Then they hired the student teacher and she stayed for about 3 years then got married and had kids.

I have total sympathy for you. I saw (from 1 way glass) the energy a kindergarten teacher needs and why a teacher would burn out. My son's class had 18 kids and 2 teachers on at all times. That's 9 kids to a teacher. Even then teachers still burned out.

I hope things get better for you. I don't have any advice as I taught English conversation to kids and adults and that was only a few classes a week. I couldn't have done it as long as you have. Teachers don't get nearly enough credit for what they do.

I am in year 28 of teaching. While I am not feeling burned out, I am totally exhausted by the end of the week and I understand your pain. New standards and national testing are exhausting. We have to be observed 6 times a year by my principal, have several different teams of observers that come through unannounced every month recording what I am doing. Every single day there is a new email detailing some new procedure for not only teaching but recording it all on the computer. Kids are tested and tested during instructional time so there is little time to do what we are supposed to do. I feel like I am being mommy and nurse to so many kids that I have never looked more forward to the weekend. I have so much grading to do on the weekends (but I won't) that I don't ever catch up! Keep on trucking and see if you can't get through this rough patch.


One great benefit of teaching is that your day flies by and you are never bored.

Seventeen years for me. There are many things I love, and it is a fulfilling career....but....I am zeroing in on that wall. I just can't imagine another 20+ years of doing this.

I hear you. (And I teach high school Engliish).

I am so, so sorry that you are feeling this way.  I taught 4th grade for five years, then quit.  Every day I was a failure, because there was always more that I could have and should have done.  More differentiation, better lessons, more attention to individual students.  I just couldn't stand the thought of knowing that I was failing every single day, no matter how many hours I put in.  That no matter what I did or how much work I put in, I was always leaving something undone.  (And trust me... there were a lot of hours!  An unbelievable amount of hours!  I never stopped working, it seemed.)  And this was 15 years ago!

So I feel your pain, and I am so very sorry that you are feeling this way.

If it's any consolation, you sound like an amazing teacher and person.  I hope you find peace soon.

After 12 years I switched to a specialist position. It helped me keep my sanity over the last 5 years. I actually volunteered to go back into the classroom, but my boss likes me in my current position.

If you have a good relationship with your principal, tell her how you are feeling. I am lucky. My principal really listens to her staff. She helps lighten the load when she can.

I've also picked up the mantra, "You can only do what you can do." I give 100% every day. I have had to learn to limit my extra hours. I don't skip lunch any more. I try to stay until 6:00 only a couple of nights a week. I know once I start giving too much, I'm going to end up at the doctor. I know how hard it is to find that balance, but you need to do it.

You are not alone. The demands on teachers - and students and administrators - just keep piling up. Common Core, a new evaluation system and all the documentation that goes with that, committees and more committees, testing, paperwork and more paperwork, Response to Intervention, workshops and conferences for professional development and documenting that, professional reading that you could spend hours a week on. The list seems endless - and then you add on other things like the Leader in Me program, with everyone just asked the other day to sign up for yet another committee. A couple years ago we also moved the entire school into a renovated building in the middle of the year - and we teachers did a huge amount of the actual moving. And oh yeah, we have those students who show up every day, the ones we are supposed to be there for.

I know almost no veteran teachers who would encourage their own children, or anyone else, to go into teaching. That may be one of the saddest things about the current educational climate. So many teachers are counting the years and days until they can retire, and way too many quit early in their careers.

You're feeling the stress, as many, many teachers do, because you aren't the type to settle for being "just good enough." You pour your heart and soul into it, as all really good teachers do. You need to make time for yourself, and realize that there will always be more that you could be doing - but sometimes "good enough" is really OK.

If you are at a true burnout stage, you need to make some changes so that you can continue on, if that's what you want. Say "no" when you can, take help where possible, and make time to just breathe and relax and do things for your own health, mental well-being, and personal satisfaction. I've read your posts, visited your blog; you're the kind of teacher parents want their children to have. But you can't be that teacher if you don't take care of your own needs too.

I took early retirement after 29 years of teaching.  Your situation sounds dreadful with all the lesson plan writing required of you...what a waste of time.  When I look back, I am disgusted thinking of what a terrible time suck faculty meetings were.  I loved teaching kindergarten but would have quit if I had had to write out the lessons plans being required of you.

What I find so amusing is that many veteran teachers I know talk about having only "5 years to go" or "9 more years" or whatever the case might be until retirement. It sounds like we're in prison counting the days until we get out!!

I'm in my 19th year, so only 11 more to go. (I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...)

This is my 21st year of teaching middle school art. The past 3 years have sucked most of the joy out of what I do. At the last meeting I went to they used 17 different acronyms. The amount of documentation we have to do is crazy. The amount of work we have to do for the teacher evaluation system is crazy. The number of pre- and post-assessments we have to do is crazy.

And I teach art. I can't imagine teaching language arts- the work load is ten times as bad. I don't know how everyone does it.

It is just depressing because I spend so much of my time doing things that don't actually have to do with giving my students a good art education. 

Fourteen years to go...

Yep.  Our principal just quit a few weeks ago.  He couldn't do it any more.  Now we're all on pins and needles to see how the new principal is, because you know they're bringing in someone even more gung-ho about the test and data culture - those are the only kinds of principals who survive in my district.

I got mostly threes (out of four) on my last evaluation.  Three is considered "effective," four is "highly effective."  The way the rubric is set, it's almost impossible to make fours in a specialist classroom, and to try to do so would not improve music education - just the amount of time we spend on paperwork and assessment.  I told my evaluator (who is not the principal) that I wasn't interested in making fours.  I was interested in improving myself as a music teacher, and that the four level on that rubric would not do that.  I also told him that if I was expected to differentiate my teaching for the many learning levels and styles of our 850 students, it seemed the least the district could do was to design a differentiated evaluation appropriate for teachers in the arts who see their kids once a week.

He kind of laughed and said, "I think I won't write that last part down."

It's just frickin' ridiculous, and gifted teachers are leaving the profession in droves.

What's a miracle is that there are still many great things going on in our classrooms.  Teachers are teaching and kids are learning, but all this nonsense the state has us doing isn't improving teaching or learning.  We're doing good work in spite of the extra hassle and paperwork.  

Personally, I've been talking with a recruiter about making a move to corporate training.  It's hard because there are so many aspects of my job that I love, and I think I'd be bored to death in a corporate environment.  But even without the extra hassle and paperwork, teaching music well in an environment that treats arts educators like overpaid babysitters so the classroom teachers can have their planning time is physically and mentally exhausting.  

Six classes back to back (because I have to have my planning first thing in the morning, and have it interrupted a thousand times by the announcements, kids turning in papers and money, parents who "just wanted to stop by" after they drop their kids off, etc.) and I have to be on and leading the group for every second of every one of them.  My planning period is 45 minute, and the "real" teachers get 55.  There's no recess in the music room, there's no silent bell work, there's no silent reading time, there are no group bathroom breaks, there's very little individual work.  There is no time for the teacher to take a breath.

My classes are larger because I get a whole homeroom class plus 2-4 students from one of our self-contained classes.  There is no limit beyond that imposed by the fire code for how many they can require me to have in each class.  If one of my specialist colleagues is out and their sub gets pulled to cover a "real" class, I may have double classes all day.  Many of the sped. students come without an aide, even though they have one the rest of the day, because the aides are stretched so thin and the sped. teachers need them to stay in the classroom so they, too, can have a planning time.  So I sometimes teach an entire class while gently holding the hand of a child who would otherwise be running around the room banging on the instruments, messing with the computers, etc.

I introduce, lead and close six complete large-group learning activities each day and I am so. freaking. tired.  The lessons have to be planned to the nth degree to maximize the short learning time I have with each class each week.  There is no "oh, we didn't get to that today; we'll do it tomorrow" in the specialist room.  I see each kid for a maximum of 36 hours each year, minus any days missed for field trips, illness, holidays, etc. and I have to get through an entire year's content in that time. I plan different lessons for classes in the same grade level based on their ability.  I see every special ed. student in the school and my lessons have to include documented differentiation for all their different special needs.  

I put on two whole-grade-level performances each year without the help of any other adult, I run three after-school group rehearsals each week and do three evening concerts and an off-campus performance trip with them each year, I produce a music video with 5th grade each year for their promotion ceremony.  I write my own curriculum and planning calendars since the district doesn't see fit to provide those for "just" the music teacher.  I mentor new music teachers in other schools and run the district's elementary choral festival.  And now I create and administer BOY and EOY assessments for 250 students in two grades even though these things are meaningless, just because it "wasn't fair" that classroom teachers are evaluated in part on test scores and I wasn't.  

I greet every class and every teacher, every day with a smile and a lesson ready and in return I frequently get scowls from the teachers.  Or worse, the teachers send the class down to my room unsupervised because it's "just too far," and the kids arrive breathless, running and pushing each other and shouting, and I have to spend the first five minute of my class time getting them settled down.  The classroom teachers resent the five minutes I get between classes to change out my equipment and use the bathroom (because there is no partner teacher next door to watch my class while I pee) and frequently bring or send their kids early and pick them up late (or not at all, and I am forced to use my five minutes to walk the class back upstairs).  Or, in a few cases, they bring their kids really late because they were trying to wrap things up in their own classrooms, and I am left to cram a 55-minute lesson into 40 minutes.

I realize that a lot of the antagonism comes because the classroom teachers are so desperately overworked themselves, and the grass always looks greener in somebody else's classroom.  But dammit, I am at school just as early and just as late as y'all, and spend my evenings and weekends doing planning just like y'all, and a little respect would be nice.

Respect, however, does not ensure that I'll be able to physically do this job forever.  It is just really, really difficult.  I know music teachers who have been doing it for 20 or 30-plus years, but I'll be honest: I've been in their classrooms and the instruction is usually not very engaging.  They're resorting to a lot more textbook-type, learning "about" music instead of actually "doing" music.  Because they simply can't physically do it anymore.

So that's my little pity party for today.  Sorry for the novel.  I'm going out for a quick run and then have to get back and finish up this week's lesson plans.

I'm not a teacher so I have no advice for you, I just wanted to say how much I admire and am grateful to teachers like you who teach young children. You have to have the patience of a saint to deal with young kids and all their constant needs and whininess and spiritedness and button pushing and bad tempers, etc. etc.. I remember being room mom for my boys' 2nd grade class and coming out of the class room EXHAUSTED after spending just an hour with them! I hope you find a way to push through this funk because the world needs teachers like you!

Honestly, bleam NCLB, Race to the Top, and your state legislation. School districts are implementing what they have to to be compliant. Some may be on board with all this crap, but many just pay lip service to keep their jobs.

I give kinder "free-choice" centers for ten minutes at the end of music class in part because the kinder team isn't allowed to do it anymore.  It's kind of a wink-nudge thing with admin.  They know I do it.  They don't like it.  They know I'm not going to stop doing it. Those babies get 20 minutes of recess and 30 minutes at lunch each day and that's it.  They need more time to PLAY.  Good for you guys for holding on to it.

Try to hang in there.  I was hoping we'd get new leadership in this state that would better fund education, possibly leading to smaller class sizes, more aides, and reduce the testing/data load, but that didn't happen this election.  I keep hoping someone somewhere will hear what teachers are saying - actually hear it - instead of dismissing it as whining and telling us to do more with less.