Managing Stressors to Avoid Burnout: Making It Sustainable

Stressors: Work-Life Balance & Staying Healthy

STRESSOR: WORK-LIFE BALANCE

Prioritizing—Sticky Notes 

“It is one of the areas I struggle with the most. I've learned to prioritize.”

“I have a ton of things on sticky notes. You know, ‘Check your emails.’ And ‘You got training videos to do.’ And that I have an I.E.P. meeting tomorrow after school. And that I’ve got to grade that test and do the curve. And I’ve got to get two more grammar books. ‘What needs to be done for tomorrow?’ is all I can say to myself. What needs to be done for tomorrow?”

Prioritizing Kids & Teaching 

“As much as I might struggle to fill in all those check-boxes and get everything done, who am I facing each and every day with the majority of my day? It's the kids.”

“I find that the administration is also pretty busy, that they might have more leniency as well if I don’t make what they ask me to do the top priority.”

“One thing I do is prioritize my lesson planning and then make sure I have a lesson I am proud of. And if I feel like I'm proud of my lessons, and everything has worked for that day, it doesn't matter how many sticky notes I have on my desk. I can kind of feel like I did a good job that day.”

“Teaching is more important than checking your emails (...) You know, all that stuff is fine, but did I teach the kids today? Did I have positive relations with them? And if those two are checked off, that's my core value. That's what feels good for me.”

STRESSOR: BEING HEALTHY

Finding Moments for Physical Activity 

“I’ve got to take care of my physical health more now. Earlier on in my teaching, it was about my mental health, and I would segment at least an hour a day for relaxation and leisure. What I would call couch time, essentially. If I could get an hour, that was enough to sustain me, and now it might not be that reality. I might not get that hour. But you know what, I haven't stretched in a while and I'm feeling a little achy, so let me stretch a little, and as I'm stretching my cats come over and I'm playing with my cats, and suddenly I get a half hour (…) It feels good physically, but also I'm engaging with my pets. There are these small moments I can find reprieve in, and it might not be every day—like I said, there are a lot of days where it's back-to-back, rushing from one thing to the next. So this is another thing that I'm working on.”

“I have a style of teaching where I'm walking around the room (…) That's how I get my steps in. So that's physical health.”

Joy & Meaning in Teaching 

“If I had to choose between teaching or getting to sit on the couch, I would choose teaching. So what's most important to me? Well, it's everything—just because it's called a job doesn't mean I can't get something out of it. So I go back. I focus on the positive relationships I had that day. I don't think about all these sticky notes. How I think about work will contribute to my mental health in a lot of ways. So I take joy in the work that I do. I wave off all the other stuff that stresses me out and I find meaning and purpose through that.”