Teachers carry the burden and responsibility of all their students regardless of their age and gender. The educational sector of an entire country relies on the shoulders of these professionals. They shape, mold, and develop the personalities of a whole generation. But can a tired teacher carry anything at all? The answer is scary!
The Realities Of A Teacher Burnout
Teacher burnout is a depression that comes from the workload, and it’s not pretty! Overall, this is what a burnt-out, tired teacher looks like:
- They lose interest and pleasure in activities.
- They feel fatigued all the time.
- They have continuous mood swings.
How to Identify Teacher Burnout?
According to experts, professionals, and research, there is a significant overlap between depression and burnout. Hence, the signs and symptoms of both are quite similar. The essential characteristic of a tired teacher is not finding pleasure in things they previously found enjoyable. Some other diagnostic symptoms of this condition include:
- Cynicism, which means the feeling of being detached from life and work, becoming pessimistic, and isolating oneself.
- Emotional and physical exhaustion resulting in 24/7 tiredness, insomnia, concentration problems, forgetfulness, anger management issues, and anxiety.
- Feelings of not being enough, hopelessness, apathy, irritability, and self-loathing.
5 Ways to Avoid Becoming a Tired Teacher
1. Set boundaries
Setting healthy boundaries is essential, whether it’s for work, relationships, or anything else in your life. When it comes to teaching, understand the differences between responsibilities and extra workload. First and foremost, stop saying yes to favors and tasks you cannot manage. It is entirely okay to be a little selfish and analyze your own time table and health before accepting a request or doing someone a favor. You can always avoid over-time, extra tasks, and additional responsibilities that are not a part of your job description. And if you don’t think you can manage it, that’s what you should do – avoid them!
2. Balance work with life
The primary cause of a tired teacher is that they fail to balance their life and work. It might take some (or a lot of) time and effort to find this balance and maintain it. But you must give it your attention. If you lean more towards the former, the balance is disturbed, and you will inevitably be overwhelmed. The burnout will come sooner than you expect!
Make sure you find a hobby and indulge yourself in it every now and then. Spending quality time with friends and close family should have equal priority as your work. Go on dates with your significant other, hang out with your kids, go to your mom’s place for breakfast. Find ways to balance your hectic week with a relaxing weekend.
3. Social networking
Having a supportive and encouraging social network is immensely helpful in preventing becoming a tired teacher. Have an active social life that you can lean back on when you need to take a breath. Your social life could consist of your colleagues, old friends, family members, cousins, or literally anyone! They could be relevant or irrelevant to your teaching profession. All you need is a lively group of people you can talk to when feeling overwhelmed, intimidated, or stressed.
4. Self-care
More often than not, a tired teacher will look and feel like a mess. These individuals completely stop taking care of themselves, physically or mentally, sometimes even both! Thus, if you want to avoid such a severe burnout, make sure you give yourself a little bit of time every day. This time could be a shower before you go to bed, ten minutes of meditation in the evening, a nice walk in the morning, or just a cup of coffee during the day. Make sure you do something nice and thoughtful for yourself every day, something that makes you happy and relaxed and takes your mind off of the stress for a while.
5. Pre-plan
Even though some think that pre-planning is just more work on top of work, it saves you a lot of time and effort. Pre-planning means that you have already done all the critical thinking, planning, and deciding. Now all you have to do is implement the plan! If such a habit saves you from a lot of stress at the final moment, then it’s easily worth it. Plus, it helps you avoid most of the things that could go wrong. Therefore, pre-planning is one of the best ways to prevent additional stress.
Final Thoughts
Indeed, working on yourself is an essential part of avoiding burnouts. However, you can also share or reduce your workload to prevent such a disastrous situation. Tools, technical equipment, and software can help you train your students better and improve their skills. For example, Keyboarding Online significantly improves children’s typing skills without you having to do a lot of work. Such tools and software share a large portion of your workload. Let tech share some of the workload and avoid becoming a tired teacher.