How do you avoid burnout as a reflective teacher?

Honestly, it's impossible to avoid burnout. We all experience it in different ways. It's what we do in our "down time" that determines how we approach our moments of burnout and how we seek assistance. Having a line of non-judgement communication where you can openly vent to another person, that can provide an outside point of view, and experiencing life. Yes, we are all teachers, however, we need to be more than our life's work. We need to be able to actually live and experience life. Learn to break away and unplug in order to fill our own cups prior to filling other's.

We need to be fully intentional on our purpose, no matter what that may be. As a teacher, I believe we should always teach others so they understand in all ways. Will they get it visually, kinetically and auditorily? My goal and purpose has always been for my teachings to be fully understood. The other thing we can do as teachers, is ask if they understand and then have them teach it back to us.

To avoid burnout, I relied on an old naval maxim that I first came across when reading "Two Years Before the Mast" - "Remember, one hand for the ship, one hand for yourself". Just as you would advise your students, recognize that sometimes "good" is good enough. If you take on too much, too much work or too much emotional load, you fail your students and you fail yourself.

A teacher is a teacher even outside the regular working hours. It is a mission rather than a job, for those who are passionate. A passion can lead your life, delusions can put a break. It is important to stay focused and understand which students are in front of you, but do not make it as a personal matter. My suggestion is: draw a line over what work and life should not cross each othet.

Teachers often think that it is imperative to make the most of every minute of the 180-day school year, which most definitely can lead to burnout. Reflecting on your strengths, values, and goals as a teacher gives you insight into where to focus your time and energy over the course of a school year. One thing I’ve found helpful to avoid burnout is creating a workflow over the course of a school year that cycles through sprints and jogs. Sprints are times of intense focus on the high value lessons that connect to your purpose and jogs are times to catch your breath and just enjoy the learning process.

As Principal of a high poverty, majority minority school with about two-thirds of our students being second language learners, one of the biggest challenges was learning to accept that small improvements are OK, even when they fall short of grade level standards. The School Leadership Team and I took every opportunity to celebrate small successes with students and staff. We always taught to the standards, but put great emphasis on growth targets and made sure everyone knew that meeting them was greatly appreciated.

You are just a human being and deal with all the challenges being close to all students you teach. It's important that you keep certain barriers intact and remind yourself. Mediate at least half an hour a day to readjust to yourself and find inner peace.

Clear short term vs long term expectations help both the teacher and the students. While some changes can be made with immediate effect others need more time and these must be communicated effectively with the students.

Whether it’s teachers, students, or administrators, setting realistic goals and expectations is imperative for success. We can just work our way out of every problem. We need to evaluate what we want to get done and how we can do it while maintaining good life balance.

I've long been familiar with the adage "Expectation is the source of misery." While valid in many situations, I find that, personally and professionally, expectations do matter. I believe the crucial aspect is pursuing improvement. As Voltaire wisely states: "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Expectations should be geared towards fostering progress, no matter how incremental.

Having a positive teacher support network is crucial to avoiding burnout - especially for new teachers. There is a wealth of research that shows there is a higher retention rate for new teachers who have a mentor teacher than for new teachers without one. Teaching is MUCH harder than anyone outside of the profession can imagine, so being able to reflect on your practice with someone who understands is vitally important. Also, inviting students to honestly reflect on your teaching practices will help you better understand what works in your classroom, and what doesn’t. You can easily do this in a variety of ways including an exit ticket, online survey, or a quick discussion group check-in.

Many times, teaching feedback feels punitive. Normal daily student feedback can feel overly negative. It's important that you find other avenues for feedback outside your immediate circle, even outside of your school. Other teachers with outside perspectives can help you be more realistic with your expectations and can share shortcuts to more effective practices when you are vulnerable and honest about your struggles. Learn to focus on leaning into your strengths rather than just improving your weaknesses. You can't be anyone other than you so be the best you and celebrate your victories and your recovery from your defeats with someone else. It will make them so much more productive!

Support plays an important and decisive role in avoiding burn-out. Burn-out is not an individual's issue. It is the team's issue and a top concern to address as soon as possible. "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link," and the way to make that weak link strong is through a strong support mechanism that helps both, the individual and the team. Having buddies for new teachers, regular peer-observation to grab best practices and a department-level brain storming session to improve the departments practices goes a long way.

For teachers to truly thrive, they absolutely must get support. And I am not talking about evaluations, but true 1:1 coaching that is a priority. This is not just needed for new teachers either. As a veteran teacher who is a lifelong learner and always looking for feedback and growth, I stopped getting good coaching and support because 1. those above me had far less experience and often didn't know HOW to coach so I ended up coaching them, and 2. newer teachers always get priority. So my coaching was often canceled as leaders believed I was just fine. And I mostly was, but that doesn't mean I don't want or don't need the feedback and support to grow.

As a primary teacher, recognizing that reflection is a collaborative effort is essential to fostering professional growth and avoiding burnout. Actively seeking feedback and support from colleagues, and/or principle diverse perspectives and valuable insights that enrich my reflective practice. Their emotional and practical support not only reduces stress but also avoid the sense of isolation that can accompany the teaching profession. Additionally, involving students in the feedback process by eliciting their opinions and needs not only strengthens the relationship but also enhances my understanding of their learning experiences. This collaborative approach creates a supportive network that contributes to a positive environment.

I work at an Arts school and my students tend to be very driven. Therefore, as a community we felt like we had a responsibility to keep them busy in order to keep them engaged. However, over time we learned that less is more so we became very intentional about content and assessment. Now we focus more on skill building so that these skills can be transferred across the curriculum. For example, for the grade 9s we focus on the following skills: summary writing, the supported opinion paragraph, research skills, oral presentation skills and essay writing. The essay is also adapted to the IEP requirements of the student so instead of writing five paragraphs, they might show their understanding using three paragraphs.

Taking time to reflect on the bright moments in the day is hugely helpful. While working in a very stressful, poverty and violence stricken community school, the bright moments in the day, the things that made me laugh, kept me coming back.

It was quite difficult for me to use reflection in my classroom. Let me be frank. How did I overcome this? We have the tools, right at our fingertips. Two tools that I use often, which have made a lot of difference in me and my students are the ClassDojo app and Reflect/Insights in Microsoft Teams. Off hand, asking colleagues for feedback, and students for what can be continued and what can be made obsolete in my teaching method too has helped.

I'm a big fan of reflecting with your class. Just ask them informally! Have that discussion with them and let it flow. The only thing I'd say is be clear with them about your own goals for learning. Reinforcement regarding what the class is about always helps.

Take up a hobby, go on vacation, play a board game with family or friends; if you are burntout odds are you've been overthinking everything already, so take a break. Just because you aren't directly recording or analyzing yourself doesn't mean you aren't reflecting. Your work doesn't define you, you define your work.

Setting Priority will not only help us to be effective, but will enable us to be stress-free and will avoid last minute hassles. Staying organized can prevent burnouts in any profession.

Realistically, just do what you can to find some sort of "balance". What I mean by this is find what works for you and try your best to stick with it; "balance" for one person may mean talking to friends every weekend while others may spend a whole two weeks over the summer to just isolate, decompress, and evaluate their whole prior year. Regardless of your "balance", try to keep focus on what will make the most impact for you overall, and remember that implementation is a process not a race.

Reflection for those that overthink can be inefficient use of valuable time. The extreme detail noticed can focus on magnified surfaces that do the job, but may have insignificant imperfections. Stepping back and looking at our work upside down or in a different light helps us see the overall direction and purpose. It reminds me of when you use a microscope and start to focus using the low power objective first. After the area is in focus, you switch to the high power objective. Setting a timer for efficient reflection becomes more focused and understandable. It keeps things moving forward and efficient.

For me, this became critical. I started meeting with myself each Friday to set my to-do list for the next week with priorities. For things of highest importance I even scheduled what day I would accomplish the tasks. Each week I review that list to see what I did and what I will push to the next week (these become the #1 priority). It was important for me to even schedule when I would make copies, when I would read/return emails, when I would grade, when I would plan, etc. And when I knew I was going to need time outside school to complete things, I set specific days and specific times to do it and refused to work outside of that. This really helped me create better balance to avoid burning out.

So much attention is being paid to what you are doing wrong. Instead, focus on what you are doing well and attempt to expand that aspect. That is where you are getting it right, enjoying the job, doing more of that will prevent burn out. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that some children have needs beyond that of learning, such as hunger, security, sleep, safe housing, and a safe place to be themselves.

I think that teachers are almost pathological at giving - but that's a problem. You can't pour from an empty cup. One of my favourite movie directors, Martin Scorsese has been making films for almost 50 years. In an interview, he was asked what his secret to his longevity, he stated he made "one film for them (the movie studio, the masses) and one film for me (passion projects and independent movies.) You have to make time to take care of yourself. As Jesus of Nazareth said, "love others as you love yourself." It's a balanced equation.

As a Teacher it’s important to hold onto your wins everyday, even on the days when you feel the most distraught. The smallest sparks burn into the brightest lights. Keeping yourself grounded and being present for yourself and your students will greatly reduce burnout. Leading to an improved quality of life for yourself as an educator and drastically increases your students success and happiness in your classroom.

You are a human being! I know you are passionate about teaching, and that's great, but as a human being, you have other passions as well. Pursue them to the fullest! The essays to grade can wait for an hour: go grab your Nikon and do some street photography; get your yoga mat and full-on Shavasana; toss the Frisbee at the park with your daughter. Part of not burning out is never forgetting that what you do for a living does not define you. It might be a huge part of who you feel yourself to be, but you are more than a paycheck-earner. Have yourself some pure, unadulterated joy time!

One significant way of self-care is to recognize and emphasize your identity beyond an instructor. Finding time to feed into and contribute to your other social roles is useful. Spending time with loved ones and communicating about work challenges with someone who is outside your work setting. Further, I practice self-care by pursuing some hobbies like paining and reading.

Yo creería que esté tip es el más clave. A diario compartimos con estudiantes quienes a la final son seres humanos al mismo nivel de los profesores, no somos mejores que ellos por ser educadores. En ese sentido, sus problemas y razones de ser son tan válidas como las de cualquier persona. Por ende, reconocer a los estudiantes desde su esencia es fundamental. Por ejemplo, tomarse como personal algún comentario no tiene sentido y además puede alterar nuestra estabilidad mental. Sin embargo, a veces puede suceder. Lo importante es recordarnos constantemente que la docencia es un trabajo de servicio incondicional. Somos guías, instructores impartiendo un conocimiento pero no poseemos la verdad. Esto se relaciona con la empatía.

Don't work for free. My biggest mistake during my twenties was believing that I had to take on a large amount of free projects in order to build a portfolio and a reputation. Unfortunately what is true is that others regard charity work with disdain rather than seeing it as evidence of virtue. This type of work on your resume does not have the same weight as paid projects - something many young adults don't become aware of until it is all too late. Should this be true? No. But the only thing we can do about it is to give full credit in our own considerations when we are hiring or selecting candidates.

As Namrata has already said, setting boundaries and these include setting boundaries with supervisors, colleagues and most importantly ourselves. There is a reason they are clearly defined working hours and teachers need to start realising that if it cant be completed within our working hours then it clearly means it shouldn't be completed. Home is for spending time with family not working.

I try to avoid burnout by actively setting clear boundaries in terms of my availability to students. Often students that come to you belong from a range of dysfunctional backgrounds. And being an educator in Psychology they seek non-academic support from me. I feel obliged to support such students because I know the difference that may make in their lives. I have always tried to help students beyond academics. They can learn academics from their books, but there is not book for life and that is where I feel I can make an impact. But I have set active boundaries with regard to my availability, and what is considered emergency. Setting such boundaries helps me to help them better.

I played with my grade 7/8 students. We played floor hockey, we danced, we made art, cooked and created games, every student was allowed to bring one guest to our in-class feast that they cooked, and I asked them for help in solving classroom discipline problems. I worked in an Indigenous school.

Change: This may sound counter intuitive but sometimes a change helps you appreciate what you love about teaching and bring those skills to a new work environment. While at the same learn new skills and challenge yourself in new ways. In 2018 after 21 great years lecturing in undergrad and post grad programs in Northern Ireland, I totally changed career to take up the CEO role of a social enterprise in the Republic of Ireland. The skills I developed as a lecturer: empathy and helping people stretch themselves were ideal for a new environment where helping people start and develop their business is core to what we do. So, I am still helping people to learn about themselves and their potential. But every day - I learn something new.