31 May How Do You Avoid Teacher Burnout?

Education Week’s Blog highlighted the advice of Tish Jennings and other leading practitioners, teachers, and scholars about navigating the pitfalls of teacher stress and burnout.

“Research shows that the burnout process begins with emotional exhaustion—feeling depleted, out of emotional energy. We now know that teaching is an incredibly emotionally demanding profession and teachers receive little training on how to manage these demands. The first step in the process is to recognize the need for self-care. Like the procedure on an airplane, we must put on our own oxygen mask before helping another or we may not be able to help. Self-care involves providing a balance of for our physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs. Getting enough exercise and eating right is a good start, but we also need to tend to emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs.” — Tish Jennings, Ph.D.
More here.

Other tips:
“Have a life outside of school. When you are organized at school and go home at a reasonable hour, you have time to cultivate friendships outside of school (Edwards, 2014).” — Jenny Edwards, Ph.D.
More here.

“Being able to detach requires figuring out what you feel like when you’re starting to get stressed. Cliche, perhaps, but know the signs. Stress manifests itself with me via shortened patience, and chaotic thinking, with a severe decrease in my focus and attention. I know when these happen, I need to reframe and rethink these 10 fundamentals of my life….” — Wendi Pillars, NBCT
More here.

Full articles: “Ways to Avoid Teacher Burnout” “Response to Teacher Burnout is ‘Contagious‘”