{"id":19449,"date":"2023-08-28T16:16:50","date_gmt":"2023-08-28T05:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.educationperfect.com\/?post_type=article&p=19449"},"modified":"2024-09-20T14:03:48","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T04:03:48","slug":"post-burnout-reflections-from-a-tired-secondary-teacher","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.educationperfect.com\/article\/post-burnout-reflections-from-a-tired-secondary-teacher\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-burnout Reflections from a Tired Secondary Teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Talk of burnout has undeniably entered school staff rooms around Aotearoa. While it has been a hot topic in the corporate world for a while now, and almost a rite of passage for lawyers and doctors, teachers have long accepted their heavy mental workload as part of the job. That\u2019s changing though, and the start of the year provides a good opportunity to open some honest conversations about how things are really going.<\/span><\/p>\n

I experienced burnout last year. I had been teaching at secondary schools for 11 years and was leading a large learning area. Things were not great but I wrote it off as a \u201cpinch point\u201d in the school year, stiffened my resolve and found new reserves of capacity to cope with the workload. It wasn\u2019t until a termly check-in with my line manager that I really stopped. He began the meeting by simply asking, \u201chow are you?\u201d Determined to suck it up and get on with how the department was progressing toward the annual goals, instead, I burst into tears and told him how I really was.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

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I hated going to work. I felt sick arriving at the building and wanted to cry when I checked my emails. I was putting off important jobs. I couldn\u2019t prioritise the many things I had to do, and it was starting to affect other people. So I went to see my GP who explained what was happening and signed me off work for four weeks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The World Health Organization\u2019s definition of burnout: \u201ca syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that\u00a0has not been successfully managed<\/em>.\u201d<\/strong><\/h4>\n

It is characterised by three dimensions:<\/p>\n

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  • Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion<\/li>\n
  • Increased mental distance from one\u2019s job, or feelings of negativity or cynicism related to one\u2019s job<\/li>\n
  • Reduced professional efficacy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    In 2019 the WHO redefined the term burnout as referring \u201cspecifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    So I was feeling like this because of my job, and the inability to manage the associated stress. And I quickly found out that I wasn\u2019t the only one. Lots of colleagues \u2013 many of them experienced, high-performing teachers \u2013 approached me to share their own stories.<\/p>\n

    Burnout and workload-related stress is more common than we like to admit. Teachers tend to give more of ourselves than we have in reserve \u2013 and let\u2019s be honest, there\u2019s a bit of a martyr complex going on for many of us too \u2013 I don\u2019t think we\u2019re very good at talking about it.<\/p>\n

    Suzi McAlpine\u2019s\u00a0Beyond Burnout: How to Spot It, Stop It and Stamp It\u00a0<\/em>is the first book I read to help understand what was happening last year (classic teacher move) and I highly recommend it for middle and senior leaders. It refers often to the 2020 Cogo Workplace Wellbeing Survey (NZ) which showed that education professionals were the most likely to show signs of exhaustion (86%), a lack of engagement (71%) and depersonalisation (35%) all of which are all red flags for burnout. I wonder how those stats might read now, after three years of illness, masks, rostering home, student absences and all the accommodations for NCEA?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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    Teaching is an intensely human profession. We spend our days talking, listening, reacting, pre-empting, reassuring, decoding and defusing \u2013 often all at once and with a target audience of erratic \u201cemerging adults\u201d. That\u2019s part of what makes the job varied and, most of the time, a lot of fun. But it has also been documented that a teacher must make tens of thousands of micro-decisions each day. This constant decision-making takes a toll on our mental load, and means that many aspects of the job follow us home. A colleague describes it as letting students \u201clive rent-free in our heads\u201d. As a curriculum leader I often let colleagues or SLT take out a lease too.<\/p>\n

    The beginning of the school year, marked by fresh stationery and crisp new uniforms, is a time of hope and possibility. With it always came a touch of idealism for me as I planned cutting-edge units of work that surely, this time, would tap into the zeitgeist and transform my students into avid readers and writers. But reflecting now, what I really needed to plan was how to manage the stress when the inevitable pinch points of the secondary school year took hold.<\/p>\n

    Weirdly, I\u2019m glad this happened to me. I now know that keeping our performance up in spite of a low well-being is a precursor to burnout. Better yet, it forced me to find practical ways to manage the stress of teaching and share them with my colleagues. And in a follow up to this piece, I\u2019ll share them with you.<\/p>\n

    By Jen Smart<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":19490,"template":"","categories":[],"ep-category":[23],"ep-content-type":[36],"ep-featured-post":[],"ep-focus-area":[],"ep-privacy-type":[],"ep-region":[44,34,43],"class_list":["post-19449","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ep-category-wellbeing","ep-content-type-articles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPost-burnout Reflections from a Tired Secondary Teacher | Education Perfect<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Read our article: Post-burnout Reflections from a Tired Secondary Teacher by Education Perfect. 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