Burnout: It's a Thing

If you're a new teacher, you probably took a class or two where you learned to write multi-step lesson plans for every activity. If you're an elementary teacher, you may have been expected to write enough of those plans to fill a small novel every week.

One reason many new teachers burn out and leave the profession is that they spend hours and hours working, only to get up the next morning and do it all over again.

According to research from the Center for American Progress, 70 percent of early-career teachers either consider leaving the profession or actually do leave within their first few years. That's an alarming number. Some of it is certainly related to pay, but most people don't go into teaching expecting to become wealthy. More often, the issue is burnout, and one of the biggest contributors to burnout is the feeling that your work is never finished.

Ask anyone who taught in San Diego during the late 1990s and early 2000s about the "Bersin Years," and you'll probably get a long story. Teachers were expected to create different lessons for different students, document everything, and prepare mountains of paperwork. To ensure compliance, teams of administrators would conduct surprise observations throughout the year.

The part teachers still shudder about today was that administrators might ask a student which state standard the class was working on. If the student couldn't recite it, somehow that reflected poorly on the teacher.

The good news is that teaching doesn't have to consume every waking hour of your life.

In this article, we'll look at a few ways to keep your sanity while still being an effective teacher:

• Lesson planning without reinventing the wheel every day

• Grading without taking stacks of papers home every weekend

• Recognizing when your stress level is becoming unhealthy

• Creating sustainable systems that allow you to have a life outside of school

Because the goal isn't to survive teaching today. The goal is to still enjoy teaching ten years from now.