Banish Burnout: Fuel Your Passion
As educators, we likely have all felt teacher burnout and stress at one time or another. It’s not always easy keeping your passion for teaching alive.
I remember walking into my very first classroom, so excited about all the lessons that I would teach and really feeling a passion for teaching. I loved putting my classroom together, thinking about the fun activities I would plan and the amazing kids I would get to interact with.
In a lot of ways, my experience as a classroom teacher was amazing. But after giving my whole heart and nearly every one of my hours to my class, I started to feel completely overwhelmed.
A couple years into teaching, with teacher burnout and stress becoming constant, I found myself going on autopilot. Things had gotten easier, but with that, I had started to lose some of the joy and excitement I once had. I was no longer struggling as much, but I was also no longer bouncing into my classroom.
I wasn’t innovating as much and I didn’t look forward to my time in the classroom. I was worried I had lost my passion for teaching. I knew I needed to make a change to bring joy back into my life and figure out how to avoid teacher burnout.
Today, I wanted to share what I learned with you. If you’re worried about keeping your passion for teaching alive and are feeling on the edge of burnout (or like you’ve already plunged in) try these three ideas. They really helped me to find my way out of overwhelm and back into a more spacious and relaxed role as an educator.
3 Ideas for Keeping Your Passion for Teaching Alive
If you’re ready to say goodbye to teacher burnout and stress and want to reignite your passion for teaching, then these three tips are for you.
Tune into what you love
First, think about what you love doing. Then do it. It sounds simple, but often we have so many other competing responsibilities in the classroom. We need to help each of our students, we need to get through important content, and we need to meet the responsibilities we have at our schools. But we also need to bring ourselves joy— it’s a critical part of keeping your passion for teaching alive!
For me, realizing this marked a turning point. As a classroom teacher, I started by choosing just one thing everyday that would make me happy. Sometimes this was reading a favorite book aloud to my class. Other days it was putting on music and dancing around with a bunch of smiling kids. Just a few minutes of focusing on fun sustained me and helped me avoid teacher burnout. I had something to look forward to and a way to build self-care into my day, all while still being in the classroom.
As time went on, I realized I wanted to leave the classroom but stay in education. Again, I found myself needing to tune into what I loved. This time, I evaluated what I loved about teaching to help inform my next steps in education (spoiler alert: it turned out to be curriculum design and supporting teachers.)
No matter what your situation is, the first step on the path out of teacher burnout and stress is adding little bits of joy to your day and reprioritizing what lights you up.
Focus, Focus, Focus
Burnout and overwhelm are closely related. Often, we feel burnt out when we have too much on our plates. Evaluate whether there is anything you can let go of. These can be responsibilities, tasks, or jobs, but they can also be thoughts or feelings.
Maybe you spend so much time thinking about how you feel burnout that you end up spiraling. Instead, focus on your passions and your next best step. After identifying what lights you up, find ways to do those things or even just think about those things. Changing your mindset can make all the difference when it comes to keeping your passion for teaching alive.
When you focus, it also means you tune out what isn’t bringing you joy. Sure, you might not be able to offload every annoying task, but you can try to spend less time dwelling on frustration. Give yourself time to feel however you’re feeling, then turn your focus back to your passions and your goals.
If you ultimately decide you’re ready to make a change and move into one of the many non-teaching jobs in education, then focusing on your next step can help you feel less burnt out.
Even if you aren’t ready to actually make a move, just thinking about intentionally planning your future can help you feel inspired. Try to take small steps towards building the future you want to create every day and you’ll make a lot of progress toward banishing teacher burnout and stress.
Follow Your Intuition
Whenever I’m feeling overwhelmed, I also feel pretty disconnected from myself. Tuning into your body and your intuition can help to ground you. Try to take some time to clear your head— take a walk, meditate, write in a journal, whatever works for you.
Then ask yourself some key questions:
What do I need right now?
What would bring me joy?
What would I like to focus on?
How can I intentionally create my future?
What can I let go of?
For some of us, teacher burnout is a sign that it’s time to try something new, whether that’s something new in the classroom or a new career altogether.
What If Keeping Your Passion for Teaching Alive Isn’t Enough?
While focusing on what brings joy to your daily life in the classroom may be enough to bring back your passion for teaching, it’s ok if you realize you want to move on.
There are SO many things you can do to make an impact in education, both in the classroom and beyond. If you’re feeling the pull to bring more joy and sustainability into your life, while still making a big impact in education, I’d love to invite you to join me in the Educator Forever course.
Whether you want to start a side hustle for teachers or want to leave the classroom completely, the course will help you identify your marketable skills and show you how you can use your teaching experience outside of the classroom.