Teacher: Why I burned out and what I did about it
Jackie Parrish is a retired teacher who spent 30 years in the same inner-city school in Philadelphia. She has certification in elementary education, secondary mathematics and is a reading specialist. She wrote in the following post about her two episodes with burnout — a not infrequent condition for teachers, especially today when they are under new pressures. This post, which I am publishing with permission, appeared on The Educator’s Room website.
By Jackie Parrish
Burnout occurs often in the field of teaching. Rarely does it have anything to do with the children that we teach. Usually, it has to do with decisions made by non-teachers and the ever-increasing paperwork that comes with those decisions.
I went through two burnouts during my teaching career. I survived one and continued teaching for many years afterward. The second burnout resulted in my early retirement. I am sharing them with you so that you know that you are not alone.
My first burnout occurred at the beginning of my 10th year of teaching. My district was headed into the second major strike of my career and I was my sole support. The strike was about the same old thing – benefits, pay increases, and class size. My district had the highest class size in my part of the state and they wanted to increase it to 35 students. We never had enough supplies or books for the class size we already had so an increase would have been a nightmare. I felt that I couldn’t continue teaching much longer under these circumstances, but I also knew that I couldn’t just up and quit. I needed a plan.
Phase 1 of my plan was to find ways to reduce my stress while teaching. I began walking every work day until I was up to almost two miles a day. I decided that a new hobby might help so I enrolled in a Czech beading class at a local junior college. Creating jewelry using seed beads got my creative juices Teacher: Why I burned out and what I did about it - The Washington Post:
