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When you feel like you have one foot in the door and one foot already on the way out, how do you actually make it to the end of the school year? Here are some thoughts from someone who’s felt this way for almost 5 years (Maybe it really is time to quit…) If you are a New Teacher, a Veteran Teacher, or even a Homeschool Mom, read on! Teaching is hard, but it is worth it!
- Leave work at work. Unless you are actually doing something – creating a test, planning a lesson, or grading papers – you should leave all the thoughts about work at work. If you start thinking about it, say, “Nope!” and let the thought drift away. If you have a problem like a chatty class, don’t just dwell on how they are terrible. Give yourself two options: Do something to try to fix it like a new seating chart or classroom management strategy OR stop thinking about it! Constant worry is just mentally draining with no improvement in your situation to show for it.
- Create a morning and afternoon ritual. Create some routine when you get to school to ease into the day. My first year, I got there as soon as students were getting to my room. That is just hectic. Give yourself about 10 minutes to get things sorted out before students arrive and go through some kind of routine – reviewing your plans, setting up your calendar, organizing your desks, setting out papers – that helps you to feel grounded for the day. Then, at the end of the day, do the same! I like to touch base with my coworkers to decompress for 15 minutes or so. Then, I take another 5-10 minutes to wrap up. I throw away trash, do a quick pick up of my desk, go over needed papers for the next day, and write out a to-do list if there’s anything on my mind that I need to do. Sometimes I also try to get some grading done which might make this afternoon routine a little longer. With two at home, little to no grading is getting done at my house. So I try to stay a little longer at school if I need to while I have childcare.
- Make sure you eat, drink, and pee as needed! You have to take care of yourself! In my first year, I didn’t eat lunch because my cafeteria was a 10-minute walk away. By the end of the day, I was starving and hangry. It doesn’t help you to avoid eating and just work through lunch. It isolates you from your coworkers and makes your mental health worse. Use that time for you! It’s not in your contract, so make the most of it for you!
- Make your classroom someplace that brings you joy! Based on Pinterest, some people do not need this advice (in fact, they may need to dial it down a little). I am not a Pinterest kind of teacher – I try to get the most bang for my buck with as little as possible. When you are trying to be so practical and spend/use as little as possible to get your room ready, it can make your room feel like someone else’s. You may go in and just groan that you are there – not because you don’t like your job. Simply because you don’t like your room. By my 3rd year, I started adding personal touches to my room. I put up pictures of my family, got a few plants, and added some more decorations that were an actual theme (not just what was cheapest at the teacher supply store).
- Connect with your coworkers. As a major introvert, I need lots of time to recharge after being with people. This means that after teaching students for 5-6 hours a day, I need quite a bit of time to myself. Being a mom of two and trying to maintain an active social life on top of everything else means that spending time chatting with my coworkers doesn’t really make sense. Shouldn’t I just come to work, get the job done, and go home at contract time to make it through? No! Many people say that kids are the best part of teaching; it’s the adults that make it hard. And, to a certain extent, that’s true. However, if you find a good school, do not try to make it on your own! The adults you teach with are truly the only ones who understand all the complexities of your job. You can commiserate with each other, and you can also lift each other up and laugh about your day. These are your people! If I take a few minutes just to spend time with my coworkers, my mood improves because I feel seen and heard in my particular situation. Don’t give that up! At our school, we try to eat lunch together with our grade level each day, and on Fridays, our entire grade level gets together during planning to chat while we work. I also get together almost daily with my content area team to plan and just chat. It’s easy to pull away when you get stressed or depressed about your job. These moments keep you grounded and keep everything in perspective.
- Keep having a life outside of school. I was just talking with a friend about teaching, and as we mentioned our weekend plans, she said that she probably wouldn’t want to do anything on Friday because she’s like a zombie then anyway. I totally relate. After working with kids all week plus any kind of community or family events that I try to do, making it to the weekend feels like collapsing after a long sprint. All you want to do is lay down and go to sleep. However, if that’s all you do on the weekends, lay around, grade papers, and maybe watch Netflix or Football, you’ll begin to feel like your life is only made up of work and sleep. Even though it may feel like that’s all the energy you have to give, ultimately, living like this will make you unhappy and drained. You need to create space in your life for the things that you love to do. This means if you know that you love to go out to a new brewery or restaurant with your friends, don’t stop doing that throughout the school year just because you feel tired. If you love hiking and exploring new places, don’t stop doing that because you feel tired. If you love painting or reading or sewing or playing music, don’t stop doing that because you feel tired. What I’ve found is after you do some of these things, you stop feeling so tired. If you create space in your life for what brings you joy, those things become life-giving and will help you to make it through the next week. It becomes a way of Sabbath rest. Binging Netflix and social media (just like binge drinking alcohol) always makes me feel gross and sluggish, but all too often that’s what we look to do on nights and weekends to try to give us life and energy. Create space to do the things you love! If you don’t know what you love anymore because your life has become full-on teacher-parent all the time, try to pause and try out a few things. Find what gives you life.
- Work at work like you’ll be working for the long term. This may seem paradoxical. If I think I’m going to quit at the end of the year, why would I actually want to invest the time and energy in working my job? Not everyone is motivated like me – but I know in my case, if I feel like something is pointless, I just try to do it halfway. However, this actually makes me feel less joyful about my job because in my heart, I want to do a good job. I am motivated by excellence. So, if I feel like I am just going along to get along and not giving my best, I will end up feeling like ‘What’s the point? I should just quit right now.’ You may decide to at the end of the year, or like me, you may continue working, find your hum, and begin to think you could do this long term. I am a firm believer in working your contract hours and not bringing work home regularly (yes- there may be exceptions for those 100 essays you need to grade, but that should be once a quarter, not every week). At work though, you need to give it your all. You need to work excellently because you are working for God, not man. This is not quiet quitting. We strive for excellence. Your work will not be perfect, but it will make you feel successful.
- Create lessons (every now and then) that make you love your job. In the same vein, feeling like you want to quit may make you want to put your head down, hand out a worksheet, and coast to the finish line. In truth though, this will only make you want to quit more because the days will drag on and on. When you spend the time to find what and how you love to teach and try to incorporate that into your lessons, you will find that your days fly by. I’m blessed with a lot of freedom in my school to create lessons. We have parameters for the number of grades we need, but that’s about it. This means I can try to teach the standards however I see fit. I still have to teach TDA’s and grammar, but I can incorporate games, movement, and peer conversations if that’s what I love to do. These are life-giving ways to try to teach content. It shouldn’t always be fun in the student’s sense of fun, but it should be enjoyable for you most of the time. If it’s not, you need to reevaluate your lessons.
- Don’t take it personally. Have an open-hands mentality. Have a good sense of humor and recognize you are working with kids. This is all about your attitude. When you have a quiet moment during teaching (maybe taking attendance while they work on a bellringer), pause and try to assess your mental and physical stance. Are you scowling? Are your shoulders tense? Do you feel clenched hands? If so, why? Is there anything you can do to loosen up and get comfortable? Maybe you need to shake it out physically. Maybe you need to find one thing to be grateful for and write it down. Maybe you need to jot down one thing to share with a coworker to have a laugh. See if doing this changes your posture. I think it’s easy to have a closed-hands mentality. We are frustrated. We are angry. We clench our hands into a fist and are ready to lash out if one student (or admin) so much as looks at us wrong. But, that is no way to live. Unclench your hands and offer them up as blessings. What can you do to bless those around you? How can you find a way to stop scowling and start smiling at the day? It’s not always something that you can do to change your surroundings and circumstances. Sometimes it’s just a mental choice, but it’s so important to give yourself the chance to make today a great day.
- Don’t think about quitting until it’s actually time to make a decision. Lastly, don’t tell yourself you want to quit every day. That’s just a good recipe for making yourself miserable. As I said before, don’t worry or fixate on something unless you are willing to take action to actually change it. If you are not going to send your resignation later in by the end of this week, stop thinking about quitting! You are not helping anything by wishing that you could; you are just reinforcing that you are unhappy which means you’ll just stay unhappy. Teaching is a strange job in that there is a built-in time every year when you have to consider, ‘Do I want to keep doing this?’ We sign a letter of intent for the next year in January and then contracts in May. Every year, I have the time to reassess: Do I want to stay home? Do I want a different grade level, school, or job? You need to prayerfully consider these questions when the time arises. But, I don’t need to be fantasizing about quitting (if I’m not going to quit midyear) in October. Again if the thought arises, you need to let it pass on. It won’t make you happy to keep dwelling on it, and your circumstances won’t change if you do.
So these are my 10 tips. It’s not for the people who love their job and go all out. It’s not for the ones who feel like they have a burning calling in their hearts to accomplish great things for their students. It’s for the rest of us that feel done some days. They need a little motivation and a little advice to try to make it through those difficult moments and months that seem like they will never end. Much of this is about your attitude more so than your situation. It requires you to go against the grain and choose to refocus your mind so that you can make it through another day.
Time will march on. If you wake up and do the next right thing each day, you’ll turn around at the end of June and say, ‘Wow, I actually made it. I did it.’ When it comes time to assess and ask yourself, ‘Am I ready to do this again?’ You may find yourself surprised when you say, ‘Yes, I think I will.’ Or, you may decide to go another way. In any case, let this be a year where you do right by yourself, your students, and your coworkers. If you find ways to thrive, it will be a year you won’t regret no matter the outcome.
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