Navigating #TeacherLife: The Dangers of Making Teaching Your Whole Identity

Hey, teacher Tribe. Today we're looking at this idea. When is too much of a good thing, too much? Well, in the case of tying our whole identity into our roles of teachers or educators, our hashtag TeacherLife becomes toxic. Many of us do it. It's contributing to our burnout, but it doesn't need to be this way. I've got some great suggestions for you, so let's get to it. Welcome to the Balance, your Teacher Life Podcast, where we talk all things avoiding educator burnout, setting healthy boundaries and achieving better work-life balance. If you're passionate about education but tired of it consuming your whole life, you have found your home in the podcast universe. I'm your host, grace Stevens, and let's get going with today's show. So let me ask you this how many of you have watched Rita Pearson's TED Talk? Every Child Needs a Champion. It's like the classic of educational TED talks. I love it. I've seen it many, many times. I've recommended it many times, but it starts this way she says I spent my entire life at the schoolhouse, on my way to the schoolhouse or talking about what happened at the schoolhouse. Now, this gets quite a few laughs from the audience and it strikes most of us, because it's true that for a lot of us, is our life. We're either at school, thinking about school, talking about school, worrying about school, and so much of our identity is wrapped in this idea of being a teacher. Maybe we come from a long line of educators. Maybe lots of people in our family are teachers. Certainly most of our friends are teachers, because that's where we meet our friends at work. Right, and sometimes we don't even realize just how pervasive it is. Look at the mugs on your desk. How many of those were either gifts from students or gifts from other educators. So they say something funny like hey, but first coffee, or whatever. Think about your wardrobe. Oh, my goodness, when I stopped teaching in a classroom last year and I was also moving at the same time, that was one of the reasons I stopped teaching and so I went through. I was going through all my dresses and I got to like a three drawers of t-shirts. Do you know? By the time I pulled out all the t-shirts that had a school name on them. So, like all the school spirit shirts or all the teacher shirts that like well, you know, for the kids in the classroom, you know they had rainbows on them spread happiness, you know all of those spirit, joy, spread kindness, all those things, right, that we would wear in the classroom, or else they were t-shirts that I'd collected for special school days or spirit weeks, like all that stuff, right? When I actually cleaned out all of those t-shirts, I was left with, like you know, five t-shirts that were like sports shirts that I use when I exercise and like three other plain t-shirts, like it was so much of my wardrobe, right? So it's a wardrobe. It's the gifts that other people give us, not just students, but other people in our lives. A lot of the gifts revolve around school, right, our conversations revolve around school, all the things. So much of our identity is tied into it, even our free time, right On. 90% of the people who you follow on social media, are they teachers? Probably is one of your like favorite, you know, like board teachers or snarky teacher memes, right? Is that all the stuff coming through your feet, like it's really, really pervasive and there are some problems with it all, right? So let me go through the top three problems that I see and then some solutions, okay, so the first problem is you know, if everything in your life and everything about your identity revolves around teaching, it's just your life is out of balance. Right, that's what this whole podcast is about. You need to get some balance back in your life. It's unhealthy from a mental standpoint. It's unhealthy from an emotional standpoint. It's possibly damaging your relationships. I guarantee that there is some resentment in your family Maybe your spouse, your partner, your children about just how much of your life revolves around teaching and how much of your identity. Right, and I always tell people you know, it's your profession, it's not your identity, it's just one expression of it. Right, teaching is a verb, it's what we do, it's not an identity. Now, I know I'm going to get some pushback on that, because you're going to think well, my goodness, like, teaching is a vocation. Right, it's a calling, it's who we are at our core. Right, that is all messaging that is sent to us. Right, that we perpetuate ourselves. And is it true? Yes, to a certain extent, like in my being I, my mission for my life is to learn, to learn and to teach. Now I stepped out of the classroom. Now I help teachers. I'm still teaching. But so much of my identity, even when I talk to people. I took such pride in it. Right, oh, what do you do? Oh, I'm a teacher. How lovely. Right, we do take such pride in it and for some of us we do feel it's a calling. If you've had, you know, like I said before, if you come from a family of educators, it might be an expectation that was put on you. For me, when I was a child, you know school was my safe place. I'm just going to say school was my safe place, right, the rules were predictable, the schedule was predictable. I was a child with a lot of anxiety who came from a pretty volatile background. School felt safe to me, even though at certain times I was terribly bullied and other stuff To me. The whole system of school felt safe to me. And when I was at home I would play school. I would set the little dolls and the teddy bears on the landing of the stairs. I'd do all their little homework. Then I'd correct their little homework, then I'd tell them what they got wrong. It was the whole thing. I would play school for hours, right, I always wanted to be a teacher. I love the classroom. Did you know that story? Lily's purple plastic purse, and it starts. Lily loves school. You know the new crayons, the pencils, all those things? Right, I just loved school. So for me, was it a calling yes, even though I was on there, you know, in the corporate world, when all of that came crashing in and I really asked myself what is it I want to do? What is it that I wanted to do with my life? I wanted to be a teacher. But constant recognition of fact that that was only one of the roles in our life right, if that's all we think about, talk about, you know, have hobbies around. If your only hobby is putting on, you know, theater for the schools or coaching for the schools, it is still all in that same bucket that your identity is completely wrapped up with school and being a teacher. And again, it is out of balance, it's damaging, it's not healthy. Okay, so that's the first problem with it. The second problem is, when you attach your worth to your work, you're setting yourself up to fail in this educational environment. Okay, we don't have measurable, tangible results. Somebody's going to say, yes, we do. We have standardized testing, right, honest to goodness that we all know that isn't fair or true measurement. We'll talk about that in a second. But we have so many things that we're not in control of right. So I liked. One thing I like to do is to quilt. I like to quilt. Right, you get these little scraps of fabric that are like. The most beautiful quilt I made was actually when we were in lockdown because I wanted something to occupy myself and we were spending so much time on the computer like I need to step away, do something with my hands. But couldn't go to the store and buy fabric. So I just had all this leftover fabric from other projects and I'm like I'm going to make something out of this and it turned out my most creativity, the most fun. I loved it. But all that to say, it's a hobby. When I'm done, I have something tangible to show for it. Right, if you're in a trade, something was broken. Let's say you're a plumber or a roof or something was broken. You fixed it. You feel accomplishment. You're a builder and architect, you build something. Right, you're in manufacturing, you produce something. There is something tangible you can see. But with teaching there really isn't anything. We don't know the impact we're going to have. Sometimes never, sometimes years from now we realize a student comes back to us, or at the end of the year they have grown so much and we can take great pride in that. But for a lot of times, our day in the actual classroom is kind of frustrating at this point. And if we're going to attach our worth to our work and our work is not going well ie, we had a rough day in the classroom for a million reasons, none of which were we're us right, disregulated students, craziness happening, you know, I don't need to go into all that drama, we know that. Okay, so if we're attaching our worth to our work and our work isn't going well, it is hard to feel good about ourselves. We feel demoralized, right, it's demotivating. That's when the burnout creeps in. We're working so hard and we see no results for it and we're so passionately attached to these outcomes that we're just wearing ourselves out. So for the people who are thinking well, we have standardized scores. Now, this never happened in my district, but I know it was a thing and I'm really hoping that it still isn't the thing. And if it is, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry because it's ridiculous. But I know there was a stage when teachers were evaluated directly on the results of standardized test scores, which is crazy. Which is crazy, right, first off, it gives so much pressure on you to teach to the test, right? You just you know. I mean and that's a whole nother episode right. We know how terrible that is teaching to the test, not teaching to a kid's needs, right. And we also need to acknowledge which I talked a lot about in another episode when your class list is out of balance, right, if you're a really effective teacher, you're really good at classroom management. And what I mean by effective is you know, you don't bother admin, you take care of your own behavior issues. You take care of parent drama, student drama, you come up with your own interventions. You don't complain that you need more support, right. So the more you are perceived as being, you know, effective and efficient, the more challenging students you get. You're going to get more behavior problems. You're going to get students with bigger skill deficits, right, which maybe they should be with you. But that's completely unfair then to evaluate you based on their standardized test scores, because we don't have standardized classes and standardized students, okay. And again, the better the educator you are, probably the more challenges you have in your room, okay. So that's problem number two when you attach your worth to your work in education, you're never going to feel great because you have no control over the outcomes. You can influence the outcomes for sure. That's why we're here to have influence and impact, but we have no control over them. Okay, so let's recap. Problem number one your life's completely out of balance, not good. Problem number two attaching your worth to your work, you're going to be miserable, all right. Problem number three when you're no longer an educator, who are you? Right, that is something that has been an epidemic recently. Now it's not a new concept. If you over identify with anything, right, we see this a lot with empty nested Okay. So for myself in particular, I identified so much of being a parent. I had been a single parent for many years and so, all of a sudden, when you're kind of redundant usually around the time they learn to drive and have their own cars, but certainly when they leave home and crush in it at life, then who are you? I'm not a parent anymore, I'm not a teacher anymore. Who am I? Like? It's a really hard thing. On social media the last couple of years, I followed a lot and communicated a lot with educators who were leaving the profession and it was just really startling to me and really sad what a hard time people were having with this guilt about leaving education, and I can tell you from my own standpoint. I knew for a whole year that I was going to leave, that it was going to be my last year. I had planned that I would be a public servant for 20 years and then I would do something else with my life, and it was your 20. And I had done what I said and I had put off moving physically, my location and other things until I was done with my 20 years. So I should really have been at peace with it. I left, goodness me, a whole year's worth of lesson plans on a spreadsheet, everything attached with the link to a. I can't even explain to you how well I set the next person up to be successful, so there was nothing to feel guilty about. There was nobody was being left in the lurch, like I had filled out the terms of my contract and a promise that I had made myself. I was in excellent standing with the school district, right. So it was kind of the best possible scenario for me leaving teaching and taking early retirement. It wasn't quitting, so it was burned out and I couldn't handle anything. Well, surely the last year was more challenging than I would have enjoyed, anyway. So From where I was sitting. I probably it was, you know, an excellent position when I left. And even so, I have to tell you, the whole year before I left and still to this day and it's been over a year the nightmares, the nightmare. You know, that dream where you're running and you can't get to where you're going and like, for me it's like I'm driving a car and suddenly the controls don't work, like I can't put it in reverse, I can't put in the brakes, like I'm just, I'm totally lost and the car's out of control. And it all centers around this idea of abandoning children. It usually is like I went to lunch and then I need to come back now and I'm lost and I can't get back to campus and my phone isn't working and I'm trying to call the admin and I'm like, oh my God, the kids are alone in the playground. Like it's like, you know, a whole soap opera and it all revolves around this guilt about abandoning children. And you know it's ridiculous, it shouldn't be that way. I did not leave kids in the middle of a school year, in the middle of a period, standing in a playground. But I am not alone in this. Okay, and so it really is. When you over identify with any particular role. Now, for some of us, you know, it all comes crashing at the same minute, especially if we are parents, right around the time that we're wanting to retire. We have an empty nest, so we have to. If we were over identified as a parent, now what do you do, also, at the same time that we're looking at retiring? If we were over identified with being an educator, now what do you do? You've lost both those roles, right? I also moved. I didn't even have you know friends anymore. Now what? So I knew better. I have skills. I coach people on this, but even for me it was difficult. So I do see how it can really be a problem. So what's the solution? Okay, what's the solution? We're all about solution and empowerment here on this podcast. So the first thing, awareness. Stick around with me. You're going to hear me say it so many times with awareness comes choice. The first part of the equation is many of us are just drifting through our life reacting. We're so busy, especially as an educator, stuff thrown at us every minute, every second of every minute, every second of every second, right, and we're just reacting, reacting, reacting. We are. Take a step, a pause, a breath and sink into an awareness. So how can you do this? At the beginning of the year, I always like to do I'm sure we all do right An activity with students. You know, tell me about yourself and they come up with their avatar. You know, there's there's perfect person that tells us about themselves, like a cartoon character or whatever. All I used to do a lot with kids decorate a t-shirt If they felt they didn't have you know excellent skills. If they were younger, give them a blank t-shirt template and like oh like, put the things that are important to you or you like to do, or how you identify, on this t-shirt and put it around the room. And so I remember for so many years when I, you know, one of my rules was when I asked students to do an activity, especially if it was a get to know you activity, I would always do the activity too. And so I was making my little you know avatar, this person, person myself. And there I was and, like you know, my little you know my flippy hair, and there I am in my you know little comfortable shoes, and in one hand I had the Starbucks cup because you know hashtag, teacher life. And then in the other hand, I had, you know, before we all taught digitally projectors and such. We used to need to. I remember, especially for first grade, we need to physically touch the sound spelling cards. I'm really short, I'm like fun sized, and so I had this stick you might have seen them, a teacher stick with a big apple on the end, and so I would use that to point and touch the wall. And so I would have that in one hand, my sensible teaching shoes, my teacher coffee. In the other hand, like sometimes even you know, the cape, super teacher, whatever. So is that all you got Right? I should have had other things. So I want you to go through and, first off, identify which roles in your life you have and it doesn't. You know, when I do courses with educators and coach them, we have, you know, exercises for this and whatever. Don't make it complicated. Grab a piece of paper, draw a stick figure and do all your roles. What are your roles? So you coach a teacher, a parent. You're a child, right. Unless you're both of your parents are moved on. You're a child to somebody, right. You are a friend. Maybe you have responsibilities in the community. You're a church leader, a church goer, maybe you have Right, you Gotta Learn To Walk sequentially different responsibilities, right? So write them all down, all the roles You're a sibling, right, unless you are an only child. So all of your roles. And then, on the bottom, write a list of all your hobbies. What are the interests do you have to participate in and to talk about and to have community around and to be excited about and see results about, other than teaching? So I'll tell you for me, for years, of course, I would say writer, yes, a writer, and published books, and it was a big part of my life and I did do it a lot. Okay, so legit with that. But I would write. You know, cyclist Yoga, loves yoga. Oh my God, that yoga mat was so crusty from sitting in the corner not being rolled out for like a year, right. So be honest with yourself. Oh, a reader, avid reader, when was the last time I read a book that wasn't about teaching or marketing or building my business, right, being a better educator or being a better writer? Okay, so be real honest about yourself. You can list all the hobbies you know. Maybe you love gardening. Pickleball is a newer one for me, so some kind of sports book club, all those things. But then be really honest with yourself. Next to that, write down a percentage what percentage of your time have you done that in the last month, three months, six months? Right, because in our mind we might say, no, we have lots of roles. Oh, we have lots of roles and we have lots of interests, but do you participate in them? That's the big question. All right. So the next step, after you have awareness because with awareness comes choice you can make a better choice, right, and that is going through an intentionally scheduling activities and appointments, blocking out time in your calendar to do these things or to be with these people, not waiting till you find time, because school will consume all of your time and then some, but making commitments in your schedule, either to get involved in your hobby or to be with other people who are important to you, and keeping those commitments as religiously as you would keep any school commitment. If you have a parent meeting or a staff meeting or a back to school night or some school event. You never just blow it off and say I'm tired or I'll get to it next week. You always do it right. So part of the practice is to keep your commitments to yourself as well, as you would keep all those commitments to school. Okay, and then the other thing. So number one was awareness Make yourself an avatar. Number two is intentionally schedule some dates on your calendar. And number three is conduct like this, not an official, like. There's a whole process for going through a time audit that I coach people on. We don't need to make it difficult. Grab a piece of paper right, look at do you want a time audit? How much of your day do you spend doing this, that and the other? How much of that is school related or at least education related? Listening to teacher podcasts, reading, subscribing to blogs, following teachers on social media? Right, try and carve out. Where can you find some time, not only just for your other roles and your other hobbies? Where can you find 15 minutes a day for you? 15 minutes, there's a lot of minutes in a day. Check it Some of you have not given just yourself 15 minutes for a really long time and I have to say, the place where most people find that 15 minutes is going to be getting up earlier. It's going to be getting up earlier before any other demands are made of you, and how are you going to spend it Nothing, being quiet, maybe reading, maybe journaling, reading something inspirational that has nothing to do with teaching, maybe just visioning, imagining yourself daydreaming, having a wonderful day, like. Just take a few minutes for you, 15 minutes, maybe it's the first 15 minutes of lunch. You just walk one lap around your school quietly, without talking to anybody. But find some minutes for you. Okay, all right, so that's it. Hopefully you're getting the idea that your value, even if you never spent another day at school, you intrinsically have value. Right, your value, your worth as a human being, is not attached to your role as an educator. I really want you to hear that. Okay, so, coming back, if you stick around on this podcast long enough, you're going to see we have common themes, and one of them is attention and intention. It is creating your own path, your own way of functioning and living in the education system that is empowering to you and is not leading you on a road of burnout. Okay, so that's it, sending you so much love and I will see you in the next episode.