Burnout

The burnout is real and the burnout is bad. Just about everyone, everywhere knows the empty, exhausted, aching sensation – least of all anyone part of a school community. Each day comes with a new article about truths banned, staff shortages, educators leaving, National Guard substituting. The local and national pressure is absurd and intense, the day to day job unpredictable and draining.

Not many people can relate to the experience of having a deep calling to your profession, a daily reckoning with your purpose and responsibility in our great democratic experiment. All educators can. How so many people can be targeting something so important is beyond me. When that dignity and grace is questioned and attacked with such invective, certainly we have lost sight of the great moral arc we have been traveling on all along. The truth is that educators are qualified professionals, caring individuals, and committed community members. We are the tender core of what makes this a free nation, which is a dangerous thing to desecrate.

When anyone doubts the collective integrity of educators, they doubt the hope of the future. The hope that’s driven each generation forward toward a more just world, even through the darkest times. The enthusiasm for censorship and surveillance to the level and degree that is appearing in state houses across the country effectively means that the next generation will have to uncover free and critical thought on their own. I have no doubt they will, but it will take time and struggle – an unnecessary struggle that we have placed on them in a shameful pursuit of denying the truth.

Put that on top of the days teaching no less. The well-documented days of being short staffed, dealing with explosive behaviors, wondering about the silent ones, navigating the ever-changing Covid guidance. The results are not good. The worst part for me though, what this story misses, is how in the midst of all of that, the inspired moments that we all aim for in our teaching still come through. They come through with a power so explosive in contrast to the daily struggle, in an instant reminding me exactly what’s at stake. This is a glorious thing, but the whiplash is intense. Opening up to the experience leaves me with a raw vulnerability to the hurt I know will come over and over again, but it’s one of the strongest forces keeping me in the work.

I can’t reference a ratio of good to bad , I don’t keep a tally of these things the way some wellness tips would have us do in a little notebook. I’m too afraid of what the results would show – some numbers I’d rather keep unknown. I do know my inspired moments don’t happen every day and sometimes only once a week, but when they come they make up for lost time. At least so far they do, and I’m holding out hope that they will through the future.

This doesn’t rank me against other teachers. This isn’t about tolerance or ability or anything like that. This is the experience that every educator is having, a part of, and who we are and what we each decide is right and just. What this is doing is giving us a shared effort, a chance to find solidarity in a national tragedy. It’s my belief that a shared trauma will become a movement in time. With that I’ll follow Neil Young’s advice: “It’s better to burnout than to fade away”.