We have A Broken Spirit, not Burnout…

A Teacher’s Perspective

I am a tenured professor who has been teaching over 20 years. I went on sabbatical last year to address and research Mental Health in Higher Education. My goal initially was to take that time to nurture a better understanding of how young adults experience mental health.  Along my sabbatical journey, one thing that continuously kept coming up is how (in addition to students) teachers are feeling overwhelmed and mentally drained. According to CBS News Chicago, the number of open teaching positions in Illinois schools jumped 28% this same time last year.  My conversations revealed many teachers feel they are an overlooked population whose efforts go unnoticed and well-being uncared for resulting in The Great Resignation and the truth is I can relate.

I have never talked about my feelings around this topic, but for whatever reason (or perhaps one big reason) now seems like the right time.  When I first became a teacher, my beloved mother, who taught over 30 years, said something I never forgot.  “Teaching is a calling, Shelita.  Good teachers are called because they give of themselves mentally, physically, emotionally but most of all spiritually.  We are there not to impress, but to impact lives.  If you do that for one, you win.  Everyone else is overflow.  Always go for the overflow!”  All these years later, I can literally see us in her kitchen having this conversation.  The more I taught, the truer those words became.  I also learned another hard truth: If you lose teachers in any of these areas, their spirits start to break and eventually they will leave.  Now the leaving is not sudden.  Quite the contrary; It is usually calculated.  It is what we have come to know as quiet quitting.

From the beginning of time, teachers have been overworked and underpaid.  We come into the profession understanding this.  The entire essence of burnout is to be overworked so it does not apply with teachers today because good teachers do lessons plans in our sleep.  Yes! Productivity still happens but a broken spirit hits us differently and can be identified by:

1.    Absenteeism without an explanation or the explanation is lacking in detail.

2.    Refusal to participate in anything before, after and during school.

3.    Change in appearance.  Look for things like disheveled or mix matched clothing.

4.    Relationships with other faculty and staff come to an abrupt halt or dissolve.

5.    Teachers do not bother to learn or retain a student’s name.

Admittedly, I experienced all five. 

In Fall 2020, I went through the worse teaching semester of my career.  Sadly, my beloved mother went to heaven and my father was stricken with illness that left his body and mobility compromised.  I was teaching full time and never missed a class.  What I did miss was the fact that my students were not getting their work graded and returned.  [Remember, good teachers can always teach and plan.]. It is the other work that can start to reveal holes in your plan and that is exactly what happened to me.  Rather than address my unprecedented deportment, I was reprimanded severely, threatened with suspension, and mandated to grade all missed assignments, plus create curriculum for the following semester.  Did I mention this was all due after the Christmas/New Year’s break?  Did I also fail to mention this happened in the middle of my grief?  Needless to say,  I got it all done, but the most valuable lesson I learned was what a teacher with a broken spirit looks like.  She looked like me!

I will be the first to admit I should have shared this revelation with my dean, and I did not.  (A decision that costs me dearly in the long run.). This is not an easy thing to share.  A few reasons why we are not sharing our broken spiritedness is:

·      Embarrassment-It is hard for anyone to share anything we have not completely accepted or cannot control.  Teachers are no different.  Though we are expected to present ourselves differently than most, we hurt and bleed like everyone else.  It is just that our scars are usually covered in our calling.

·      Cultural-Historically, black, and brown people do not participate in therapy.  Anything resembling that level of sharing may be met with resistance.

·      Repercussion-Sadly, most teachers are in a season where they feel guilty until proven innocent; This is with students, parents (if applicable) and especially administration.  They would never share anything they thought could be used against them later.  Who would?

·      Judgement-People are quick to judge what they do not understand.  It is really that simple!

·      Imposter Syndrome-This is a psychological condition that is characterized by persistent doubt concerning one’s abilities or accomplishments accompanied by the fear of being exposed as a fraud despite evidence of one’s ongoing success.  In other words, it was already hard to land this good job, now I must tell you my challenges and prove I belong?  No, thank you.

We are indeed in trying times with our educational system.  History proves that administration waits for a particular incident before changes occur.  However, teacher’s trauma at the hands of a student is a real thing.  When that goes unaddressed, it shifts the atmosphere from a classroom to a crime scene.  Nobody willingly returns to the scene of a crime while the yellow tape is still there.  Hence, The Great Resignation.

The bottom line is classroom wellness must start with us!  The healing oil must run top down.  Any other way is out of order!  For me, hard work, therapy, prayer, journaling, and mental health days helped me rebound into a better teacher than before.  Honestly, I just completed the best semester of my career.  I now teach at the intersection of trauma and triumph.  That is the place where broken spirits are mended, and I cannot wait to see what doors this calling opens next.

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