Tag Archives: overwhelm

The battle beyond

Yesterday I wrote, ‘The battle within‘ and said,

“The battle within is greater than the battle beyond.“

And while I firmly believe this I am seeing countless tweets from educators and educational leaders across different districts, provinces, states, and international borders, talking about the overwhelm and exhaustion of their role in a pandemic. The challenge ‘beyond’ is taxing the battles ‘within’ and burnout seems endemic.

I’ve seen comments like:

“I can’t sleep thinking about how much I have to do.”

“I have no time to exercise or take care of myself.”

“I have to take the weekend off.”

“I asked for help but it isn’t coming fast enough.”

“I’m in my second year teaching and I feel I have to quit.”

“I’m tired of just doing an adequate job.”

“This is unsustainable.”

“I won’t make it to June at this pace.”

“My students deserve more, but I have nothing more to give.”

Here are a few suggestions I hope can help:

  • Take care of yourself. Busy times are exactly when self care matters most. Everything you do for yourself during these times will give you the energy to help and provide for others… but more importantly, you will just feel better!
  • Ask for help. It’s ok to let others know you need support.
  • Collaborate. Find others who can share the load, and find energy by working with others.
  • Reduce your own expectations around work load. What can you do to reduce marking, or to provide assessment that is student rather than grade focussed? Example: Instead of giving a test that takes 10 min. each to mark, give a 1-1 assessment that takes 5-10 minutes. You and your students will both get more out of the experience.
  • Take body and brain breaks. Have fun, while recharging yourself and your students.
  • Turn off work for a set time each night… be militant about this. Go for a no technology walk with someone. Put a block of time in your calendar. Play a board game.
  • Do something creative.
  • Meditate daily.
  • Get to bed early.
  • Exercise. Suggestion: Try to do a quick workout early in the morning… get your heart rate up for 20 minutes to start the day.
  • Pack healthy treats that you enjoy, so that food breaks are rewarding in more ways than one.
  • Connect with friends digitally. Your digital bubble need not be small just because your face to face one is.

This is a time when the battle beyond can overwhelm the battle within… so make intentional efforts to care for yourself and not only you, but those around you will benefit!

Sorry, my brain is full

Since March there have been so many new demands on educators. The path has not been easy. And the new school year has added many more expectations compared to having 70% of the year already completed, when Covid-19 brought with it the new phrase, ‘remote learning’.

How do I do effective group work with students one or two meters apart? How do I do collaborative projects and minimize the sharing of resources? How do I facilitate student-to-student communication when some students are in class and the rest are learning from home? How do I effectively engage students working from home on web conferencing tools. These and many more questions combine to overwhelm educators who are coping with learning on the fly as they navigate a new frontier.

It really isn’t easy.

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Let’s pause here and think about our students:

How does it feel to be new to a country, not know the language, and have to learn, when everything said needs to be translated and most words are not understood?

How does it feel to be introduced to y=mx+b when you struggle with Math, and never really understood how ‘x‘ was a number, and fractions confuse you?

How does it feel to have to learn the krebs cycle when the chemistry and vocabulary is all totally new to you?

How are you supposed to interpret the meaning of a story when every 5th word is either new to you or seems out of context related to the words around it?

How are you supposed to work from home when the home environment is filled with distractions and interruptions that don’t happen at school?

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While educators struggle to learn in new environments and with new tools, let’s pause and think about how hard learning is for some of our kids, who are also learning in new environments and with new tools… and new content they have never seen before.