Causes of Burnout
After watching the documentary "Teach," and reading the article “Empirically Derived Profiles of Teacher Stress, Burnout, Self-Efficacy, and Coping and Associated Student Outcomes,” I developed an understanding of what burnout is. "Burnout is the accumulation of responses to extended stressors caused by one’s job" (Herman pg. 91). Some causes of burnout observed in the documentary are: kids failing, students not understanding your lessons, judging themselves too hard, or over planning. Burnout is often not caused by a single one of these factors alone; it is when many of these factors happen all at once that teachers get burnt out.Joel Laguna, an AP World History teacher in East Los Angeles, was shown to have experienced burnout in the documentary. He had little time to himself because in addition to teaching during the day, he went to school at night to pursue his Master's Degree. On top of the stress of having little down time, he found that his students did not know how to write papers. As a result he had to reassess his lesson plans and add in a new unit on how to write a paper. Additionally, his students also were not grasping the concepts that he was teaching. This really got to Joel and caused him to doubt his abilities.
Another case of burnout observed in the documentary was in Idaho elementary teacher, Shelby Harris. Shelby's school implemented a new system of learning that heavily relied on technology for teaching. At first, her students were very excited about having laptops in the class. After the initial excitement began to die down, the students began to struggle and Shelby was not entirely sure how to help them. She was still learning how to use the new program and so she had to teach herself before she could teach the class. This led to her beginning to doubt her ability to teach and her class suffered for a bit as a result. This idea is backed by the research in the article; "lack of confidence or efficacy may interfere with a teacher’s ability to be effective in meeting the needs of students" (Herman pg. 91). If a teacher is putting themselves down, they will reflect that energy onto the class.
Lindsay Chinn, 9th Grade Algebra Teacher at Martin Luther King High School in Denver, also used a new method of teaching. Where a traditional classroom has a board at the front of the room for the teacher, her classroom had whiteboards around the classroom for the students. The idea is for the teacher to be observing every student's thought process and problem solving abilities. This method of teaching is highly taxing on the teacher because it forced her to constantly be moving around the room and making sure she paid every student attention. After a while, she found that she was unable to keep up with every student and it began to overwhelm them. She began to doubt whether she was the right choice for this method of teaching and it started to stress her out.
The common idea in all of these cases was that a lack of ability to teach effectively took a mental toll on all of these teachers. This is their jobs that they work so hard to be able to do properly and suddenly they find themselves unable to perform. Its only natural for this to stress them out and get them down on their luck. All three teachers had to spend extra time outside of school hours trying to figure out how they could come back from this and as a result left them with less time for themselves to de-stress. Without proper time for self-care, burnout was inevitable. I believe that burnout is caused by an abundance of pressure with no little to no time or way to relieve it.
So How do You Prevent Burnout?
Burnout is the accumulation of stress without releasing it. In order to prevent burnout, you must find a way to keep yourself from becoming overwhelmed. When Joel was struggling with his class, he asked his professor to come observe his class and help him figure out what he was doing wrong. By talking with his professor after his class, he learned that his students may have been receiving the information, but not absorbing it. To fix this, he started making the class more student oriented and had them learn by observing their communities in project-based learning. His students finally began to understand and he was able to rest easy again. Shelby managed to recenter herself by reaching out to the Khan Academy staff and learning how to use the program. As she became more comfortable with the system, she was able to manage her classroom better and was able to cater to her students' needs. She split them up so that fast learners were paired with slow learners and it became a peer tutoring environment. Shelby was then able to relax during class and move around the room as necessary to help those that were still struggling. Lindsay's case of burnout was not too severe because she worked closely with her principal who was there for her every step of the way. They worked together to assess her methods and figure out what she needed to do better. This is a good example of a built in support program because it demonstrates that you are not alone. Your school wants to see you perform well and they will do anything they can to help you.
In my personal life, I face a lot of stress. I come from a broken household and I work two jobs to support myself through college. In order to cope with my stress, I see a therapist every week in order to center myself. By having a safe environment to talk about my daily life, the challenges I face, things I enjoy, and things I have to do, I find that I am able to keep a healthy mental state and keep moving forward. My therapist has taught me that stress is not a bad thing. In fact it is important to have and even more important to be aware of. It is next to impossible to be stress free but as long as you have a way of controlling and managing it, you will be just fine.
Sources
Herman, Keith C., et al. “Empirically Derived Profiles of Teacher Stress, Burnout, Self-Efficacy, and Coping and Associated Student Outcomes.” Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, vol. 20, no. 2, 2017, pp. 90–100., doi:10.1177/1098300717732066.
