Teaching…
Sometimes by choosing to be brilliant, you're choosing to burnout.
We sometimes believe that anything less than a burnout is a sellout. That is not the case. Yes, the classroom should be fun and engaging and marvellous on occasion. But when the choice comes down to brilliance or your health, you need to choose your health, it is the wiser long-term investment for you and your students.
The Golden Rules of Teacher Survival:
1) Get a full 8 hours sleep. Some of you may have small children making this seem oh-so-impossible. Do your best. To everyone else, there is no excuse.
2) Try to get some sunshine every day. No, the walk to your car does not count. Sunshine fights off depression, helps you absorb Vitamin D and helps you sleep better. If you're exercising while outside, so much the better!
3) Eat right! If you hate veggies as much as I do, then you still need to find a way to be healthy. There are 25+ lives hanging on your choices. Take a multi-vitamin, find a random salad online that you actually like, do something to preserve your health.
4) Wash or sanitize your hands, a bazillion times a day. Especially in cold season or if you're teaching Kindergarten. If you've ever been in Kindergarten you know what I mean. Save yourself!
5) Have some wind-down time in your day. Choose a time (mine is fluctuating around 8:00 pm) where you stop all of that teachery work and just browse Pinterest, read a book or catch up on a show or two. You need to preserve your mind and your mind needs rest. Seriously, your mind can grow bigger and stronger and withstand the high processing speed our job demands, but if it is not adequately rested it will crash. And that just ain't pretty.
6) Save yourself! Yes, you want to be amazing and creative and brilliant. Yes, you want to reach out and touch young lives and guide their paths. No, that does not mean that every lesson you do needs to be a show stopper. Try to build rest-time into some of your lessons. Time where you do not need to be "on". Where you can answer a few one-on-one questions, prepare for your next lesson and collect yourself. The occasional worksheet is not going to kill your kids. In fact it may even help them develop character.
You are not Superwoman (or Superman), you are simply a super woman (or man), and to stay super you need to stay sane. Be kind to yourself, for your own and your children's sakes.
Lesson Learned. Grade 6.
