Is Teaching Sustainable?

As any individual working within 10 feet of a school building could tell you, teaching is not a job for the faint of heart. For those readers who are not intimately familiar, allow me to paint for you the following scene:

You have a passion for [insert subject here] and want to share it with children. Great! Now share it with a room of 30 nine-year-olds on a Monday morning when roughly 3 of them haven't taken their ADD/ADHD medication that day, 1 is having an emotional meltdown because her friend stopped talking to her, another is emptying his desk looking for last week's leftover snack, 3 more are in the corner tossing around a couple of your stress balls (meant for relaxation, talk about irony), somebody else needs to use the bathroom and you have a line of 4 other students waiting to ask you questions about the morning work (questions which are answered easily if they would just read the directions).

Now continue sharing that love of reading while maintaining rigor for all students, but also making the necessary accommodations and differentiations for the 7 students who are reading at a 2nd/3rd grade level, as well as the 4 students who are reading at a 5th/6th grade level, while the rest are on-track in 4th grade. Some of these kids have hearing impairments, learning disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, or other needs that cause their learning to be deficient and below grade-level. But the state test is around the corner, and they are anxious- as are you. You'll probably have several students today that test your patience by arguing, ignoring you, fighting another student, or maybe they'll just walk out of your room. It'll get under your skin. You'll have to call home during your prep and write it all up during your lunch, or after school. At lunch, you'll become a witness to the child in your class who only has crackers for lunch because "mom forgot to pack him a lunch" but you know it's really because that's all he could find at home. You'll give him some of your lunch because you know his family can't afford another school lunch on his account. It's only Monday. At the end of this day, how do you feel?

If you work in a school, and especially if you were/are a classroom teacher, you already know. We do this every day, year after year, like an abusive relationship that we know is bad for our health but we stay in it anyway because there's some part of it that we see hope in. But there is a huge problem in education that nobody talks about: mental health.

Imagine coming home from the above scenario on a regular basis. Or going to a second job. Even with the best of support systems, teachers are burnt out. That's the problem with the quote pictured above: it implies that the hallmark of a great educator is working to the point that you are quite literally no more. If I was a candle, I would LITERALLY BURN MYSELF OUT. Do you see how appropriate the phrase "teacher burn-out" is now?? *Throws hands in air* This isn't normal. We would never demand from any other profession that a person so devotedly sacrifice their mental, emotional, and sometimes even physical capacities for the sake of their clients AND THEN CALL IT GREAT WORK. We could call it excessive! We would call it unhealthy! We would demand that changes be made to the system! We certainly would not praise them for such behaviors! So why, then, is teaching always the exception?

In the UK, a survey of teachers showed that more than half reported their mental health as poor and of those, about half had been diagnosed by a general physician. Living with anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses is difficult enough without throwing in the stressors of life in the world of education. Until I started talking about my own struggles with friends at work, I was living under a rock when it came to just how many of my fellow educators were dealing with the same challenges. It seems more common to talk to teachers who admit to feeling anxious, overly-stressed out, or depressed on a regular basis (or perhaps are even diagnosed or on medication for these things) than to talk to teachers who aren't.

It's no secret that happy teachers make happy classrooms. When I haven't had my coffee, it shows. When I feel like crap, my students pick up on it. On the other hand, when I'm on my A game, my students are engaged and enjoy their day and you can feel the enthusiasm for learning when you walk into the room. So aside from burn-out affecting things like turnover and finding subs, it affects our students. Tired, anxious, demotivated teachers are functioning on survival mode and it's not good for anybody. It's like when your phone goes into power-saver mode -- it's a temporary function that's a lot less efficient and not meant for regular usage. You certainly shouldn't be relying on it and if you are, you're probably not getting much done.

With West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kentucky teachers walking out after having had enough of the garbage conditions they've been working in, it should've opened our eyes to a bigger problem. Nobody can work in these conditions and expect them to produce results. As much as we sometimes feel like it, we're not Jesus-- we can't turn water into wine. Teaching in it's current state is not a sustainable career. Not financially, and certainly not mentally or emotionally. We need and deserve more.