How long can I really do this for?
Is it simply bigger than me and a self-care routine?
Is this sustainable? How long can I really keep doing this? Is it just me that feels like this? How is it not Friday yet? Why is my body aching? These are just some of the things I have asked myself repeatedly on a daily basis, with increasing intensity. Most definitely not how I thought this year would go. I was determined, when practicing my breathing techniques, on my honeymoon, in the Balinese jungle with my yogi teacher this summer, that this year would be different, it would get better even. If I could embed some of these ideas in my daily self-care routine – meditation, mindfulness, connection to the self, I could make it manageable, sustainable. Reading ‘Miracle Morning’ by Hal El Rod on holiday gave me the inspiration to enjoy ‘me time’ in the morning, meaning I felt more accomplished and more productive by the time I got to work. However, I still had a whole day’s relentless work ahead of me, working consecutive days from 7am to 6pm with no breaks and no lunch due to staff absences, endlessly waiting for the day to be over.
It is safe to say it didn’t work, despite the best intentions in the world.
I fear that this will be one of the hardest years teaching yet, but in different ways to previous years, with frozen budgets and no option of agency cover when someone is away, as well as scarce PPA and lunch cover and inflated staff expectations because we are seeing the impact of missed school from the pandemic. We are now seeing that, despite the additional teaching and interventions implemented last year, the data is showing the progress is not ‘enough’, and the children are still behind. The pressures felt by Senior Leadership Teams are thereby cascaded down to staff with an even higher expectation, at an earlier stage of the year. The emotional needs of the children are still at an all time high, but there simply isn’t enough time to focus on this, and as staff we just don’t have the training to support them in the way we need to – we need to be trained counselors or therapists but of course we are not. As I crawl into bed each and every Friday evening, I am physically and emotionally drained. I have nothing left to give, and have very little capacity for anything else. After almost a decade in teaching, that ‘Friday feeling’ has become excitement to bathe, comfort eat and sit in a dark room alone for the night. Could it be that, despite my commitment to practicing self-care with my ‘miracle morning’, exercising etc, teaching really is just this hard and really is this stressful and all-consuming? Could it be that it is simply not me, or anything that I am ‘doing wrong’. Could it be that what I am feeling yet again is simply a by-product of a system which is broken and is much bigger than me?
Relationships and teaching
The next morning is Saturday, and while I am still feeling all of those things – fragile, empty, drained and achy, I hope that brunch with my friends and time with family could be just the thing I need. I am wrong. It is not, and actually ends up making me feel worse. It is not their fault in any way and actually it is a perfectly nice lunch and day. It is possible that how I feel is because I am already in a heightened emotional state and I am a highly sensitive person, as many teachers are. But again, it is more complex than that. At brunch, and all day really, I feel disconnected, alienated, out of the loop, misunderstood and like I am no good at relationships and maintaining them. During the week, I feel unable to really catch up with anyone. In the evenings I barely have enough energy to muster up a call with my parents, sort dinner, and prepare for the following day. I do not have the emotional capacity to give anymore to the relationships in my life after a day of giving to children, families and staff. I love my job, I love these aspects of my job around giving, but I do not love that it is at the expense of investing in my own life, friendships and relationships. When I do try to connect and share how I am feeling, I feel disheartened because I don’t feel understood whilst greeted with generic comments like ‘next week is a new week’ or ‘it’s done now’, which, though intended to reassure me, actually have the opposite effect. I realise though it is unfair of me to expect anyone in the non-teaching profession to understand – it is simply impossible. I feel out of the loop as friends update each other on conversations they’ve had during the week and seem closer than ever. I feel that this pattern of only being able to invest in friendships on the weekend and holidays, has taken its toll on our relationships, and I don’t want it to be like that. As always, I pledge that this is going to be a priority for me going forward. So far, I have noted the negative impact teaching has had on my own mental wellbeing and now on my relationships. Again, I find myself reflecting on whether this is sustainable. For all the highs of teaching, are the lows worth it? How long am I willing to do this to myself?
Self- care vs after-care
At the end of the last academic year I heard a discussion by Nedra Glover Tawwab, a therapist and bestselling author, about relationships and boundaries, about how we often think we are practicing self-care, but in fact we are not. What we do is after-care. We work so hard and give so much to the point of burning ourselves out to serve others. Then, we might spend the weekend doing something to make us feel better – exercising, cleaning, reading, socialising… trying hopelessly to fill our cup back up. When in fact what we need to do, is incrementally, day by day, take actions to ensure our cup is maintained. Her framing of this stuck with me, as she urged listeners of her discussion to actively practice self-care before getting to the stage of needing after-care. This is something that stuck with me over the summer as I prepared to head into the new academic year. Although I have endeavored to do this, I feel as though it is to no avail, and I have failed. Despite my best efforts; committing to personal training sessions, dedicating the start of my day to self-care with exercise, reading, journaling and so forth, I have still spent the weekend engaging in ‘after-care’; trying to find ways to desperately fill up my cup. Upon reflection, I know there are things I can do to develop my daily self-care; not working solidly from 7:30am-6pm with no break, only staying later a couple of nights a week, taking each day as it comes, and taking a break before I need one. It feels unfair that the onus is on me to solve the personal issues that a broken system curses me with. Are these not just the needs of the job in the current education system?
So, is this sustainable?
I go back to the central question of this article – is this sustainable? By no means do I have the answer, but for now I know this much…I do enjoy my work, I am good at it and it is having a positive impact on the children and families I work with and my team. Occasionally, I have toyed with the idea of one day being the Headteacher of my own school, but the sacrifice this entails is something I am not yet very sure about. For now, I will continue taking a day at a time, trying to actively practice self-care daily, rather than after-care, striving to invest in relationships which are important to me and hope my loved ones can continue to exercise patience and understanding with me.
Is it sustainable? Unfortunately, I do not think so. I have always said that when it is time to start my own family, I do not want to be giving so much of myself to others. I would like to be able to show up for my family and friends with the best version of myself. So who knows what the future holds? For now I am going to enjoy the highs and lows of being part of the British education system, and hope that articles such as this, and the book I am working on, and the startling figures regarding the teaching crisis, spark a meaningful conversation about how it can become sustainable moving forward. For now, I will continue working on what I can control: drinking enough water, exercising, practicing daily self-care, investing in relationships, feeling both the highs and lows and holding on to those lightbulb, breakthrough moments in my day, when working with vulnerable children and families. I hope I am wrong and this will not be the most testing year in education yet. I hope my attempts to make my career in education manageable and sustainable are successful. Time will tell, and who knows what the future holds.
Key takeaways
- This is one of the most difficult years for educators yet, with the pressures of meeting targets, the impact of COVID and staff shortages on pupil attainment, staff wellbeing and mental health and the stress cascaded down from SLT teams in schools.
- The personal lives and relationships of educators often suffer, resulting in them feeling disconnected, overwhelmed and neglecting their own emotional needs.
- There is a major difference between self-care, which is preventative, and after-care, which is reactive; take a break before you need one!
- As an educator, there is power in acknowledging the bigger picture. It is not you, you are not the problem, and a little bit of self–care will be great, but only to an extent, as teaching in 2023 really is that difficult and the onus cannot and should not only be on educators to fix things with their self-care routines.
Critical considerations
- How does this academic year compare to other years in terms of stress levels, workload, wellbeing, and personal relationships?
- How often have you reflected on the question ‘Is this sustainable?’ How long can I do this for?’ Be honest.
- How have you made teaching sustainable for you? What advice would you offer other educators?
- Do you mostly engage in self-care, after-care or neither?
- What do you do for self-care?
- What do you think needs to be done in your setting/school, and or the wider education system, to ensure teaching becomes a sustainable profession?