Teachers are workaholics. Between planning, teaching, grading, coaching, and
sponsoring, we are too busy to breathe most of the time. Then we volunteer for
all sorts of extra committees and classes. When I was a new teacher, I thought
good teachers had to do it all. Then, through my own overload and observation
of veteran master teachers, I discovered that the best teachers had learned
when to say no and when to delegate and when to just take a break.
Sometimes we just have to put our sanity and our own well being in front of
our life-consuming job. We must organize our lives so that we have plenty of
time to do our schoolwork and also have time away from it or we burnout. Nobody
wants to find himself or herself stuck in neutral while on their teacher
journey, so exhausted that they are out of energy and creativity and don’t want
to go on to the next mile marker. Yes, I probably still have too many duties,
but I only take on new ones if I can let another one go. After all, there is
always some energetic new teacher who wants to do more – let them; they’ll
learn eventually too.
While we are all on our common journey to be the best teachers we can be, we
have to realize that the road will fork and meander from time to time, so we
must learn from others and ourselves. Stopping along the way to reflect on
where we have been can help us read our personal maps more clearly.