rantingteacher.co.uk

Burnout

On this little site of mine, I am often flippant, but I feel it’s important to not, in the words of Neil from The Young Ones, “bring everyone down”. But it’s only recently that a friend has drawn my attention to something called Burnout, telling me I show signs of this! His references were from the background of social work, but here are the signs of Burnout we should be looking out for – the definitions are from the website and I’ve shown how they relate to teaching:

1. Overloaded work schedule: Too little time and too few resources to accomplish the job.

That will be the outdated books and the crashing PCs then? Why should we complain though? Millions of children around the world are educated without the resources we’ve come to expect: picture the overcrowded village schools in remote African places, for example. A good teacher should be able to help children learn with whatever is or isn’t to hand.

Okay, let’s address the first part then: too little time. Now this is more like it, this is one I can certainly relate to. There is never enough time. Everybody I work with feels the same way. Everybody feels the crushing pressure of all those things that need to be done right now, if not yesterday, and the demands grow at an alarming pace. I get so angry when I read about how fabulous the Teachers’ Workload Agreement has made life for everybody, now we are guaranteed 10% planning, preparation and assessment time. That’s not free time, by the way, That’s not the time I remember from a good few years ago, where teachers had a free period and they sat down in the staff room with a cup of coffee and nattered with whoever else was there, finding a bit of peace and quiet in an otherwise busy day. Who does that now? Nobody I know.

If we’re not trying to keep on top of the endless marking and assessments, then we’re spending an age planning all-singing-and-dancing lessons that involve cutting up cards, sourcing pictures for PowerPoints, and doing all sorts necessary to appeal to the different types of learner we supposedly have in our classes. One worksheet alone does not fit, and perhaps it shouldn’t, but the extremes we have to go to are manic. When I’m finding out the best font and background colours for the dyslexic pupils, I’m wondering if the electricity board goes to such bother when it send out its bills, and if not, then how on earth will these pupils cope when they leave school?

So for the average teacher, the job never feels done. Just when you work all weekend to get on top of marking coursework, another set is due in. Three hours of non-contact time per week to catch up? You must be joking. There is never any end to it all. There is no sense of closure, not at the end of the week, nor at the end of the day, nor even at the end of term.

2. Lack of control: Reducing costs is primary over needs of clients or employees.

To the bog-standard teacher, who has no access to the budget and no say over how it should be allocated, seeing money wasted on photocopying a thousand letters about how to get rid of nits when you just know that most of the paper will end up scrunched up in the bottom of schoolbags, is really frustrating. You start calculating how many books you could have bought for the price of that print run.

But it’s not just on a school level. Government officials boast about how much public money is being pumped into education, and then it gets spent on crackpot schemes and glossy literature that most teachers don’t have the time to read. It really is infuriating.

3. Breakdown of community: Faster paced work destroys the sense of community among co-workers, which further disrupts our job performance.

Well that speaks for itself. Not having the time to settle down for a half hour free period in the staff room for a grumble, or session of letting off steam, or comparison of notes about a naughty kid in Year 8 means that you often have nobody to offload your stresses to. So you carry your stresses home and they come to you in the darkest hours of the night instead.

4. Unfair treatment of workers: If evaluations, promotions, and benefits are not applied fairly, the organization cannot be trusted by the employee.

This seems to happen all the time. I can’t even go into detail here but there are many specific examples I know of, and it’s true that it erodes at whatever trust you have in those who manage and lead.

5. Conflict of values: Performing tasks we feel are unethical or which go against our personal values undermines our ability to believe in the worth of the work we do.

Again, something we are expected to do quite regularly. Often, this means lying to or misleading the pupils for some reason or another. On a personal level, I see other teachers doing stuff that I believe is unethical, but what am I to do about it? It’s nothing to endanger the pupils’ safety, but I see pupils being given only half a story where they deserve a balanced view.

So there you have it: 5 reasons why people have breakdowns, and a wonder that more teachers aren’t suffering from one.

You can find more on this topic at these links:

Fried Social Worker
Teacher Stress Archives
University Teachers
BBC Education Report Feb 07

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added 25/02/07