Teachers work in annual cycles. They usually start school in August or September. They finish up the school year in May or June. And in between, the school calendar is speckled with short holiday breaks and long weekends. The cycle is one that keeps many teachers who might otherwise quit stuck. Sometimes they stay for years longer than they would if they worked a full 12 months of the year because the job has become increasingly impossible.
A day with the word Start circled on a calendar to mark the beginning of a new job, school semester or other significant event
The cycle that is embedded in the typical school calendar is part of what keeps teachers stuck. And sometimes they stay for years when they might otherwise leave.
The problem? Teachers tend to hang on from vacation to vacation. To top it off, certain specific emotions go with each part of the year.
For example, at the beginning of the year, there is a certain sense of anticipation.
That sense of new beginnings that is almost palpable. In fact, for a few weeks before the first day of school, the excitement mounts. School supplies appear on store shelves. Students, parents, and teachers all prepare for the new year with back to school shopping. Who doesn't enjoy the first day of school? And there may even be a honeymoon period during the ensuing first few weeks. The honeymoon period wears off eventually, though. The routine of day-to-day school activities get underway and everyone settles in
Teachers are often as excited as the kids during the first few weeks of school.
If it is a “good year,” the teacher will count his or her blessings, and the year will proceed in without much incident.
If it is a “bad year,” however, that is another story. What constitutes a “bad year?” Teachers will know the answer to this question. But for those who haven’t experienced it, let me recount what a “bad year” was like for me. This was a long time ago. I was starting my 2nd year of teaching.
There are 180 school days in the school year for my state. That does not include teacher workdays and holidays. One hundred and eighty days of students.
I started my countdown on day 179.
That's right. I was already wondering if I could make it through 179 more days of this new, fresh hell. Needless to say, my morale hit a new low that year.
I remember telling myself as I drove into my apartment complex after the 2nd day of school, “Only 178 more days.” That was 42 years ago…I still remember it like it was yesterday.
Why was it a “bad year?”
I didn’t have “bad” kids. In fact, on paper, they should have been a dream class! They were all bright with IQ’s hovering around 120, and they were all from nice, middle-class families. In fact, they were all in the band, so they had that in common. They were also behaved. With few exceptions, they displayed little or no impulse control, even for 6th graders.
Illustration of young teacher with sand clock
That's right. I was already wondering if I could make it through 179 more days of this new, fresh hell.
I had a set of twins who were so similar that the only way I was able to tell them apart was the color of their tennis shoes. They sometimes switched their shoes for fun. After all, who doesn't love watching the teacher make a mistake that everyone else is in on?
These boys were particularly mischievous.
One of them forged his mom’s signature on a homework assignment…so I had to call Dad about that. Dad didn’t question that the twins were a handful. What he questioned was whether I had the experience I needed to manage them. (And he was right to wonder given my relative inexperience.)
Another one of my students that year was like the Charlie Brown character, “Pig Pen.” He was adorable, but he was a mess.
He traveled with a cloud of chaos and clutter around him all the time. His desk always looked like it had exploded papers from who knows where. Maneuvering around his desk was impossible. His books, book bag, coat…and everything else he owned…was strewn in the aisles around him. He was a sweet kid, but I bet today wherever he is, he has left a trail of clutter in his wake. He could not help himself.
I had another student who would sometimes sit on the floor and rock back and forth. He would bang his head on the radiator. I didn't know anything about autism back then. No one did. But I suspect that was his issue.
Nothing would console him when he was in one of these moods. Class came to a screeching halt while I tried to calm his ragged nerves. He was at his wit's end, and he often drove me to mine because I was unable to help him.
And then there was Richard. Smart, cute as a button with a mouth full of braces. He was the gregarious one in the crowd and he was physically incapable of not talking.
He was good-natured, likable, and even entertaining. I am sure he is very successful today. He is a charismatic leader somewhere. But in 6th grade, he was unable to restrain himself from talking. I put him next to me at my desk so I could keep him close to me and away from his neighbors. It didn’t work. But it was the best solution I could come up with
There was yet another student in that class who was my contrarian. If I had said the sky was blue, he would have wanted to argue that it was green instead. He was the only kid I ever had who wanted to argue over rules of grammar as though they were all that subjective.
The point is that this class never gelled into the highly functioning group I wanted them to be. They didn't behave the way the class I had the year before had. Nor did they behave the way the group I had the year after did.
There was always some drama going on with them. Teaching them was more than a little challenging.
It didn’t help that the teacher they had before me went out on sick leave around the middle of October. Their long-term sub was too easy going. And I didn’t have the classroom management skills I needed for this group. But that is what I mean by a “bad year.”
During a “bad year,” things don’t go as well as you might like.
What keeps most teachers going is that for every “bad year” they have, they will usually have a couple of “good years.” At least that was the case for me. I had a great group the year before and the year after. In all my 33 years as a practitioner, I only had that one terrible, awful, really bad school year.
That doesn’t mean that the rest of my professional career was perfect, but it was better.
I was often frustrated with the low pay and the lack of respect I felt people had for my chosen profession. At one point, I even sought out a career counselor to investigate other types of work that I could do. Finding nothing suitable, I decided to go for my Master’s degree instead. If I was going to stay in education, I thought I should at least maximize my earnings.
Each year for the full 33 years of my career, I experienced the same cycle of excitement about the first of the year.
I would feel tired and frustrated as early as October and early November. I would start looking forward to the long weekend over the Thanksgiving break. And I could do almost anything for the few weeks between Thanksgiving and Winter Break.
The New Year represented another fresh start. And then we would get into the slog of February and early March.
I would start to look forward to Spring Break. Then, toward the end of my career, we started the testing season around the time of Spring Break. Testing season consumes all else. In my last school, the anxiety around the spring state tests was palpable. The school had been an at-risk school at one point, and each year, the fear was that the kids wouldn’t make the cut this year. I was there for eight years, and that fear never went away.
Once we got through the testing season, it was downhill to summer vacation. And that is the cycle that teachers typically experience.
This is also the cycle that keeps teachers stuck in a profession that may or may not serve them any longer. Matthew Boomhower sums it all up pretty well in his blog post, “Emotional Stages of a Teacher’s Career.”
When I talk with teachers who are feeling the painful symptoms of burnout they can relate to this cycle.
It is the cycle that has kept them coming back year after year until they decide they can’t do it anymore.
You may be feeling burnout. If you aren’t sure, you should down the free checklist of 7 signs of teacher burnout here.
If you can relate, you should acknowledge your feelings. And then you should consider if you can continue in the profession or not. Or is it time to consider your career alternatives? It is not too late to connect your passion and purpose with a new career.
If you aren’t sure, you should check out my presentation on the 7 Signs of Teacher Burnout.
You might find the information useful. I hope so.
So, if you can relate to this cycle, let me know. I would love to hear your thoughts.
You might also enjoy checking out this post on when it is time to take a chance to a new career.
Let me acknowledge that I know not all teachers feel the symptoms of burnout, and I am glad that is the case. Our students need and deserve teachers who want to work with them and be with them. I am concerned about the teacher who has hit the point of no return. I am concerned about the teacher who can think any more is “there must be more that I can do than this.”
If you think you might be stuck in this cycle and don't know what to do about it, check yourself first. Download the checklist of the 7 signs of teacher burnout. Then watch the presentation. If you feel you can relate, maybe we should talk.
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