Educational Burnout — 5 Warning Signs In Teachers, Students & Parents & What To Do About It
What do teachers, students, and parents all have in common?
They’re all suffering from burnout trying to deal with the education system through a whirlwind of changes brought on by recent world problems.
Put simply, our education systems weren’t designed to deal with the world as it is today, and it’s showing.
It’s affecting every demographic a little differently, but they’re all suffering, and the solutions we’ve tried so far haven’t seemed to work too great.
Many Problems, Many Solutions
Perhaps the reason is that they’ve been piecemeal solutions — attacking a single problem at a time — adding to the overall workload by doing so.
Teachers have been overwhelmed not just by the problems, but also the solutions — because it’s on them to learn all the new programs and attempt to implement them into an ever changing classroom dynamic.
Students have been swapping back and forth between different systems and protocols, learning from home, then back to school, then back to home again, never knowing what’s coming next.
The parents, who want nothing but what’s best for their kids, are often left feeling ineffective and trapped, unable to fix the poorly designed systems that are failing to provide the education their children need in these troubled times.
Recently it’s been proposed by a handful of expert teachers, PhD’s, and parents — that perhaps what we need is a more holistic approach, that attacks the whole problem in a coordinated fashion.
More on that later though, but first — how do you know if you, your teachers, your students, or their parents are experiencing burnout?
Symptoms Of Educational Burnout
- Loss Of Joy
For many parents, teachers, and yes, even students, school was exciting and enjoyable (other than maths tests, no one likes those) until recent times.
If sending your kids to school, heading in to teach your class, or walking through the door and finding your locker has become something you dread each day, you may be experiencing education burnout.
2. Brain Fog
Having trouble remembering the details, focusing on the problems, or coming up with reasonable solutions?
It’s not just you, “brain fog” is a common problem caused by education burnout.
3. Irritability
Everyone gets a little stressed out, but if even the thought of dealing with school problems gets you upset, it could be a sign of something worse.
If the irritability leaks over into the rest of your life, it’s a sure sign of a problem and something that needs to be dealt with.
4. Complaints
Your normal conversation probably includes a complaint now and then, that’s normal.
Sufferers of educational burnout may find that complaints become the main focus of their conversations though, and that’s not healthy or productive.
If it affects a conversation every now and then, it’s probably not a big deal — but if it starts to affect your overall attitude, then it’s a different matter.
5. Chronic Fatigue
Does it seem like everything is just too much work, more so than a couple of years ago?
Is there a stack of exams that need grading just piling up in the corner, and you can’t bring yourself to work on them?
Has your homework been going unfinished, or you just can’t find the energy to help your kids with their school projects?
You’re not alone, you’re just suffering from chronic fatigue caused by all the madness in our education system right now.
The first thing to do is to stop attacking individual problems and overburdening the parents, the students, and the teachers with solutions that just create more work.
We all want to feel like we’re doing something, and finding a solution to a problem would normally be a great way to help out and make ourselves feel useful.
With so many connected problems though, recent experience has shown us that single solutions all added together don’t always work well, and often lead to other, larger problems.
That’s why many experts have been advocating for a holistic approach that attacks the problem as a whole, with a system of supports designed to work together rather than individually.
Unfortunately, that means that as individuals we can’t solve the problems on our own — they’ve just grown too large.
However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a solution. Some of the best experts in related fields of teaching, psychology, trauma care, social work, and the education system have been working together to fix the problem as a whole.
Sometimes what we can’t do alone — we can do together.
