Put Teaching Down For A Minute, Teachers 299

Summer break can start and somehow you still feel like you’re on duty. If your body is home but your brain is still in the classroom, I made this one for you. I keep it simple on purpose, no new system, no productivity plan, just a pause to breathe and reconnect with yourself outside of teaching. 

I tell the truth about what it looked like when I let the job become my whole life, starting with a brutal first year in 1997 and years of living in fight or flight. I talk about getting sick, trying to prove myself, and how that constant grind bled into my marriage and my sense of identity. Teacher burnout is not abstract for me; it shows up as anxiety and depression, autoimmune disease, and the kind of exhaustion that makes you wonder if you can even make it to retirement. If you’ve ever felt like school “takes and takes” until there’s nothing left, you’ll recognise yourself here. 

Then we turn the corner toward teacher boundaries and teacher self-care that actually matter. Whether you’re in your first five years or you’re a veteran educator, I remind you that you’re a human being with multiple roles and needs, and you deserve to invest in all of them. I also share a gentle nudge for what rest can look like right now, plus a quick update on plans for episode 300 and how I’d love to bring more teacher voices into that celebration. 

If this helped you exhale, subscribe to One Tired Teacher, share it with a teacher friend who needs permission to rest, and leave a review so more educators can find it. What is one boundary you want to hold this summer?

Transcript

When Summer Starts But You Cannot Rest

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Some teachers are so used to carrying everything that the moment summer starts, they don't even remember how to rest. Is this you? This is definitely me. This was definitely me for at least 20 years. And today we're gonna talk about putting that down for a minute. So welcome to One Tired Teacher. I'm Trina Debry. This is episode 299. You are allowed to put teaching down for a minute. Hope you stick around.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Welcome to One Tired Teacher. And even though she may need a nap, this teacher is ready to wake up and speak her truth about the trials and treasures of teaching. Here she is, wide awake. Wait, she's not asleep right now, is she? She she is awake, right? Okay. From Trina Deborah Teaching and Learning, your host, Trina Deborah.

No Hacks Just Breathe

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Hey, so this is gonna be really simple because it there's no strategy, there's no system, there's no productivity. We're gonna just stop, breathe, and reconnect with yourself outside of teaching.

A First Year In Fight Or Flight

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Here's the thing. I started teaching in 1997, and that first year of teaching was I'm just gonna say it, it was hell. It was so hard. I had gotten a degree in sociology and was going back to get a second degree in elementary ed, and then basically took all the classes and realized I could get certified and go from there. So I did everything except for the last internship and um, which I probably needed desperately. I worked as a mental health tech in a mental behavioral health facility with children and adolescents. And I thought I was gonna be an expert at behavior because I had all this training with, you know, behavior. And I quickly realized when I got into teaching that no, it's not the same because number one, we don't didn't have snug bags in the classroom, we didn't have a lockdown room, and we didn't have meds, so it was a totally different experience, and I had a lot to learn in a very short amount of time. I was in fight or flight the whole year. I was constantly getting sick, I got strep throat a couple times, I got pink eye, I had this, and this is the same year I got married, and I didn't learn quickly how to make it all work. In fact, I really struggled. My marriage struggled even from the very beginning. And we he was, you know, working his way up in a career, and I was trying to prove myself in a career, and we were living at our jobs. We were getting home at like seven o'clock, seven thirty at night, and there was no time or no energy to be spouses, there was no energy for anything. And we worked through some difficult times at home, and I'm like, okay, we can do it, and we, you know, decided to fully commit to our marriage, but that didn't stop my commitment to the classroom. My commitment to the classroom was like almost equal my marriage in my mind. I don't think I would have admitted that at the time. It's hard to admit it now, but I I really feel like it's true, and that is not a sustainable way to work through a career or work through a marriage. And there were many opportunities for me to put it down, to take a breath, to refocus on myself, and I never did. I really didn't do that for so long. And then when I became a mom and I wanted to be a mom so badly, and I wanted to stay home with my baby, I tried every stay-at-home job imaginable. I tried so hard, and so did my husband at the time. He tried, you know, he wanted that for us as well and for our daughter. And and even then, like I couldn't figure it out. The only thing that ever really worked out was school, was teaching. And I made my whole life about it. You know, you don't want to look back on life and have like all these regrets. And I I don't look back and think I have all these regrets. But what I do know, and I just, you know, last week I did a a re a rerun of an episode that I did based on seven things I wish I had told myself as a first-year teacher or that I had known. And some of those things I feel like I'm gonna repeat again, but I think they need to be repeated sometimes because we s get so overwhelmed or so involved or so invested in doing this job well.

The Job Takes Until You Break

SPEAKER_01 5:30

And it it unfortunately will just take and take and take and take from you until there's nothing left. Now, I don't think every principal behaves that way. I'm not sure every school district does, although I wonder about that. Um, but definitely in my state, which is number 50 in the worst paid profession, and definitely my district, and definitely my school system, yeah, they took and took and took and took until there was nothing left, until I was left with an autoimmune disease, anxiety and depression, a broken marriage. And I was beyond burned out. In fact, I even ended up leaving the profession in 2018 only to return a couple years later and get paid less and work just as hard, if not harder, and go through COVID and then quit again. So, and it was it's definitely a profession I would have stayed in until retirement, but I wasn't gonna make it. I kept thinking, I'm gonna get I'm gonna get cancer at the and then I'm not even gonna have the chance to retire. I'm not gonna make it. I really believed that I wasn't gonna make it. And when I got divorced in 2014, I thought for sure that was the answer. Like that was what was really the biggest problem. No, it I mean, it was a problem, but it it wasn't my only problem. I was experiencing what felt like emotional abuse even in the school system. And so it didn't stop when my air marriage ended. It didn't stop until I left the school system. So don't put yourself in that situation. That's what I would say from the beginning. If you're in the beginning of your career, if you're in the first five years of your career, that that's the those are the golden years. And a lot of people don't even make it past that, which is very sad.

Why You Must Invest In You

SPEAKER_01 7:43

But if you're past that or you're working through your like year of 10, 15, 20, 25, if you're in any of those stages, you are going to want to do yourself a favor, and that is to stop, take a breath, and focus on yourself as well. You are a human being and you have multiple, multiple areas of your life that matter, that need just as much of an investment as does your profession. Whether you're a mom or you're a friend, or you're a daughter, or a woman, or even a man, you're a human being. There's multiple aspects of who you are. We're not one-dimensional. So we want to remember that about ourselves and give ourselves the grace and the gift of stepping

Simple Ways To Actually Recharge

SPEAKER_01 8:40

away. And and hopefully you're doing that this summer and you're you're taking a break, or you know, maybe you're still listening to this tea to this podcast. And if you are, thank you. If you're still listening to this podcast, I hope you're doing it while you lay out by the pool. I hope you're doing it while you're jogging um on your treadmill or outside. Maybe it's too hot if you're in Florida. It's too hot for me. Um, maybe you're, you know, kayaking, or maybe you are doing something, anything, reading a book. Well, I guess you wouldn't be listening to a podcast reading a book, but hopefully you're doing something that's for you because it's really, really that important. You don't want to carry everything and forget what it feels like or or forget what it is to rest. So this is an episode to remind you. It's a remind you to rest, it's a remind you to take a break.

Episode 300 Plans And A Rerun

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Now, next week I'm gonna do another rerun, and it is episode 300. Now, I wanted to have a big celebration, a big happy birthday, happy anniversary to one tired teacher. I mean, 300 episodes, that's crazy. But I think I'm gonna wait until it gets to be later in the summer in case, in case you aren't listening and you wanna be part of the celebration because I'm really wanting some teacher voices on the episode, the birthday episode. So I'm gonna hold off. We're gonna have a belated birthday. We're gonna have a belated birthday after sometime after the 4th of July when people really start to think about teaching again. But we're gonna we're gonna hold off. So before we do that, in the meantime, I'm going to share a special episode of how do terrific teachers set boundaries over the summer. And this is a guest co-host that I used to have for a while. And we're I'm gonna share this episode with you because I thought it was so fun and it went really well the first time. So I thought it would be fun to bring it back. So if you need a little bit of a next week, I've got you covered. Until next time, sweet dreams and sleep tight.