As a teacher, coach, or other academic professional, you might be feeling overworked, undervalued, and underpaid.
Maybe you're frustrated with your school's administration, policies, or demands. So much is expected out of you, from meeting academic standards and supporting a wide array of student needs to navigating evolving curriculums, technologies, and administrative changes. On top of this, you're dealing with the complexities of student mental health issues and hearing about school shootings in the news.
It's very common to feel like you're never doing enough as an educator. It might feel impossible to find the time, support, and energy you need to complete all of the grading, parent phone calls, reports, and planning you still need to do. When you do have free time, maybe you end up binge watching TV, doom scrolling social media, staying up late, or drinking too much alcohol, leaving you tired, guilty, and worse off.
As a result, you're probably becoming increasingly exhausted, stressed, burned out, anxious, or depressed. Compassion fatigue could be kicking in if you find that you're isolating yourself more and losing the passion you once felt for your job and your students. Maybe you realize that this isn't sustainable, but you're unsure of how to prioritize yourself.
Your friends and family might think "teachers have it easy because they get so many breaks," but what they don't realize is how many different roles you juggle and how many unpaid hours you work. For all of these reasons, investing in teacher mental health should be a top priority in our society. Without healthy and dedicated educators, our educational system suffers, and ultimately, so do our children's futures.