What To Do When You've Had Enough

Each year around this time, I start feeling like the crappiest teacher in the whole world. Usually it's because my kids are rowdier than normal and I'm exhausted, which is a terrible combination.

According to the website salary.com, teaching is in the top ten most stressful jobs in the country. They put it at number 10. ABC News put it at number 3, right up there with police and ER nurses.

As some of you probably know, I struggle massively with anxiety. Not like, "Man, I'm so nervous," anxiety, but real, gut-wrenching, hand-wringing, I'm-terrified-of-being-the-world's-worst-teacher anxiety.

On Friday, I had a student who didn't want to participate in the activity have a complete meltdown, kick chairs and desks, and storm out of class, mocking me in a high-pitched voice as he left. My kids were working on their own that day, so I pulled a chair up to a group of my students, grabbed a coloring sheet I had leftover from Day of the Dead activities, and I began to color and chat "teenager chat" with my students as they worked on their projects. Prom. Twitter. Who's dating. Who's not dating. Cute styles. The whole time, it was literally all I could do to not burst into tears.

Today, Saturday, I drove the 30 minutes into the town where I teach to sit in silence and read through letters and notes in what I call my "Special Box." (Well, actually I drove here to clean up my disaster of a room from our craft this week, because I just couldn't do it yesterday). I travel a lot with EF Tours and my students (which would make an AWESOME blogpost...I'll post that next week!) and they sent me information for our last trip in this super cute box. Plus, it even had a slit cut in the top already. Perfect for a box where I could store nice notes from parents and students.

I poured everything out on the floor and spent 20 minutes or so reading through them. My spirit began to lift immediately as I read notes from students telling me how much they loved me or how much they enjoyed my class. I laughed as I read funny things kids had written and I'd cut out of their worksheets and kept.

As a teacher, it is so important to keep stuff like this. Make a little box or a place where you can keep notes or even emails from parents or admin that have encouraged you.

A great activity for this time of year that my awesome colleague Emily did was to have students in your class write down things they love about other teachers they've had in the school. She then collected them and made us each a little baggie of anonymous encouraging notes from students who either currently had us as a teacher or had us in the past. It was so awesome! We read them at PLC last Thanksgiving. So cool.

I've also done teacher referrals at the end of each semester or the end of each year. Some of them are painful to read, but some are so uplifting. I actually have yet to get one that made me mad. Most of it is good info to grow from, and nice things written by my kids. I ask kids the following questions on paper and have them fill it out anonymously, although many of them put their names.

1. What kids of activities have you learned from the most this semester?

2. What has been your favorite part of this semester?

3. What has been your least favorite part of this semester?

4. What can Mrs. Lehr do to improve her teaching?

5. What is something you can do to help yourself improve in your studies?

Whatever it is that keeps you going, do it. This is a hard job, friends. Hard on my heart, but so worth it. You will not make it without someone to pour into you!