6 Ways to Rekindle Your Passion for Teaching Before You Burn Out

No matter how much you love teaching, it's easy to get to the point of burnout before you realize it. One minute you love your job, and the next you're feeling so overwhelmed that you wonder if you can make it to the end of the day, let alone the end of the school year. Everyone feels this way from time to time, but if you continue to feel discouraged day after day, it's time for a change. Ignore these signs, and you could become another teacher burnout statistic.

The key to overcoming teacher burnout is to dig into your feelings and figure out what's wrong so you can do something about it. If you recognize the signs of burnout early, you can rekindle your passion for teaching before it's too late. I speak from personal experience, because during my 30 years of teaching, there were times when I wondered how much longer I could keep going. But each time this happened, I was able to figure out the source of my stress and overcome it. As a result, my passion for teaching would flare up again and burn stronger than ever!

Recognizing the signs of burnout isn't difficult if you take a moment to slow down and you look inside. If you struggle to find any joy in teaching because you are exhausted, overwhelmed, and overworked, you're on the edge of burnout. If you feel irritable and grumpy all the time, and you can't seem to focus your energy on anything positive, it's time for a change.

Studies point to a number of factors that can lead to teacher burnout, including lack of support, student behavior problems, lack of adequate training for the demands of the job, and plain old boredom. I would also add the inability to find work/life balance. When you consistently put everyone else's needs before your own, you end up feeling resentful and even angry because there's never any time left over for you.

Fortunately, there are many ways to combat teacher burnout before you become a statistic. Here are 6 strategies that kept me from burning out and enabled me to love teaching until my last day. You'll probably realize that you're already doing many of these things, but you if you even discover one new strategy that resonates with you, you may find that it makes a huge difference in your outlook.

1. Start taking care of YOU. 

The most important thing you can do is to make yourself a priority, and decide you'll do whatever it takes to start taking care of you! It's easy to feel burned out if you never have time to exercise, cook a healthy meal, read a book for pleasure, or spend time doing activities that you enjoy.

If you're wondering how to accomplish this when your day is already jam-packed, I have some good news. Have you ever heard the saying, "There's no tired like teacher tired?" If you've ever spend a day on your feet in the classroom, you'll know exactly what this means! My friend Angela Watson of the Cornerstone for Teachers has developed a free email mini course that will help you prioritize your daily tasks so you can make time to take care of yourself. Sign up for Good-bye Teacher Tired: 5 Days to Doing Fewer Things, Better to get started.

2. Connect and collaborate with others who love teaching.

If you feel isolated and unsupported, actively seek out your "tribe," a place where you can connect with like-minded teachers who want to share ideas. Facebook makes this incredibly easy because there are dozens of teacher Facebook groups where you can collaborate, get advice, and offer support to others. Be sure to join groups that have a positive vibe, where teachers are sharing ideas and supporting each other rather than venting about their problems. If you end up in a group where the majority of the posts have a negative tone, leave the group before you get sucked into those discussions!

I loved collaborating with other educators, and I was inspired by many fabulous teachers during my teaching career. After Facebook rolled out groups,  I created several groups for teachers, including the Upper Elementary Teacher Connection. This group is a place where teachers in grades 2 through 6 can connect and with each other to share their passion for teaching. Group members discuss active engagement teaching strategies, share innovative instructional approaches, help each other find curriculum resources, ask advice about situations they're facing at school, and so on. If you're interested in joining, click over to the Upper Elementary Teacher Connection page on my site to read the guidelines and apply for membership. It's free, but you do have to fill out a Google Doc form before you can be added to the group.

3. Transform your classroom into a place you love to be!  

One of the most stressful aspects of being a teacher is the sheer number of hours spent in a classroom with 25 or 30 children who seem to test your limits constantly. I used to feel like I was constantly battling my students to assert myself and gain control in the classroom. I left school every day exhausted, and I had to take a nap before I could do anything else!

Honestly, I was starting to wonder how much longer I could stay in the classroom. The turning point came when my district started providing great professional development, and I spent a week in a Kagan cooperative learning workshop. I was trained in the structural approach to cooperative learning, and I also learned classroom management strategies that helped me implement the techniques effectively. What a game changer! My classroom was never the same!

I began using cooperative learning strategies in every subject area, and I taught social skill lessons to help my students learn to get along with others. Instead of working in isolation, struggling with the content on their own, they worked with partners or in teams, talking about what they were learning and engaging with the content in meaningful ways.

What a different this made, not only to my students who were happier and learning more, but also to me personally. Instead of dragging myself to school in the morning, I was excited and full of energy, ready to try new strategies with my students. My classroom became a place I loved to be, and my students loved to be there with me!

This experience taught me about the importance of creating a caring classroom environment and using active engagement strategies. When you make learning both challenging and fun, kids don't have time to think about misbehaving.

4. Learn to work smarter, not harder.

We've all heard this advice, but what does it really mean? Until a few years ago, I had never heard anyone explain exactly HOW teachers are supposed to work smarter and not harder. Anyone who lives with a teacher knows that they work insane numbers of hours each week, and they never get everything done! The "normal" 40 hour work week sounds like an impossible dream to a teacher who's working 60 or 70 hours a week.

I loved teaching, but I will be the first to admit that I worked far too many hours. It's a wonder that I didn't burn out because I never could figure out how to "work smarter" and not harder. But a few years ago, I found out that it's possible to work less and still be a great teacher. I learned that Angela Watson, who will be presenting the webinar I mentioned earlier, taught 3rd grade for many years, and she was able to work a 40 hour teacher workweek. You can tell from Angela's blog that she was a great teacher, so I was a bit skeptical about her claim that she only worked 40 hours a week.

Then I became a member of her 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club and started learning all of her secrets! Each week Angela sends an email to club members that's packed with productivity strategies, and she also has a Facebook group where members can get support with implementing the strategies. Angela doesn't promise that everyone will be able to reduce their workweek to 40 hours, but data she's collected shows that club members are able to shave an average of 1 hours off every week. That's over 40 hours a month saved just by learning to be more productive!

The 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club is only open twice a year to new members. Click here to find out when the next open enrollment period starts and join the waitlist!

5. Never stop learning, growing, and trying new strategies.
One reason I loved teaching was that I was always learning and growing. I loved figuring out new ways to teach a concept more effectively and creating new resources to help my kids become self-motivated learners. Every school year was different, bringing new challenges and new opportunities for growth. I couldn't imagine pulling out the same set of lesson plans and teaching from them every year... how boring! Students come to us with different needs each year, technology is always changing, and brain research continues to provide us with more evidence about how we learn best. How could I possibly teach from last year's lesson plans?

If you realize you're bored because you've been teaching the same thing, year after year, it's time for a change. Why not request a move to a different grade level or teach a different subject? Try a new program with your students, like reading workshop, literature circles, or math stations. Explore a new online tool like Plickers or Kahoot, and make a plan for implementing it in your classroom. Join teacher Facebook groups where you can ask for ideas and advice about new strategies and technologies. How about signing up to watch some of my webinars for teachers? You'll soon feel rejuvenated and ready for a new year!

6. Remember why you became a teacher, and stay true to your purpose. 

If you're like most elementary teachers, you became a teacher because you wanted to work with children and make a difference. But in today's current educational climate, it's easy to lose sight of your purpose when it feels like teaching is more about following district mandates than meeting student needs.

Sometimes the best thing to do is to shut your door and do what you do best... teach! Figure out exactly what you are required to do, and do what's absolutely necessary, but don't be afraid to change things up a bit as long if you truly believe you're doing what's best for your kids. Carve out time for passion projects, reading aloud, class meetings, and learning games. Don't do anything that will get you fired, of course, but you'll find that there are many ways to stay true to your purpose and do what's right for your students.

If you encounter resistance from your administration, even when your students are happy and achieving at high levels, it might be time to seek out a new school family. I remember two times when I felt unappreciated and unsupported by the administration, and it seemed like every idea was met with resistance. I was miserable, and it had nothing to do with my students and their behaviors. In both situations, I decided at the end of the year that it was time to move on. I was so much happier in my new schools that I never regretted those decisions.

Being a teacher isn't the easiest profession, but it's definitely one of the most rewarding. If you recognize the signs of burnout in yourself and take action NOW, you can rekindle your passion for teaching and find joy again in the profession you chose!

Disclaimer: I'm an affiliate of Angela's 40 HTW Club which means I earn a commission each time someone purchases the course after clicking on my affiliate link. However, I would never put this much effort into recommending a course unless I was convinced it was absolutely amazing! I can assure you that if you're willing to do the work, your results will be amazing, even life-changing!

Motivating Math Games

Motivating kids at the end of the year can be a challenge, especially if you're still expected to teach skills and review academic content. Whole group instruction is particularly challenging this time of year because it's so difficult to get kids to sit quietly and focus on the lesson when everyone (including you!) is hanging on until summer break!

As a former 4th and 5th grade teacher, I've been there, and I found that the best way to keep kids engaged during the last few weeks was by using math games. I love using games because they are so versatile; you can use them in math centers, cooperative learning teams, or small guided math groups. Math games give kids a chance to talk and move, but it's productive talk and movement, so playing math games is the perfect way to wrap up the school year.

Where to Find Math Games
Whether your school is still in session or you are already on summer break, this is a great time to build up your collection of math games. You can make your own, of course, but they are quite time-consuming to create. I know, because I created loads of math games for my students while I was teaching. I continued to make new math games after I left the classroom, and I've spent considerable time updating my older ones.

I love making math games, but if that's not the way you care to spend YOUR weekends, consider purchasing them from TpT.

Math Games Mega Bundle
If you're an upper elementary teacher, check out my Math Games Mega Bundle because it might be just what you need. This growing bundle includes 16 math games, and if I create new math games (and I probably will), those games will be added to this bundle, too. If you'd like to take a closer look at the games in this bundle, click the individual games at the end of this post to find them in my TpT store. If you like all of them, you'll save over $25 by purchasing the bundle!

Earlier this week I hosted a giveaway of this bundle and two $10 TpT gift cards, but the giveaway ended on June 6th. Congratulations to Aimee Wallace, the grand prize winner of the bundle, and to Jaime Homan and Becky Raycroft, the winners of the TpT gift cards.

As a part of the giveaway, I asked teachers to preview the books in the bundle and tell me which ones were their favorites. To enter the contest, they had to comment on my Teaching Resources Facebook page to tell me which games they liked best and why they liked them. I especially loved reading the comments from teachers who already had some of the games because they shared how the games actually worked with their students. If you'd like to read those comments, click over to the giveaway post on Facebook. Even though the contest is over, feel free to comment about which games you like!

Tips for Teaching with Math Games
If you'd like some tips for teaching with math games, check out my post, How to Use Math Games Effectively in the Classroom. In that post, I shared some strategies and techniques for using math games as a part of your instruction rather than just for fun. I also described an easy mini-lesson on how to teach kids to be a good sport. Many of those tips and that mini-lesson are also included in my freebie, Tips for Teaching with Math Games, which you can download from my TpT store. Enjoy!

An InLinkz Link-up

Child-Centered Reading Conference Strategies

by Carolyn Wilhelm, Guest Blogger

Oh, the joy of a really great novel with just enough suspense that the reader can barely put it down! Teachers work so hard at getting to know which books will really grab individual children. We learn about their lives, their interests, and their reading habits. We are so happy to match a reader with the just-right and just-perfect book, and observe the silent reading with a smile. Job well done!

Screech, put on the brakes . . . as soon as our students are happily engaged in reading, we slide a teacher stool up next to the absorbed reader to begin a reading conference. Then we brightly ask, "What reading strategy are you using today? Will you explain how this strategy is helping you be a better reader?" Smiling and hoping to jot some notes on our charts or report card forms, we hope for an insightful and elaborate answer.

The student, wanting to please, stops the marvelous reading experience to try to answer. He pauses to think, "What can I say to get the teacher to leave so I can just get back to reading?  Let's see, she was happy when I said I was inferring the other day, so I can't use that again. What can I say today?"

When seen from a child’s point of view, reading conferences may sometimes appear to be an unwelcome interruption. However, we know that individual reading conferences are critical in order to determine if our students comprehend the text. So how can we confer with them in a child-centered manner that meets their needs rather than focusing on our objectives?

After giving this some thought, I created the Child-Centered Reading Conference chart shown on the right with some strategies and possible questions to ask without interrupting the reader and ruining the reading experience.

Begin the session with a general question such as "What is something you have just been thinking about while reading?" Then try to follow up that question with one that matches what the child just said with a similar reading strategy.

We should not make children fit their thinking into the strategies we are teaching when they are delightfully engrossed in reading. Be as unobtrusive, quiet, and thoughtful as you can when conferring with an engrossed reader . . . and be quick!

Yes, teachers have to gather notes and information about readers, but we also have to be careful not to spoil the reading experiences of our students. Happy reading!



Carolyn Wilhelm has a Masters in Gifted Education, another Masters in K-12 Curriculum and Instruction, and is a National Board Certified Teacher in the area of Middle Childhood Generalist. She has taught grades 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, gifted education K-6, and remedial math grades 1-6. Carolyn is the creator of The Wise Owl Factory website and Book-a-Day blog.

Teaching Order of Operations: No-fail Strategies that Really Work!

Order of operations can be frustrating to teach, but it doesn't have to be. There's no question that this is an extremely challenging topic for elementary students. Fortunately, there are loads of strategies for teaching order of operations that are both fun and effective.

One reason kids struggle with this concept is that there are so many rules to learn and follow. Even worse, rules that appear to be simple often prove to be deceptively complex.

For example, most kids can easily remember that multiplication and division are always performed before addition and subtraction, especially after they learn to follow the order described by "PEMDAS."

However, they tend to get stuck when an equation includes both multiplication AND division. Most kids automatically multiply before dividing, but order of operations tells us to perform the operation that comes first when reading the problem from left to right. No wonder kids find order of operations to be super confusing!

Another reason kids struggle is that even when they understand how to use order of operations correctly, they don't apply the rules systematically. Because the problems look easy, students try to rely on mental math alone to solve them. This may work with the easy problems, but mental math isn't effective with more complex problems that include multiple operations, parentheses, exponents.

After watching my students struggle with order of operations, I developed a simple lesson that worked every time. As a result, my students actually remembered the rules and could easily apply them to any problem. I'd like to share these no-fail strategies with you, along with two free order of operations printables you can use to help your students grasp these concepts.

How to Teach Poetry, Step by Step (It's Easier Than You Think!)

April is National Poetry Month!

When you saw those words, what was your first reaction? Come on now, be honest!

You might have been thinking, "Yay! I love poetry, and now I have an excuse to teach it!"

But more likely you were thinking, "Yikes! Is it that time already? Poetry is so boring and hard to teach, and my students don't like it either. How will I fit poetry lessons into my already packed schedule!"

No matter how you feel about poetry, if you're an upper elementary teacher, you probably have to teach it at some point during the year. Poetry is included in most reading curriculums, and almost every standardized reading test has at least a few poems. Even if your students aren't tested on poetry, there are many reasons to teach it. Just think about the amount figurative language used in poetry, and you'll understand how learning to read and write poetry can improve comprehension of other types of text, too.

The good news is that even if you don't enjoy poetry yourself, it's easy to teach it in a way that will have your students begging for more! 

If you don't believe me, I hope you'll join me on March 27th for my free live webinar, How to Teach Kids to Love Poetry (Even If You't Don't). Every time I present this training, teachers tell me that watching the webinar totally changed the way they feel about teaching poetry. Instead of dreading their next poetry unit, they are actually excited to get started!  

Before I tell you more about the webinar, I'd like you to reflect on your own feelings about poetry and consider why you feel the way you do. This might seem like an unusual request, but after reading this post, I think you'll see why it's important.

What I've discovered is that whether you love poetry or you'd rather walk across a bed of hot coals than teach it, the way you feel about poetry now is a direct result of your early experiences with it. I'll admit that the study of poetry can be dry and boring, but it can also be vibrant and exciting when it's taught as a form of self-expression. Read the two scenarios below and ask yourself which one is most like your own experiences learning poetry.

The Best of Poetry
If you enjoy poetry and you like teaching it, your first experiences were probably relaxed, playful and fun. Discussions about poetry focused on personal responses, and you talked about the beauty of the language, noticed the musical quality of the words, or discussed how poetry made you feel. You learned that poems don't have to rhyme and often break the rules of grammar, and if you were encouraged to write poetry, you probably wrote free verse.

Free verse poems are so easy to write that almost anyone can compose them, even kids who normally struggle to write sentences and paragraphs. To see what I mean, read Corn Husks below, a poem written by one of my former 5th grade students while on our "Private Eye Poetry" field trip. I wrote a grant for a class set of Private Eye magnifying lenses, and later arranged to take my students to the local park to observe nature up close and write poetry. The students spent the first hour collecting items and using their private eyes to observe them, and the second hour was spent writing poems about the treasures they found. Anthony was fascinated with dried corn husks, and he wrote this beautiful comparison poem about what he observed.

The Worst of Poetry
Not everyone has been lucky enough to learn about poetry this way; in fact, most students have only seen the worst of poetry. If your early memories consist of painful and humiliating attempts to memorize and recite poetry in front of the class, it's no wonder you want to avoid it at all costs! Were you forced to analyze each and every poem to uncover its "true" meaning? If so, I'll bet you were frustrated when your interpretation was different from your teacher's, and you were told that yours was wrong. If you were given poetry-writing assignments, your poems probably had to rhyme which meant never being able to write in your own voice. Writing rhyming poetry is an art, and it's not something that comes naturally to adults or children. Inexperienced writers often end up replacing powerful words with weak ones just because they rhyme, so their poems sound boring and contrived.

So, did you experience the best of poetry or the worst of poetry as a student? If you don't like poetry, are you starting to realize why you don't like it? This is why I wanted to you to explore how you came to feel the way you do about poetry. Which of the two scenarios would you like your students to experience? Poems don't have to rhyme, and they don't have to be dry and boring. If that's what you've experienced up until now, let me introduce a whole new way of thinking about poetry and teaching it to your students! After you implement some of these strategies, you might even be surprised to learn that you actually like teaching poetry!

Sign up here for the poetry webinar or the replay. 

Free Webinar: How to Teach Kids to Love Poetry (Even If You Don't)

I've been sharing poetry resources with teachers for a long time, but until last year, I had never explained how to each a poetry unit from beginning to end. Frankly, I worried that trying to write out the complete, the step-by-step directions for a poetry unit would result in a 3-inch thick document that no one would have time to read!

Then last April, I had a flash of insight when I realized poetry would be the perfect topic to teach during a webinar! The format would give me a way to explain the steps and strategies in great detail, and I could also answer questions at the end of the live session.

I immediately set to work developing my webinar, How to Teach Kids to Love Poetry (Even if You Don't), and it was a joy to be able to share exactly how I teach poetry, step by step. The webinar has been hit each time I've presented it, and it's equally popular with teachers who love poetry and those who don't... or those who didn't enjoy it in the past!

My free webinars don't include a professional development certificate, but you can obtain a PD certificate for this session by purchasing my How to Teach Poetry Webinar PD pack or my Poetry Webinar Bundle. Both products include a PD certificate, the poetry webinar slides in a printable PDF format, a downloadable video to watch offline, and an audio replay.

Register here for the next live poetry webinar on March 27, 2018 at 8 pm ET.

What You'll Learn in the Poetry Webinar
If you're wondering what cover in this webinar, download the free How to Teach Poetry webinar handouts from my TpT store now and take a look. While you're there, read the comments and testimonials from teachers who attended the webinar in the past, and I think you'll see why I'm so excited to share this information with you! Whether or not you actually take notes, the handouts provide a nice outline of what you can expect to learn in this session:

• Why it's important to teach poetry
• A 6-step plan for teaching an entire poetry unit
• What free verse poetry is and how it differs from other forms of poetry
• My favorite poetry books to read aloud and share with your students
• Questions to guide your poetry discussions
• How to teach kids the difference between poetry and prose
• 8 commonly-used poetic devices and how to teach them
• A quick and easy close reading strategy for teaching kids to dig deeper into poetry
• How to get kids talking about poetry
• Strategies for teaching kids to write powerful similes and metaphors
• A simple, step-by-step method for writing color poems
• How to transform reluctant writers into enthusiastic poets

Ready to Get Started Teaching Your BEST Poetry Unit Ever?
Have you signed up to watch How to Teach Kids to Love Poetry (Even If You Don't)? I feel confident that after implementing the step-by-step plan described in the webinar, you'll actually begin to enjoy teaching poetry. Best of all, your students will discover the best of poetry instead of the worst, and before you know it, they'll be reading and writing poetry with enthusiasm!