Teacher Burnout, Explained Five Years Later

Me, as recently as 2012. pic.twitter.com/P4SiAPRjqa

— A. Cedric Armstrong (@cedteaches) March 16, 2017

Five years ago, I did something that only a handful of people saw coming:

I left the classroom.

Not quite me when I handed in the grade book in 2012, but similar effect. 

Of course, there are days when I somewhat miss it yet there are days when I feel like I thumbed my nose at what was supposed to be my calling. I’ll also acknowledge the fact that I was an imperfect educator and never could play the political games well – or at all. I would like to think that of the students I taught over the years, many of whom have moved forward to being productive citizens of the world although we all know a few of them are (or were) making a living as professional athletes and creating their imprints in that fashion. That matters more to me than some award or backhanded compliment paid by the local politicians who would visit our campus only to vote against any legislation to improve our lots, stringing more layers of red tape and the conditional temptation of government dollars to teach in a more specific manner.

So…why else did I get out of the kid biz?

As much as I loved my students, I absolutely dreaded standardized testing and absentee parents/guardians who only showed up for game days or when the student was about to be suspended for a few days. For those who think teachers have it made working Monday through Friday nine months of the year with every holiday off, they also fail to consider the professional development days are usually during those holidays off while their sons or daughters are at home. While I’m at it, let us not discount the fact that homework has to be graded in a reasonably timely period; for many of us, we spend most evenings and weekends tweaking lesson plans to fit classroom dynamics (if they don’t understand it, you have to do something else to convey your point) atop of the grudge work of analyzing short answer quizzes for letter grades. More often than not, life simply gets in the way – not everyone has a home life conducive to academic success meaning the disruptions at home would trail the students to school the following day. For example, an amazing young lady may have had to stay awake late caring for her younger siblings after school while mom has to work evenings or the graveyard shift, or a promising young man who is routinely bullied by his classmates is forced to make a choice between selling drugs to put bread on the table or find a different way home daily to keep from getting beaten up after school. That burden alone is emotionally taxing on him yet he isolates himself from the larger picture as a defense mechanism!

Then you have those students who you pour gallons of effort into who invariably do something so baffling that it even shocks you.

It wasn’t because of the students that I left – after investing at minimum fifty-five minutes per day for 36 weeks they were why I kept coming back day in and day out. You could also say I needed the check (very true), but I also somehow developed a relationship with many of them not limited to writing recommendation letters for summer camps and colleges; helping them navigate the inequalities they saw on-campus without blowing up and doing the rashly violent thing; explaining why their attention was more important to me than the cell phone I took away from them during class and returned at the end of the period; sharing parts of my lunch period and food from the McDonald’s around the corner with them once they found out that I hadn’t eaten cafeteria food since elementary school; and even poking fun of myself. Playing Earth, Wind & Fire every morning before first period also helped set a dynamic that everyone mattered and at the very least would be respected as individuals in a world that demanded conformity. I did not drive back and forth to Jacksonville for fun. It was because I genuinely believed in each and every student and (mostly) enjoyed the staff I worked with as I would pick their brains about best practices and have someone to lean on if I had additional questions.

The forty-five minute commute was no problem. However, the politics were a load of bullshit and everyone knew it; when school board members could pick and choose for their own unruly children and wield unnecessary power over the public learning institutions, serving the greater good of 18,000-plus* students was effectively a spectacle and audition for higher office. Ditto for the inconsistencies of the administrations with principals being transferred mid-year and vastly warring ideologies.

*Reduce that number from 18K after the Jacksonville-North Pulaski School District separated itself from PCSSD a year ago to get today’s numbers. Titan supporters legitimately had a real taxation without representation issue which they were able to resolve. I’m not an expert in demographics, but having a place to hang a hat on to call home outweighed what eventually became being a satellite community that paid for everyone else’s projects with nothing coming back home.

All of you knew I had a second job for the first five years I moved back to Arkansas. Here’s more about what drove me bonkers about it and how it affected me as an educator.

That second job was at Wal-Mart. For the first two years in the home store, I had a store manager who was vested in everyone’s success and understood that being an overnight stocker was only a steppingstone to the next level – or whenever I finally paid off debts. He wanted me to enter the ranks of the salaried management yet my heart was in saving the world one kid at a time, to quote myself. Because my mom was one of his top-performing department managers and of my own background (I worked for him in college at the store across town during the summer, and he was aware of my predicament), we made a verbal agreement that I could leave early in the mornings to shower and prepare for my day in the classroom if my area was taken care of; otherwise, I had to suffer in morning rush hour traffic between the gym and school.

Two years later, I transferred to a different store and a culture where the majority of the store felt as if their positions were an inherent privilege to hold and outsiders were looked upon with scorn regardless of work ethic. I won’t discuss the then-store manager (who has since retired), but he was not a fan of my prior agreement; instead, he wanted a do-boy with no desire to advance as much as someone who could really stock shelves to capacity without showing an ounce of greater ambition. 

Over the next three years I tried to balance the career with the job with mixed results:  I wasn’t giving it my all at school, and often I found myself sleeping in the breakroom as I graded homework at work. To compound that, my eternally optimism left via free agency and pessimism took its place on the high block; instead of cheerfully facilitating the learning process, I was irritated by the least of things:  EdLine and student discipline. I couldn’t teach the way I wanted to, the preparation had simply gone kaput, and my sour attitude began rubbing off on colleagues.  In other words, the frustration was real.

I needed a break before I broke down and ended up in the mental asylum.

I was working eighty-five hours per week and the time I needed off from the night gig (teacher prep and conferences, regular Sundays off, and my vacation requests granted) were met with guffaws and sadistic assistant managers who scheduled me anyway or denied vacation simply because it meant they had to cover my area for two different weeks during the summers. Understand I did not take off from that job during the school year, yet my time sheets were blocked constantly. The commute wasn’t getting old but I was finding myself falling asleep driving home from class or napping as I stood next to a pallet of Ol’ Roy dog food.  

I was burning the candle at both ends and by the time I realized it, it was too late.

I had surrendered my twenties trying to make a fistful of dollars, and during that decade I had forgotten how to live versus simply existing to go to work and come home. I knew I didn’t want to repeat that same mantra in my thirties or beyond, so I had to make a decision:  I needed to 1) choose which path I had the greater passion for and stick with it; 2) continue working the same 85 hours per week and sleep all day each Sunday; or 3) breakaway and follow a different path altogether.

I chose option #3 and have lived with it for the last five years.

I quit both jobs in a ten-day period, if that’s what you expected – or not.

It’s not perfect and at this point, I don’t even know if I would even want perfect especially if it involved rush hour traffic, limp lunches or racist coworkers. I have learned how to toil anonymously each night and whenever I have a free moment, I know to police my own time without being bound to artificial deadlines and angry bosses. Aside from the money (in truth, it is marginally better than what I made teaching but the flexibility within this job’s schedule is a boon as the father of an active toddler), spending twelve hours nightly in the control room alone has also freed up buckets of creativity in addition to providing the opportunity to plan out and execute my next move. Hopefully, I won’t remain in this chair for the next twenty years; I might as well prepare myself to be in position for the next great step in my life.

I did love teaching English until I didn’t, and once I made that discovery it was time to move on. I’m not even sure I would want to come back to the classroom – by the time I completed the recertification process, I would be 41 years old. My main trepidation has been what if I don’t like it after going through the trouble and money to return to the classroom?  I don’t want to feel like I’ve wasted two years and $2,400 for something that won’t pan out; consequently, if I don’t try, I’ll never know if it is the calling or just a way to make a living. While the experience was invaluable, I feel like I would crawl in a corner and cry all day if I ended up going back in after such a hiatus and that would be the biggest shame of all.