How to Maintain a Passion for Teaching

Teaching is a care giving profession and as such you are always prone to "burn out" and this will take your passion, focus and your drive away. Not everyone in this field burns out; usually it is the best and the brightest; the overachievers, and the highly sensitive and motivated people.

Just as any profession keeps track of hours and productivity; teachers sometimes forget to set boundaries with how much time they are really spending on student and school issues and activities:

Even though you can grade papers or do study planning, etc. while watching your favorite soap opera, surfing the net, showering or skydiving; doesn't mean you should. Teachers have always been notorious for having 12-18 hour days because they are constantly in demand to cram more and more into fewer hours. If you kept track of this time and all the times you are figuring out things in your head, you would not be as surprised as to why you feel so spent all of sudden or all of the time.

You often see teachers at every other extracurricular activity either on the coaching staff or as a spectator. Now, there are times it is required per the administration and there is nothing wrong with this unless you are starting to burn out and need to get away from the source of the burn out; because your batteries may need some new stimulus to recharge them, not the one core thing in your life that you are already over doing.

There are times where you are very busy in life and you can't ever even imagine adding one more thing to your schedule. But you need to add something recreational as far apart from and very opposite what you do every day in teaching. It can be anything that you come up with but again run it through a test to make sure you are not just getting more of the same things you are already experiencing. If you take a class on pottery and you are already teaching that in your art class, you may get a little release, but in essence you are just doing more of the same behaviors. A good opposite example would be a math teacher taking up hiking or camping.

Teaching can be such a rewarding field and you can be very proud that you have chosen it because you are an integral part in shaping lives, sometimes young and sometimes older. Just make sure you take great care of the Golden Goose; you, so that everyone is getting you at your best.