One of my goals this coming school year is to be more personal in my writing/blogging. I know I am guilty of sharing precious little about myself. I pontificate, philosophize, condemn, encourage but in that, I share little of “who I am”. I don’t want to be that kind of writer, blogger or secret sharer. So here is a personal post, one of many this year as I “gavte la nata”, “take out the cork”.

This video (below) haunts me. I just stumbled upon it, sent a message by google about it. It was about 2 and half years ago as I trained to do a charity 24 hour run on a treadmill. I’ve had a great career in running. Both middle/marathon running and ultrarunning. I say “had” because soon after this, my run was cancelled and I started to have horrible problems in one calf. Now, a few years later, never been able to run again and now even inactive, am having horrible circulation and clotting problems with my legs.

I say this not for any pity. I say this because WE ALL WILL HAVE THESE DIPS. In teaching too. You can be the damndest best teacher around but life can throw you some whammees. You can get an administrator/principal from hell. Your personal life can effect everything. You just might “lose that teaching feeling” for no apparent reason. You could be put into a situation that nobody, not even the Dead Poet guy, could climb out of. You might just freak out from blowing too many student’s noses and wiping up too much cola off the floor of your classroom.

But it isn’t the problem that is the problem. It is how you fall. We all will fall but I ask you as a teacher, if you fall – fall facing up. Because if you can look up, you can get up. That’s the only lesson I have to relate about teacher burnout. Burnout but then leave an ember, and re-ignite.

I will. I’ll be running again. Maybe not setting any more records or breaking the tape first again. But I’ll be running and I’ll write to you about it here.  This Teacher Wellness Guide  offers some great tips for us teachers to keep going!  In defining the problem, here is a nice article about teachers in Canada and how so many just don’t continue, become stressed out.