Reflection 1 |Teacher Burnout : Is it even real?

My MT is really positive. She has taught for 28 years. One thing she makes clear is that when she decides she is done. She will just be done. This got me thinking about burnout and how it impacts our ability to be effective as educators. And though it sounds ridiculous, I actually questioned if burnout is even real.

Let me give some background about my feelings over burnout. Because I have worked for many years in customer service which is high stress, I have personally felt negative at work. But working in customer service, one learns quickly that they cannot feel negative all the time and that we have to funnel those feelings down and stay positive regardless of the stress and emotions. 

This way of handling stress is commonly referred to as stuffing. The common cure for stuffing seems to be "Venting" which looks like a small group of people that are complaining about their work. Because they all work in the same environment and understand each others woes, this is accepted in most work places. Dear reader, do you think this is normal professional behavior or do you think it causes more negativity? 

As a person who tends to be truly empathetic, I believe this type of action promotes negativity dressed up like a solution to a problem. Do I think one should never discuss a problem? Am I delusional enough to believe that not discussing a problem will cause it to go away? No. What I'm saying is that these discussions should be limited by the participants. Conversations should be 10 % what the problem is and 90% how should we solve it. This is actually a supervisory tactic that is applicable to education and life in general. Problem based conversations make people like me uncomfortable and it is very easy to foster additional negativity through these types of conversations. If we focus on ideas to help one another resolve issues, we will be far more likely to solve issues and that will make us all more effective.  

According to JC Sarros, "When interpersonal relationships become more frequent, feelings of Emotional Exhaustion burnout developed in almost 30% of respondents. Administrators overextended both physical and emotional resources in their attempts to cope with frequent and stressful interpersonal relationships" (180). 

This study was done on teachers, police officers, and administrators who work in schools. There are some interesting problem identifying material in it, but little is resolved in the article. By adding in more relationships within our workplace, it seems that we actually make it more difficult for us to keep emotional exhaustion at bay because we are dealing with their problems right on top of our own. By being more solution based and positive, it seems we could keep some of this stress at bay that causes for workplace burnout.

Sarros, James C. "School Administrators Write about Burnout: Individual and Organisational Implications." British Educational Research Journal 14.2 (1988): 175-90. Web.