Educators can suffer from exhaustion.
A friend told me the story of a colleague who had to leave school due to a panic attack. I know a lot about that school, a school from a different system than my own. The school and system are mismanaged, underfunded, and experiencing extreme teaching/learning challenges. I bet that young teacher who suffered the panic attack was exhausted trying to meet the superhuman expectations of the job.
Similarly another friend from another system was telling me about the after hours expectations parents had for her work. Again, these expectations are a reason for exhaustion.
Exhaustion creates a roadblock to the good work possible in schools, and as much as we can, we have to find ways to combat that exhaustion with reasonable expectations, schedules, and routines.
Now that I'm on school vacation, I can calmly look back on the past months of school and assess the points of exhaustion versus the points of reasonable personal and community expectations. We have to work against exhaustion as that may lead to errors and poor use of time and energy. Onward.
