Teacher Tired

I came across a sticky note that was placed in my planner for this week.  On it I remind myself to allow a week of rest after the school year ends.

See, the first thing I want to do for summer is get started on the to-do list of things I couldn't accomplish during the school year, and get to making amazing memories with the kids, as I always feel like a "less than" mom during the school year.  And in true Amanda fashion I want to get started right away.  The last couple of years I noticed a trend at the end of the school year.  I have this unrealistic plan of all the amazing things I will do (think of how you thought your new life of working from home would be like during the first few weeks of COVID 😆), and I am very hard on myself if I do not live up to my self imposed expectations. Every year I would degrade myself for not waking up early enough, not working out enough, not getting enough done throughout the day, and pretty much anything else I could find fault with for the first week of summer. 

So a few years ago I wrote this sticky note.  Every new planner I get I place it in the first week of summer break, and then just like what happened this week, I stumble upon it, smile, and remind myself I have 7 weeks of summer.  I can leave the to-do list for a week.  I need to be kind to myself.

Now the whole reason I feel like I need this sticky note is because of what I call "teacher tired".  I feel like many reading this today might have a better understanding of what this is since many had to put on a teacher hat the last couple of weeks.  Teacher tired is making a thousand on the spot decisions daily.  Keeping my mind busy with lesson plans. lesson materials, who is buying lunch today, what time is it, how much longer do I have to teach this standard, why isn't _____ getting this lesson, oh ______ is riding the bus today,  did I take attendance today,  _____ said that strange thing in the hallway I better follow up and figure out what they mean, and the list goes on and on.  So once I finalize all the paperwork, submit all my grades, write my last thank you note, clean/organize/pack my classroom up, and close my work computer, my mind kind of goes blank for a while.  My mind needs a little time to figure out what life is like when it isn't going a million miles a minute.  My mind literally needs to adjust to the mental relaxation of what is summer.  And so for about a week after school ends my mind refuses to make decisions.  Even small decisions.  It just shuts down.  Hence, my little note as a reminder to be kind to myself for a week.

So when I found this note last week, I laughed a little.  I thought, well I won't need that.  I've been teaching from my basement for the last 10 weeks (9 weeks of instruction).  I can't imagine my mind is acting like it would be if I were in the physical classroom.  I don't need to recover from teacher tired this year.

And boy was I wrong.  I said goodbye to my class, in a Google Meet, on Thursday.  It was the strangest end of the year I have ever had.  Nothing felt finished.  Nothing felt different than what we had been doing for weeks prior.  And yet it was the end.  No more lesson plans, no more 7am parent emails with a daily outline. No more typing up explicit directions on how to complete every assignment.  Although I only have Jacob's desk to clean this year, the thought of my physical classroom stuck with March 13 still written on the board, frozen in time, and needing to be packed up and moved (yup, I get to move again 😀) brings much anxiety barreling down.  And then it is all the end of the year items I have to get checked off, but everything is digitized, so it is the same yet different.

We have one more teacher workday, today, and as I check things off my end of the school year list I can feel myself relaxing a little bit.  Although I wasn't physically in the class with my students my mind was still in teacher mode.  Constant thoughts about ____ didn't turn in that assignment I better check in with them,  _____ said they couldn't log in I better see if they got in,  how in the world do I explain how to do this part of the assignment, do I have that worksheet in a way I can do it though Google Meet, I guess I could take that lesson and recreate it to be digital, oh how does this program work and can I make it work for my class, ______ parents lost their jobs I better check in and see how we can help, oh  ___ wanted a one-on-one lesson I better set that up, I better check with my co-teacher on that, and all the like.  We have to submit our grades, fill out check lists, work on next years teacher assignments, and it wouldn't be the end of the year without a few teacher meetings.

This school year was so different. But not so different than I can ignore that sticky note.  Maybe the note is more important this year than any other year.  So after today I will give myself a week of positive vibes.  Even if the to-do doesn't get done.  Even when I sleep in, and then take an afternoon nap.  Teacher tired is real to me, and I just finished being a teacher for this school year.  Even if this year didn't feel like a normal one.