I keep trying to figure out why teaching is so exhausting, and I think I’ve finally figured it out.Agreed on all counts. As a high school teacher with five classes, in a normal week I spend about 23 hours on stage, and the rest of my free time, even when watching the Mariners on a Saturday night, thinking about teaching, like my mind is Windows and all my processing power is being sapped by programs running in the background.
1. The brain uses a tremendous amount of energy, approximately twenty percent of the body’s total. As a teacher/scholar you’re thinking nearly all the time, which explains why sometimes when I come home I can’t muster the energy to do anything but sit on the couch and watch Scrubs....
2. In teaching you are always “on.” This point was made by a local elementary teacher. And I think it’s true. In class (12 hours a week), I am always on stage, performing....
3. In teaching you have constant deadlines. 6 classes per week = 6 deadlines per week. Add on deadlines for a variety of other things, and it’s a bit wearing. Having one big project with an important deadline is, on the whole, not as draining as having non-stop small overlapping deadlines....
I’m not looking for sympathy, just trying to understand why this nice mostly desk job with flexible hours and summers “off” is, nevertheless, so utterly exhausting that all my colleagues look like zombies right now.
I'm just waiting 'til the day I can upgrade my brain.
2 comments:
Well said. I concur.
Yeah, I don't know how you K-12 folks do it. Whatever anybody else says, I don't think there's any way you all get too much vacation--surely not enough.
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