Have you ever heard of someone who collapsed due to exhaustion?  Like they physically could not do whatever it was they were doing?  There are some days, like today, where I have wished for that kind of thing.  What would it be like to physically drop from exhaustion and HAVE to rest for a while?  No feeling guilty because you’ve missed class because you had no control over it, right?

Unfortunately, I seem to keep sucking it up and dragging myself out of bed each morning.  I push myself through my job with enough caffeine sucked into my body through a straw that most people would be wired for days.  I can have an entire can of Diet Coke right before bed and completely crash.  I then push myself through my evening, thinking the entire time I’m going to go to bed early, but NOOOO.  Here it is 9:42 pm. and I’m writing.  My excuse is that I LIKE writing.  Unlike some other things I do.

Sure it’s exhausting to play whack-a-mole with 5-11 years olds all day.  Sure it’s exhausting to have to be “on” all day in order to keep them engaged in whatever the lesson is.  But what tends to be more exhausting is the constant bombardment of meetings, emails, surveys, paperwork, and whatever accountability du jour your district/state is requiring.  “Document til you die” should be the motto and the truth is, they (whoever they are), don’t have time to really look at all the documentation you don’t have time to do.  Yes, it’s sad, but from the time undergrads put together portfolios that no administrator has any time to look at, at least in a meaningful way, to the yearly goals we have to write, I believe they’re lost in a file somewhere, either in hard copy or digitally, with all of the other lost documents.  It’s a little like the “Island of Misfit Toys”.  Everyone feels badly if they don’t do them, but nobody really has time to pay attention to them.  I’m not saying that those who decide we need to do these things have poor intentions, but piling more on without taking something away is not helping anyone.

Imagine if teachers could use all the time we wasted in required meetings and doing things for accountability for, I don’t know, planning for children, or learning more about their discipline or craft.  During PLAN time.  I imagine it all the time.  Now, please understand, that in my own geeky way I LOVE a good meeting. A time where people can debate and discuss and learn from one another is stimulating.  The meetings I’m talking about are the ones where they feed you some snacks and you get to sit at a table and listen.  Ok, maybe not listen – we ARE teachers after all – and once in a while you use some little engagement strategy like talking with your shoulder partner or some Kagan round robin thing.  But it’s not good old fashioned, honest dialogue where you talk about what you believe is good for kids and why, what’s working and what isn’t.  Why good relationships and paying attention to Maslow beats some grad student research any day of the week.  In the meantime, kids are becoming more rude, more stressed and begin to hate school.  I’ll be honest, I would too.

I’m exhausted.  I can’t remember my kids names at school.  I can’t run a sentence together.  I forget an idea the minute it pops into my head.  I would love to go to bed, but sometimes I lay there thinking about some meeting I have to have and what in the world I’m going to have to say and why.  I’m popping Pepsid like candy and eating way too much.  I wish I were one of those people who would STOP eating, but no such luck.  What can I say – I like donuts.

My situation isn’t unusual, in fact, if you were to ask any teacher right now, while they might preface it with “I love my kids, but….”, you would find out that thousands of people in our community are exhausted.  Despite what the media might lead you to think, there are millions of teachers who spend their time, their money, their talents, sacrificing their family time, their sleep and their health to love on children who aren’t their own.  If you ask any teacher, that’s all they want to do is to love and teach children to get excited about learning.  They want to teach children to be good, kind, educated people who will be an asset to their community.  And perhaps they want a little recognition for what they do.  Nothing major.  You can’t imagine what a little “thank you” does for a teacher’s heart.  That’s all it takes.  While it doesn’t erase the insanity that can be the educational system today, it does warm the heart of a teacher who has a heart for the children of your community.

I’m exhausted.   But like thousands of my colleagues in my community, I will suck it up tomorrow, get my butt to school and look forward to smiles and hugs from someone else’s children.  Because I’m an educator.