I think I’m suffering from teaching burnout. Even though I only finished a year-long break from teaching a couple of months ago, I still feel no enthusiasm for it. The mastery is there but the joy isn’t. I’m going through the motions and mostly just faking it.
My explanation is that my research has really taken off recently and it’s occupying my mind a lot. And since I can’t bring my research to my teaching, I’m bored. I tried but there is zero interest.
I don’t know, maybe there is some sort of a teacher motivation seminar or whatever. ‘Cause I’m getting on my own nerves with this shit.
Clarissa's Blog 
I doubt a motivation seminar would really help. Is there any sort of challenge you can give yourself to make it more interesting. Perhaps working in more creative assignments for the students or focusing on making some part of the course more engaging? Changing something up always seems to help with burnout.
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What I wish is that I could meet at least 1 student who’d want to learn. Who’d be like I was as a student and be curious about the world, eager for knowledge. Just a single 1.
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To follow up on what Tom said….I was feeling fairly burned out a few years ago and then really started switching things around with my teaching. I experimented with some real peer-based pedagogies, switched up the format of my teaching, and even wrote a couple of articles about effective teaching pedagogies. For some reason, writing those articles really caused me to get excited again about teaching. It helped me see teaching as intellectually engaging again. And, after a while, my teaching actually DID influence my research. I’m working on an article/book project (academic–not pedagogy focused) that grew out of an experimental course I developed.
Another possible thing to consider: I know you mentioned earlier that it’s difficult to re-establish yourself in the work force after being away for a while. (I find this to be true for myself–certainly.) Obviously working on your reserach constitutes work but it’s not existing “in the work force” in precisely the same way that teaching requires. Is it possible that you just haven’t quite re-integrated yourself yet?
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Here is a potential idea! I realize that you probably won’t want to write pedagogy-focused articles as I did. But maybe you can do a weekly blog series on teaching? Call it something like “Teaching Experiments.” For this series, you would 1) resolve to do something truly experimental–even off the wall–with your teaching (this can be teaching a new text, or trying a different teaching technique, or a new class–anything) and 2) write about that experiment for the blog!
You may not be interested in doing the above so please just take it as a friendly suggestion. But, as I said above, radically experimenting with and writing about my teaching really helped me “feel the love” again. 🙂
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You also said that you are a bit under the weather, if I recall correctly. Plus we’re now entering seasonal affective disorder season. Too many variables to draw definitive conclusions.
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This has been going on since the beginning of the semester in August, though.
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Just heard a lecture by a psychologist specialized in teachers burn-out prevention last week. Some of her advice:
It is okay to have a semester or a year where you reduce your efforts and do things the easy way. Especially if you have many other things going on (like a baby at home). Don’t beat yourself up, allow some healthy distance and some minimalism for once. Don’t get into the burn-out spiral of being tired -> things not going so well -> put in more effort -> being more tired etc.
Spend one hour per day doing something that makes you happy.
I think constant long-term enthusiasm over any job is too much to ask of a human being. Sometimes going through the motions is fine too, even for a teacher (we can learn something from the students here I guess :)).
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I think this is right on the money.
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Teaching isn’t leading to anything else at present. That is it’s a kind of dead end, it isn’t part of anything bigger for you anymore.
It won’t help you attain tenure (since you already have it) and if anything it’s come to represent distractions from things you’d rather be doing (like taking care of Klara and pursuing your research).
If you can find a way of making your teaching part of a bigger agenda then that might make you enjoy it again. Otherwise, you might just want to take things one class at a time and not worry about your attitude for a while – it might take care of itself.
Or you could take the “What the hel!?!” attitude and start improvising and/or experimenting to make classes at least a little more unpredictable.
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“Teaching isn’t leading to anything else at present. That is it’s a kind of dead end, it isn’t part of anything bigger for you anymore.”
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\What I wish is that I could meet at least 1 student who’d want to learn. Who’d be like I was as a student and be curious about the world, eager for knowledge. Just a single 1.
A few years ago you used to praise the young generation, their curiosity and desire to work hard, and disparaged your colleagues who complained about their students.
Are you sure the problem is in your students and not in what you project on them?
\ You are 100% right! I can’t abide things that don’t lead anywhere.You are 100% right! I can’t abide things that don’t lead anywhere.
From my perspective: for school teachers, teaching “leads nowhere,” and so does working in 99% of professions.
I can think of the benefits of knowing you contribute to your students’ development (contribution to society), the pleasure of working with young people (that’s why I wouldn’t be able to be a doctor, too depressing) and (though, I guess, you don’t need it already) the pleasure of seeing how well you can inspire / teach others.
Also, doesn’t teaching add a variety to your life and work? Research is a lonely endeavor, and interacting with family members is different.
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Don’t get me wrong, the students are really great. I’m very fortunate with the students. But I want to meet one who is interested in knowledge for its own sake. At the Houston conference I met an undergrad like that but he wasn’t mine. 🙁
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What I mean is: I want to meet a student who has the potential to be a scholar. Finally I figured it out.
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Yeah… a student like that emerges once every lustrum.
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(We have to do the teaching article about literature as a way to teach language, you know. At some point.)
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You know, I began that project of identifying works of lit. that can be used in elementary and intermediate levels. I believe that if we expose students who take sp for fun or for practical purposes to literature early they will want to read more fiction, and take more literature courses.
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If I were really into it, I would create a textbook for 100-level students based on literature.
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Literature based textbooks like that used to exist. I went digging around in a bunch of very old textbooks for something I was working on and found several beginning German textbooks from the 1950s that were full of poems and literary excerpts. They were basically set up so that each literary text was an example for one or more grammar points, so the basic structure of each unit was Text introduces new topic -> sentences get pulled out of text for grammar explanation -> grammar and translation activities/
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Yes. Using literature in language textbooks used to be the norm in the 50s. The idea would be to update that methodology, using a more communicative approach and developing intercultural competence.
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Sounds like a great idea. It would also be nice if we could get the cost of intro textbooks back under control. Many of them are above $300 these days.
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And with that insane cost, they are still mostly useless. I use all my own exercises in class. But at least my students don’t have to pay for the textbook. The university buys them.
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