This class was my first glimpse into how personalized our degree could actually be. I remember feeling super excited when I read the course syllabus as I could see that my time could be spent researching actual current issues that were relevant and of interest to me. Having struggled with maintaining a healthy work-life balance ever since the beginning of my teaching career, I was particularly interested in teacher wellness and burnout rates. Was my exhaustion mainly caused by my own unbalanced lifestyle habits? Or was this something bigger that other teachers were struggling with too? (Spoiler alert, while burnout rates in Canada are still very high, the majority of this issue was and still is something that I continue to work on today).
I would later find out that this was in part due to my lovely neurodivergent brain and some not-so-helpful skills that I learned to adapt with to be successful). Still, the fact remained that stress among teachers due to a variety of issues that I researched for my final paper was, and still is, way too high! In my future studies, I hope to help find workable solutions to these issues, particularly for working moms and women in the workforce.
At this
point in my masters, I was almost a year into the first of many big changes in my personal life. I had met the man that I knew I wanted to be with for the rest of my life and had just begun getting to know our “OG3”, his three beautiful kids. This was a major change from my single life, having to worry about nothing much other than my dog and keeping the bills paid for my home.
I began seeing that the hours that I put into my job were absolutely not sustainable if I was to enjoy a healthy family life outside of it. Still, having my own place to live and only just beginning to spend time with the kids on weekends meant that I could keep up with absurd number of hours that I would put into my job, at least for now. We would soon be moving in together and with Covid-19 around the corner, we were about to find out real quick whether we could all live happily ever after with each other!
Favorite Resources:
When my course outline included writing a problem essay, I knew that I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to learn more about why burnout rates were so high and what this looked like in classrooms and in schools. This paper helped me understand the reasons behind the stress that teachers were facing, which included a wide range of demands, non-teaching related duties, and loss of autonomy in the workplace. I was also interested to learn more about emotional demands (such as having to act happy and excited in front of students while feeling tired and angry) and the impact this has on teachers. Understanding these helped me to identify them in myself while at work, which in turn helped me to act accordingly to make sure I was giving myself time, space, and additional self-care to help mitigate these demands.
Micki Banks
Latest posts by Micki Banks (see all)
- Masters Portfolio - October 15, 2024
- Graduate Summative - October 15, 2024
- Expressive Therapies - October 15, 2024
