Podcast - Teacher Podcast - Episode 18: Being Real About What You Can (and Cannot) Expect to Accomplish as a Teacher - feel like a failure
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Episode 18: Being Real About What You Can (and Cannot) Expect to Accomplish as a Teacher

You have high expectations for your students and even higher expectations for yourself. When your students don’t perform the way you expect/want/hope them to, you feel completely responsible. You feel like a failure.

You know this isn’t fair to yourself, but you’re having a hard time showing yourself some grace. An important (but often overlooked) part of teacher self-care is knowing what you realistically can be responsible for, and letting all the rest of it go.

When you struggle to draw the line between what you are, and are not, in control of, and what you can realistically expect, you’re taking one of the quickest paths toward burnout.

In this episode, we’re sharing what we’ve learned over the years about what we can and cannot do as teachers. If circumstances have got you feeling like a failure, you need to listen. In the meantime, here are a few things we talk about in the episode to get you thinking.

You May Feel Like a Failure, But You Are Not One

  • You can make a difference in a child’s life. You cannot salvage or ruin 5 or 10, or 13 years of education all by yourself.
  • You can provide opportunities to learn on a daily basis. You cannot force anyone to learn.
  • You can control (mostly) what happens inside your classroom. You cannot control what happens once students walk out the door.
  • You can say no. You cannot do everything without paying a price for it eventually (or be responsible for how others handle that no).

Need more reminders about the limitations of your job and why you should not let those limitations make you feel like a failure? Hit that play button above now.

Related Content

In this episode, we talk about transitioning to a homework free (as much as possible) classroom. If you’d like to learn more about it, check out this episode of the podcast and this YouTube video.