Teacher burnout is a real thing. I could end the blog post there, but it wouldn’t be much of a blog post.
Today I almost lost my mind in the CVS line.
It was long. Painfully long. The kind of line where you start counting ceiling tiles and questioning every life choice that 
led you there.
Then I went to get gas. Every pump was full.
On the drive home, I got stuck behind a garbage truck moving at the exact speed of despair.
And then, the final straw. The tin foil would not stay in its stupid little holder. You know the one. You pull, it jams. You straighten it. It mocks you. I genuinely considered throwing it across the kitchen.
Here’s the thing. None of those things mattered.
They were annoying, yes, but not worth losing my mind over. And once I realized that, I knew the tin foil wasn’t the problem.
So I thought back to my day at school.
It’s near the end of the semester. My students have projects due. Projects I assigned weeks ago. Projects they were given time to work on after every unit test. Projects I reminded them about all last week so they could use the long weekend to work.
And yet today, I cannot tell you how many times I heard:
- How do we do this?
- What’s supposed to be on it?
- When is it due again?
Today. It is due today. At 3:00.
Cue the negotiation.
Why 3:00?
Could we do 5:00?
What about 4:30?
I countered with 11:15, which is when class ended, and that shut the conversation down pretty quickly. But still.
Then came the requests to look over projects “just to make sure it’s right.” Which, at this point in the day, really means, “Please confirm I didn’t ignore everything until now.”
And listen. I’m not mad at my students. This is not a kids-these-days rant. This is about something else entirely.
Because by the time I got to CVS, my mental tank was already empty, which is often how teacher burnout first shows itself..
Teacher Burnout doesn’t start with big things
Teacher burnout rarely shows up as a dramatic collapse at work. Most of us are still doing our jobs. Teaching. Explaining. Redirecting. Encouraging. Smiling. Answering the same question for the eighth time like it’s the first.
Teacher burnout shows up later.
It shows up in grocery store lines.
At gas stations.
Behind slow-moving garbage trucks.
In kitchen drawers that suddenly feel personally offensive.
Burnout is what happens when your brain has been running on high output for too long without enough recovery. Teaching requires constant decision making, emotional regulation, and responsiveness. You are always on. Always scanning. Always adjusting.
By the end of the day, there is nothing left to absorb inconvenience with grace.
So the tin foil takes the hit.
This isn’t about patience or professionalism
This is the part of teacher burnout we don’t talk about enough, the moment when patience disappears and self-blame takes over. This is where teachers tend to turn on themselves.
- Why am I so irritable?
- Why can’t I handle small things anymore?
- Why do I feel like this when I love my job?
Because burnout is not a character flaw.
It is not a lack of gratitude.
It is not poor classroom management.
It is not because you didn’t try hard enough.
It is a predictable response to sustained cognitive and emotional load. According to the American Psychological Association’s overview of burnout, teacher burnout is driven by chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. When the system never fully powers down, the overflow comes out sideways.
You are not weak for feeling it. You are human.
The quiet signs we tend to ignore
Teacher burnout doesn’t always look like tears in the parking lot. Sometimes it looks like:
- Feeling irrationally angry at minor inconveniences
- Losing patience for questions you have already answered
- Feeling resentful when asked for “just one more thing”
- Being technically fine but emotionally done
And then judging yourself for all of it.
That self judgment is often what makes burnout worse.
What helps starts with naming it
The moment I realized I wasn’t mad about CVS or gas or tin foil, something shifted. Not because everything was suddenly fixed, but because I stopped blaming myself.
Burnout doesn’t mean you are bad at teaching. In fact, it often hits the people who care deeply and give consistently.
Naming teacher burnout doesn’t fix everything, but it does stop us from blaming ourselves for what is actually exhaustion, it allows us to say “This makes sense,” instead of, “What is wrong with me?”
If you want a reminder that good teaching is often messy and invisible, this connects closely with what I wrote in Good Teaching Looks Messy.
You don’t need fixing tonight
If this is hitting close to home, here is what you do not need right now:
- A productivity hack
- A self care checklist
- A reminder to drink more water
What you need is permission to notice the signs without turning them into a moral failing.
Burnout recovery is not instant. It is not linear. And it does not start with doing more.
Sometimes it starts with realizing the tin foil was never the real problem.
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