Boundaries Are Necessary and Nurturing to Heal Teacher Burnout

This post is a modified excerpt of Chapter 4 from Jess' book Planning to Stay: Burnout, Demoralization, Exploitation, and How to Reclaim Self-Care, Your Classroom, and Your Life... Anyway

“Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” - Prentice Hemphill

We Can, and Must, Do Hard Things—For Our Students

From a space and time perspective, it’s clear that maintaining boundaries can prevent teacher burnout and exploitation. What’s less obvious, but much more important, is that boundary maintenance is essential to preventing demoralization.

By aligning our boundaries with the values that brought us into the profession, we can ensure that our time and energy are being spent serving the highest good. When we act in this manner, we’re also doing the most essential and least acknowledged part of our job—we’re showing students how to be a person.

Teachers play an important role in students’ development as humans. In today’s United States of America, school-age children will spend most of their waking hours with adults who aren’t their primary care-givers. As a social species, we don’t just learn from the lectures our teachers offer us; we learn from the way those teachers conduct themselves as humans during every single interaction.

If, as an educator, I am stressed and preoccupied but can muster just enough energy to “turn on” a forced pleasantness for the start of a lesson, my students will see that. Without a doubt.

We can never be certain about the lessons that students will extract from our behaviors. Still, it’s hard to imagine that many students would conclude that we are a steady source of support if we don’t steadily enact supportiveness. If we are authentically available to be pleasant and present because we aren’t over-taxed, we’re that much more able to interact with ease—and reliability. Heck, we might even be able to field challenging or conflictual moments with curiosity, grace, humor, and a non-defensive commitment to always hold our students’ experiences as our sacred privilege to witness and support.

By managing our own stress and availability, we are not only less stressed and more available for our students, but (most importantly) we’re modeling for them that this way of being is, indeed, possible.

An oft-referenced quote in the land of boundary building is, “You teach people how to treat you.” What’s less acknowledged is that, by modeling how we will and will not be treated, we are inadvertently teaching our students about human relationships. We are modeling for our students that it’s both possible and okay to expect to be treated as a whole and sacred human.

It’s here, in modeling how to be a person, that boundary maintenance can protect us from demoralization. Because the values that draw us to the profession tend to be relate to the growth and development of the students we support (and relate less, say, to proficiency percentages end-of-level exams), our responsibility in modeling those values is evident.

For example, even if my practice is motivated by my desire to help students to become lifelong learners, I’m likely to behave in opposition to that value if I’m too exhausted to model curiosity for my students in our day-to-day interactions. If I want them to be resilient problem solvers, but all I model is giving my time, brain space, and power away to tasks and obligations that deplete me, I’m not modeling resilient problem solving. If I want to build a compassionate citizenry but am so exhausted that I meet student requests with sharpness and sarcasm, I’m behaving in stark opposition to my values. Not only does this do harm to my students, but it fast tracks me towards a self-inflicted demoralization.

Measure Boundary Effectiveness in Units of Resentment

It’s tempting to think that the teachers who say no to everything (literally everything), who arrive at the contract day’s start and leave as soon as contractually allowed, who don’t take work home, and who lower their expectations for their students to make their own jobs easier are the ones who have the best boundaries. False.

These are not boundaries. This is abandonment. They are leaving the building, figuratively and physically. Generally, while reactionary, rigid behaviors technically prevent gross

exploitation with respect to time, they actually increase burnout and demoralization because in them, the practitioner is relating to the work itself as toxic. Instead of these kinds of boundaries preventing resentment, these approaches assume that the only relationship we can have with work is one of resentment, and so we’d better limit our interactions with our obligations.

While we can have compassion for colleagues stuck in rigid work rejection, we can also reframe resentment to better empower ourselves. Your resentment is your most valuable guide in your teaching practice.

Resentment will show up when you haven’t honored a boundary. Sometimes you’ll discover a boundary that you didn’t even know you had because you’ll notice you’re feeling resentful before you even knew you needed a boundary.

As helpers, we often commit to things via a secret contract. In return, as part of this contract that only we know about, we may be expecting something as non-transactional as gratitude or appreciation, or as concrete as expecting our colleague to cover one class for us for every time we cover for them.

When our expectations aren’t met, we feel resentment. Rather than aiming that resentment at the people or situations that didn’t deliver on the unspoken contract, we can learn from it. If, moving forward, you are able to make your expectations clearer, you may be able to participate without being harmed in the future.

If the things you need in return aren’t things you feel comfortable explicitly asking for, that’s a clear sign that your energy and intentions can’t afford to make that particular commitment.

Behold! An anti-burnout boundary that still allows you to be excellent in your teaching practice.