How many teachers have you seen who have had to deal with burn out? Why have they burned out? Many would say it is because they simply have too much to do, too much to think about, during the day. Then they had to carry it home.
I agree that that is true, but I think that the principle reason for teacher burnout comes from what happens inside the classroom during class and is a result of grueling emotions, and fighting back the desire to just tell kids to shut up so that the teacher can just teach.
Some kids are great at being defiant but in a passive way. Translation: they don’t do their 50% and they don’t want to take any responsibility for assuming any kind of role in the class other than that of watcher. They don’t do this on purpose, they have been trained that way for years in school and at home by boring classes. Passive defiance is a way of life in American schools.
Such passively defiant behavior doesn’t feel innocent to the teacher, nor does it feel good. So the teacher ends up working in a situation that resembles herding cats or pushing a knowledge ball up a hill with no help even though there may be thirty people in the room who could be helping.
Getting kids to assume some degree of ownership in a class is almost impossible, unless they have jobs. They need clear jobs with clear responsibilities, since they are young. When kids have jobs, things change.
So, at the start of each class, I review which kid will be doing which job they have chosen or earned in my classroom. In an instant, attitudes change as the kids know that they are needed in this class and that they will get extra credit from doing it.
The jobs don’t change everyone, but they change the general tenor of the passive defiance in the classroom so that it is reduced. This is of supreme importance in the comprehension based classroom, which relies so much more heavily on group dynamics and trust and open communication than other classrooms.
At the beginning of each class, I sometimes write who is doing what job on the board to remind the kids and so that they can see their names on the board. It is a discipline tool and keeps the kids focused. It reminds them that they are important to what the class will be doing that day.
Since I introduced the jobs piece into my teaching over ten years ago, I have noticed that with each passing year my classroom management has gotten better and better. I feel that the jobs have helped both me and my students move into proper adjustment to each other so that we can focus on our work better.
