I have found the cure!

Alright y’all time for me to be brutally honest with you…..

I am feeling it. I am completely and 100% mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted. The holidays are A LOT, but it is more than just being hungover from the holidays. It isn’t even the fact that almost every other email I have gotten for the past week has been about the rise of COVID-19 (specifically the Omicron Virus), or that I am required to be at the doctor’s office 4 times a month, every month, since October with no end in site (I’m fine, no worries, just monitoring some stuff). And it isn’t that ALL I did from November 29th until December 17th was work endlessly (even pulled some all-nighters) to ensure presentations went smoothly, conferences went off without a hitch and the daily to-do’s still got done. It is ALL OF IT, combine everything above (plus more) and you get the physical, mental and emotional exhaustion I am talking about, but guess what I AM NOT ALONE…..

I can’t even tell you how many educators I follow on Twitter who have voiced their exact same exhaustions (I actually started to take snapshots of the posts I saw on Twitter about teacher fatigue, burnout, self-care, needing a break, etc. since I started writing this post and thought about sharing them {anonymously with you of course}, but I didn’t want to continue to put the negative juju in the world). Sure we all have different reasons for this level of fatigue but the bottom line is that many of us, in education, are “over it”.  

Many of you are familiar with choosing one word for the new year to help guide your intentions, Kane ROE even wrote a blog post about it last year in case you aren’t familiar with the concept, click here to check it out, but Dr. Stephanie Affinito (Literacy Teacher, Educator, Author and Creator of #thecoachingsketchnotebook and #ALitLife) challenges us to think about the “One Word” for 2022 differently by choosing a word a month instead of a word for the year. This, to me, made so much more sense, first of all it is more realistic to hit shorter term goals but additionally we live in a fluid changing world, the intention or focus I need one month might be vastly different than the word I would need the next. So feeling like an exhausted negative Nancy and not having my usual pollyanna attitude, I chose my January 2022 word to be REFOCUS.

After publicly announcing my January focus on refocusing on Twitter, it became clear to me, unless I change something I will not refocus, I will not re-start or feel re-energized, but what was I going to do differently to change this “over it” attitude I can’t seem to shake??

I had the privilege of meeting and hearing Chase Mielke speak at the Raising Student Achievement Conference this past December (#RSAC21), I was thoroughly engaged by his speech and even purchased his book, “The Burnout Cure, Learning to Love Teaching Again”.  Feeling burnt out myself it seemed appropriate to start reading his book as I begin to refocus in 2022.  I have officially blown through the last two days of my “winter break” reading his book.  I couldn’t put it down!!  

I am honestly excited to go back to work (although I will miss my kiddo like crazy, I love spending time with this girly). I am already way more refocused and reenergized to get back at it! I want this frame of mind for ALL educators, and am here to do my part in curing burnout for educators!

I am beyond excited to offer our next 100% online book study  of “The Burnout Cure, Learning to Love Teaching Again” by Chase Mielke to ALL educators, you do not need to be a Kane County Educator or even an educator in Illinois to participate in this event, we are ALL feeling the burn out and need a little help!  This book study will be asynchronous (so everyone with that overly busy schedule can participate) and will kick off on February 28th! In this book study, you will not only reflect on what you read, but you will also engage and interact with colleagues, and apply your learning from the book to learn to love teaching again!  

Modules will open weekly. Each week, you will have specific chapters to read along with tailored activities and discussions to engage in.  On Mondays at 12am; the module for the week will open.  All contents for the week’s module are due by 11:59pm on Sunday with a three-day grace period for emergencies 🙂

I don’t have the cure for COVID, but together we can find the cure for the  burnout you or a colleague might be suffering from. I hope you will join me for this online book study – click here to register and for more information.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at any time!

Katie Algrim – Director of Innovative Professional Learning
(t): 630-444-3044
(c): 630-675-4447
(e): kalgrim@kaneroe.org

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