Imagine this: it’s the beginning of the school year and you’re feeling GREAT. Pumped up, ready to go. The weekends and the breaks come and go, but as you near January, February, and on to Spring Break, you are feeling more and more exhausted by the day. You can’t relax on Sundays. You are riddled with anxiety as you get up each morning and drive to work. Each day passing by seems to be worse than the previous.

You are feeling burned out.

How can we avoid that?

Well, it’s not something my professors talked to me about in college, so I’ve come up with a few tips to help manage the burnout, if not completely eliminate it. As a new teacher, this is vital information. Keep reading for more details.

I remember, back when I was in college (go Bearkats!), my professors would constantly preach, “Relationships, relationships, relationships.” The same thing would happen in my first few years of teaching. The thing is, however, is that no one told me how to do this, merely that it was something to be done. Maybe they expected something magical to happen, I don’t know. So, I had to figure it out through trial and error.

“You can’t have a solid classroom management in place if you don’t build those relationships first.”

“Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.”

While these things are true, it did take me a while to figure out how to do this in my classroom in a way that was authentic. I understood the benefits; I just didn’t know how to go about it. Keep reading to find out a few things I learned.