How Often Do You Pull an All-Nighter?
By: Elfrieda Lepp-Kaethler
This question would make sense if posed at a university student services session, helping undergraduates come to terms with structuring their own schedules. No. It was at an international TESOL conference, in a Materials Writer’s workshop. Seasoned teachers, long past undergraduate days, admitted to dealing with on-going work pressure by eliminating periods of rest from their schedules.
“Teacher Tired’ is a term I learned recently in a CBC article, “There’s tired — and then there’s teacher tired. That’s me, but it’s so worth it.” While Cassandra Blain eloquently walks us through the challenges and joys of a day in the classroom, I am still left wondering: how does a teacher ever rest? On my home office wall, I have a picture of my Gollum-like “prep-monster” (Fig. 1). She belongs to that nagging, ever-present voice in my head that tells me I have not prepared enough, I have not researched enough, never done enough.
A few weeks ago, I was requested to fill in for a materials-writing colleague who could not attend a retreat sponsored by the NGO we work with. Reluctantly, I put aside my work and went to what I expected would be a series of workshops, reports, and presentations. To my astonishment, there was none of that. Retreat participants were given three things to do for four days: 1. Eat 2. Sleep 3. Move your body. Everything else was optional. There were sessions, but these were times of storytelling by invited international practitioners on the topic of rest and its importance for health and resilience. In addition, we heard stories of the disastrous consequences of ignoring our bodies’ and spirits’ calls for self-care.
The retreat not only gave me pause to reflect on my own ongoing struggle to schedule periods of rest, but it set in motion a structure for a course I am currently developing, designed for teachers working with displaced language learners. ‘Teacher-tired’ is familiar to us all, but add to that, working with learners who have experienced untold horrors of war, political unrest, natural disasters, and so forth. In the field of research on children and trauma (Winfrey & Perry, 2021) these are called ACE’s (Adverse Childhood Experiences). Most of us are familiar with the term vicarious trauma—the effect on front-line workers in the face of disasters. The course I am developing seeks to equip educators working in disaster zones (from inner-city crime-soaked neighborhoods to tents in refugee camps serving as temporary classrooms) with tools for resilience. For teachers in settings of such extreme never-ending challenges, the impulse to pull all-nighters could be at an all-time high. My own visits to a refugee camp, however, found this not to be the case. The NGOs charged with supervising the work of teachers and other front-line responders were surprisingly careful in guarding limits in time for rest and self-care for their workers.
Why do you think it is that we as teachers are so often compelled to labour harder and longer than our bodies and minds can reasonably be expected to work? It seems, we tend to forget that we are limited human beings. We work inside the delusion that we can do far more than we really are capable of. In addition, because we are gifted and compassionate human beings (the kind that are attracted to the teaching profession), we are often faced with requests for taking on additional projects that are well within our abilities and passions—but we are in denial about what they cost us. It’s hard to say no to teaching ideas that keep us up until the early hours, despite best intentions to set limits on our work. “This is not sustainable,” I scold a young teacher in her first year of teaching. She crafts delightfully inspiring lessons that regularly emerge from near-all-nighters. “I know,” she admits, “but it’s so worth it. The kids respond like butter in my hands.”
A few years ago, I created the following piece (Fig. 2) for my office wall. It represents the many projects I need to say no to, so that I can nurture more realistic time and energy reserves for those I have already committed to.
Truth be told, it’s not working.
There are no easy ways to convince ourselves that we have done enough for one day, one week, one year. There is always more to be done.
Who is the “monster in your head” that drives you incessantly? Have a conversation with that voice. How old do you think that voice is? From the urgent and unreasonable tone of my prep-monster, I surmise she must be about four years old. When I remember that, it’s a little easier to pat her on the head, thank her for her concern and tell her not to get so worked up.
How many times have you said no, this month, to work not technically in your job description? How about enticing projects that you anticipate will take just “a few extra hours” (but, if you are honest with yourself, you know this is not the case)? After you do muster up the courage to say no, how are you dealing with watching other people do what you could do so much better? How are you dealing with people telling you that you are not pulling your weight? Their tone of voice does not inspire confidence to share with them the emotional labour of caring for an elderly parent or the strain of a family member’s recent diagnosis.
A third exercise that helps a little (at least sometimes) is the “What is on your plate?” (Fig. 3) activity. Take a paper plate and colored markers. Write down all the things you are committed to right now. All of them. Realistically, how much room is there on your plate? Share with a colleague.
All-nighters and other strategies from high school or university may have served us in the short-term. They also lead to early burnout and teachers leaving the field in droves. If we are in for the long haul, we will do well to stock up on strategies that sustain us longer than those just carrying us around the next bend. Remember what the flight attendants say when they explain safety procedures: “Put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others…”
References
- Winfrey, O., & Perry, B. D. (2021). What happened to you?: Conversations on trauma, resilience, and healing. Flatiron Books. https://books.google.ca/books?id=_BreDwAAQBAJ
Elfrieda Lepp-Kaethler (Phd. Psycholinguistics, University of Nottingham, UK, Diploma in Expressive Arts Therapy) has worked as a language teacher, teacher educator and expressive arts consultant educator in many countries including Paraguay, Ukraine, China, The Philippines, Moldova and Greece. On faculty at Providence University College in Canada since 2000, she has directed the M.A. TESOL and M.Ed. TESOL programs since 2006.