Revisiting a Minefield--Part 5

Burnout.  It's one of the main concerns and hazards for both classroom teachers and homeschool parents.  How can it be prevented?

In homeschool situations, it's usually the mother who struggles with burnout.  I believe this is most effectively addressed when the children's other parent can be available at times throughout the day, and is actively involved in child training.  Keeping it a two-parent job is the key.

Focusing on having a home school rather than plopping a school system into the home environment is another key.  Many necessities in a group schooling situation have developed because of the limitations of the environment and the group schooling approach.  Without those limitations you won't need all the same coping mechanisms.  Dispense with them when they don't serve your purposes.

Taking full advantage of the benefits of homeschooling is another key.  If it's a glorious-weather day, and you can't bear the thought of keeping yourself and your children cooped up inside, gather the children and their books and head for the picnic table in the backyard or a nearby park and have your school outside.  If you get a chance to host a missionary in your home, get a lot of education mileage out of the experience by studying the country they're working in ahead of time and inviting the missionary to share their world with you.  When you visit an elderly friend, have the children ready to recite a memorized poem or Scripture or sing a song.  Be prepared to take advantage of every educational opportunity available in the community--at libraries, museums, sponsored by community organizations and area churches.  Often these are things your whole family can participate in together.

Make peace with the idea of imperfection.  Homeschoolers fear that gaps in the children's learning will haunt them for life.  Those with more conventional schooling agendas seldom help to allay such fears.  While wanting to do a good job with education is a laudable goal, it's really quite ridiculous to think that anyone in any setting can do a complete job of educating a child.  The reality is that there will always be gaps, and this will not, in the grand scheme of things, be disastrous as long as students learn how to learn and as long as their curiosity is intact--something I contend is much easier to foster in a homeschool setting than in a group learning setting.  Meeting certain academic benchmarks helps keep things on track.  Noting the results of regular achievement testing served this purpose for us.

 For what it's worth, we always test incoming freshmen at our high school to see what "makeup" paces might be needed.  We don't come unglued when gaps show up, as they do regularly.  We just try to do something about it.  That's what homeschoolers need to do--plan well to keep big gaps from developing, address them when they do, and don't worry about it unduly.

Organized support from others is a help in avoiding burnout.  In our homeschooling experience, having regular visits with a homeschool assistance committee was a help.  These were elected fellow homeschoolers from our churches.  They looked over our Individual Educational Plans (IEPs) for each child, and handed out forms to fill out regularly to help us evaluate our children's progress in learning good work habits and developing good character.    This was a safe group with whom to discuss our homeschooling challenges.

Classroom teaching is inherently stressful, although many teachers also find it rewarding.  While having students age-matched seems like a stroke of genius when efficiency is the goal, it also keeps things more boring for the teacher than they would be otherwise.  If you're a mother, you know that having many children the same age would be the stuff of many nightmares--every child in the same kind of child training need roughly at the same time.  In a classroom, that's how it is, and it continues year after year, unless you move to teaching different age groups.  The curriculum doesn't change much, so the material is the same year after year too.  When you stop to think about it, you wonder how anyone survives this for long.

Regular sabbaticals for teachers seems to me to be a big part of the answer for avoiding burnout in classroom teachers.  I'd like to see every Christian school system make this an expectation for their teachers:  Six years on and one year off.  If people in administration in the system don't initiate this, then teachers individually can do so.  My observation tells me that most people with our cultural background wait too long to take time off.    They feel extraordinarily responsible, and fear that they are abdicating their responsibility if they "quit," even temporarily, while they can still function.  In reality, this is no more irresponsible than is stopping for gas along the interstate before one actually completely runs out of gas.

The exact ratio of time "on" to time "off" may not need to be exactly 6:1.  However, in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, I believe the Scriptural model of Sabbath keeping is worthy of following  in our church school systems.  It offers a great opportunity for both the teacher and the employer to re-evaluate and perhaps re-negotiate the terms of employment.  

I did some research earlier on how colleges handle sabbaticals.  Apparently two common models are in use. One model grants full pay for a half year for a professor on sabbatical.  The other offers half pay for a full year.  I don't know how they handle the time on/time off ratio, although I'm certain that professors usually teach at least six years before they get a sabbatical.

I've never heard of a small church school system that pays grade and high school teachers on sabbatical.  Imagine with me, however, what a game-changing thing it would be if they did so.  It would be a major incentive for teachers to stay at least six years.  (There goes the teacher-retention challenge.)  Worries about finding a job during the time off would ease, and the teacher could actually afford to further his own education during that time.  Preparing oneself mentally for a six-year stint, with the knowledge that a break is waiting at the end of that time is enormously freeing.  Agonizing over the timing is eliminated, and planning for a replacement can take place well in advance.

Another key in avoiding burnout, for women classroom teachers especially, is to be able to exercise a great deal of freedom to make the school a home away from home.  Learning can happen under a shade tree as well as inside the walls of a classroom, so, in one sense, the environment is not critical.  The feeling that you are in a welcoming space is critical, however, to a teacher's (and students') sense of well-being.  If your hands are tied so that you are unable to do what it takes to make the space around you inviting,  and no one else takes this initiative, you have my deepest sympathy.  Even a paid sabbatical at the end of six years might not be enough incentive to stay in such an environment.  

If you want to avoid burnout as a teacher, you must limit your work hours to reasonable levels.  Ask for more help if you can't do what you need to do in a decent day's work.  Easier said than done, I know.

I referred earlier to the blessing it is to teachers when they know they are appreciated for what they do and they do not feel that they are being taken advantage of unfairly (that is, they are not doing something that parents could just as well be doing if they were more willing to be inconvenienced).  In the absence of such conditions, again, even a paid sabbatical might not be enough incentive to stick around.  

All this writing about sabbaticals brings up a homeschooling possibility I have never seriously considered:  a sabbatical for homeschool families.  During that year, all the school-aged children in the family could attend a classroom school.  Or maybe the whole family goes temporarily to the mission field where a teacher is available.  Consider it with me, and tell me what you think.  (That's an invitation--not a command.)