Calming the Sunday Scaries
It’s Sunday, and your Saturday went by in the blink of an eye. How is it that it is already Sunday? Then, the dread and anxiety set in. Depending on your personality, you may stay busy with family, friends, and activities trying to avoid thinking about it, while other teachers try to take the day to rest and curl up with a blanket and a Netflix series that they binge-watch. I am the latter. Because I tend to be more introverted, I regenerate from the quiet and solitude of being by myself. If you are an extrovert and need people around, being a couch potato may cause your “Sunday scaries” to heightened, so you may need to be out with friends and partaking in group activities, which is how extroverts reenergize.
Truly, we as teachers are actors and actresses on stage, entertaining and performing daily to a highly-challenging audience. This responsibility to perform day after day can feel heavy. For some educators, performance anxiety can develop, sometimes to an unhealthy level. In this case, one should seek a counseling professional to help them through this — I did and it helped! Many actors, actresses in Hollywood, musicians, comedians, and professional athletes experience stage fright and performance anxiety before they perform, and some even become ill. (Singers Rihanna, Beyoncé, Adele; actor Hugh Grant; Actress Octavia Spencer; Golfer Graham DeLaet; athlete David Freese all experience stage fright or performance anxiety at some level…just to name a few.)
I can relate to Sunday scaries as I used to get highly anxious on Sunday and Monday mornings before “entering stage left” for the week, but after my first class or two, I am warmed up and rolling along with the script, usually having tweaked my presentation. I always feel as if I am in the entertainment business, writing scripts of what I am going to say during my lessons, finding goofy jokes and intriguing information to catch the audience’s attention, and even dressing in a costume of a character related to the concept, culture or time period we are studying. Once I realize the material is transferring over successfully, my anxiety levels lower. However, if it isn’t going well, I feel slight defeat and the need to “up the game,” which requires me to change my course of action in the middle of the lesson.
In saying all of this, I have been where you might be with Sunday scaries and have had first-hand experience with performance anxiety and stage fright. In my case, this anxiety hasn’t always crippled me but has made me a better teacher as I regularly raise the bar for myself — well that and I am a type A perfectionist. So, I feel I can speak to this as I have the credentials of living with it. Remember: Anxiety doesn’t make you weak nor does it mean you are weak. Many strong individuals deal with anxiety.
5 Ways to Calm the Sunday Scaries
⓵ First and foremost, if you must go over your lesson and your script for Monday’s lesson, limit your time to 1 hour at the most. Set a timer and once the time is up, put away all work and place it out of sight. Even if you don’t feel ready, walk away. There is only so much prep you can do and at some point it becomes unproductive. We often have to rely on instinct, or “fly by the seat of your pants.” We all know the classroom is unpredictable and no matter how much planning we put into our lesson/performance, we have limited control.
⓶ Change your mindset. Anxiety is often a source of our thought process — what counselors call “time travel.”I am guilty. Playing the “what if” game is not helpful. Most of the time “the awful” you imagine might happen, never will. So, if you look it in this sense, you are expending energy on things that will never occur; therefore, using the emotional energy you need for the classroom. In addition, you will never feel fully ready. Just face it, no matter how much you plan or how much you practice your presentation, you will always feel a little ill-prepared. At some point, it is important to learn how to say to yourself, “I am human, I am not perfect, I have done my best!”— and then move on.
⓷ Plan a “no-work day” and stick to it. For many years, I worked Monday through Saturday; Sundays were always my no-work day. No emails, no calls, no planning, no grading! They were my “Me” days. Days I used to rest and take care of myself. Later in my career, I would work longer hours Monday-Thursday, and I eventually took back my weekends. My educator husband, not so much. He still works through the weekend, especially as he has moved into the position of team lead and is a GT specialist which holds more responsibility. (He was a middle school math teacher for 15+ years, that is how we met. I was the middle school geography teacher down the hall.)
⓸ Realize You Are an Effective Teacher & You Only Have Them For One Year. With all the demands on teachers today, it is no wonder we are all reaching burnout. It is impossible to wear all the hats we wear and be 100% effective in all of the roles. Realize even though you have failures, you have many wins! As a veteran teacher, I can speak to this. Yes, it is important to give students a strong education, but you are only one teacher out of many that they will have. You are not going to ruin their lives. That is one thing people often asked me, “Why do you work so hard, and all the time?” My answer used to be, ” I am dealing with these students’ futures, their education, and their success in life.” While this is true, what I have realized after all these years, is that students will survive and my efforts could have but didn’t necessarily change the course of their lives. While giving them a good and positive education, we also need to realize that we are one of over 100 + teachers that will have a great influence in their lives—when I speak of teachers, I also speak of parents, guardians, church leaders, coaches, etc. We cannot often compete with the outside-of-the-classroom influences that our students receive.
⓹ Be Yourself. You are good enough! You care or you wouldn’t be in the teaching profession. And, although, the education system highjacks our plans of what teaching would be like with all its mandated guidelines which take away the creativity classroom as well as teacher autonomy — work within the guidelines the best you can but try not to lose yourself in them. You are the professional. You know what your students need. Do the best you can and let the rest go! Give yourself GRACE when it feels like the system is not. Allow yourself to make mistakes and know that is par for the course. Love yourself for the daily sacrifices you make and know it is good enough and in some way you are making a difference. You may not see it now, but you will see later in life when your students are reaching out to you on social media, or you run into a former student who is successful in life. It will be then that you see the fruit of your labor.
As teachers, we are often overworked and pulled in too many directions. We often put others before ourselves and it is hard to learn to take care of ourselves. Addressing mental health is part of self-care for our minds, bodies, and souls. Remember, if your cup is empty, you can’t fill someone else’s cup. Here are 27 FREE COUNSELING OPTIONS FOR
TEACHERS https://www.weareteachers.com/free-counseling-for-teachers/
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