Teaching consistently ranks among the top 20 most stressful professions in the world. The profession's high burnout rate isn't surprising when you consider that people choose teaching as a career to help others reach their full potential, but face an over-stuffed curriculum, underfunded mandates, and ever-changing initiatives and best practices. That base level of stress has only continued to increase this year amid heightened calls to action for equity and COVID-19 disruption.
When school leaders and teachers accept high levels of stress and burnout with phrases such as "That's just the way things are" or "We're in it for the kids and need to keep doing what we can," they ignore very real evidence from neuroscience. Long before you feel the kind of fatigue associated with burnout, you're losing your ability to be effective, efficient, emotionally intelligent, and engaged in your work (McGonegal, 2011). Why? Because you don't have enough of what we call "brain energy" and "bandwidth."
Think of bandwidth as the energy that powers the prefrontal cortex of the brain—the center of executive function. This small area of the brain uses a tremendous amount of energy. We need that energy to make good decisions, focus on cognitively demanding tasks, be patient and empathetic, and engage in necessary self-care, such as eating well. You can increase the amount of "bandwidth" you have using specific behaviors, similar to how you can increase fuel capacity by installing a bigger fuel tank in your car. However, use up bandwidth for one of the above functions and you'll be running on empty for the others.
For the past five years, we've used a validated survey and workshops to help schools and other organizations educate themselves about habits that fuel the brain. The survey provides organizational data indicating whether norms and policies support individual bandwidth.
What Fosters Bandwidth?
Think about conversations you've had with family, friends and colleagues. Are conversations about imbalance, frustrations, and concerns? Or, do people feel on top of the following factors:
- Being satisfied with the balance of work priorities and home priorities?
- Adequate sleep, healthy diet, and regular exercise?
- Being able to focus on cognitively demanding tasks, including active listening?
- Being able to effectively filter through choices for good decisions, whether on the internet or in other information searches?
- Using electronic devices and social media in energizing, non-distracting ways?
- Structuring time and schedules?
When we ask leaders this question about their teams, they often react with, "We can't control what people do outside of their workday!" This is true, but from our research, we know that the No. 1 predictor of how people rate their personal brain "fuel tank" is whether they believe their workplace supports them in keeping that tank full. Leaders play a crucial role in ensuring that educators have the brain energy they need to be energized, feel a sense of self-efficacy that leads to achievement for their students, work efficiently, act with emotional intelligence, and remain engaged.
Norm: Self-Care
Self-care starts at the top. If leaders aren't modeling self-care and boundaries around work life and home life, no one around them feels that they have permission to care for themselves (Skakon, et. al., 2010).
How do you model self-care? Master bringing a healthy lunch and taking time to eat it, perhaps by leaving your office to take a break with different staff members. Or, use that time for a 15-minute walk outside. Exercise is the fastest method for increasing willpower, mental sharpness, resistance to the downsides of stress, and self-control (Ratey, 2013). Even a five-minute walk around the block increases bandwidth.
If you're thinking, "I'm not asking anything of others that I'm not willing to do myself. It's just the nature of the job," we ask you to keep two key things in mind:
- Many people who seek out leadership positions are hard-wired to go at a faster pace, put regrets to rest with a good night's sleep, and remain objective in a way that keeps them from being drained by emotions. If this describes you, it is unreasonable to think that others can go at the same pace indefinitely without burning out.
- Ensuring that the policies and norms in your learning community support bandwidth is about ensuring that everyone is energized, effective, efficient, emotionally intelligent, and engaged in the hard work of helping every student succeed. Without brain bandwidth, teachers can't feel that motivating sense of collective efficacy.
Norm: Concentration
Attaining a "state of flow" makes for brain efficiency and quality work. Being able to focus your attention for about 52 minutes and then pausing for a 17-minute break is one ideal work pattern for productivity, creativity, and critical thinking (Gifford, J., 2019). How often do professionals in your learning community get 52 minutes, or even 30-minute blocks, of uninterrupted, deep concentration?
People who remember the days before cell phones and email might recall thinking, How rude! when someone interrupted deep thinking. A closed door meant that you needed to give full concentration to the task at hand. Now, we allow ourselves to be interrupted multiple times each day. We even do it to ourselves by letting electronic devices interfere with our concentration. How does this affect our focus, productivity, and, ultimately, our brain energy and bandwidth? Gloria Mark, who researches digital distraction at the University of California-Irvine, revealed that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task after being interrupted (2008).
What can we do as educators when we feel pulled to be immediately available to students, colleagues, and parents?
School administration teams we've worked with have agreed to excuse each other one half-day a week from all disciplinary duties to engage in deep work. Another simple remedy that we use to create that uninterrupted time block is a door knocker that looks like a do-not-disturb sign from a hotel. On one side it reads, "Brain at work! Do not disturb! (It takes approximately 25 minutes to focus after interruption)." On the other, it says "Ok to interrupt. I'm done focusing." This allows you to set boundaries when needed.
If teachers share offices, have a conversation about other spaces in the building that might become "Do Not Disturb" zones. Staff can use these for high-level cognitive tasks such as creating an entirely new unit plan or analyzing student work examples for patterns in mistakes.
If you're working from home with simultaneous responsibilities as caregiver and teacher, finding blocks of uninterrupted time might seem impossible, but it's worth trying. Constant interruptions may increase the amount of time you spend on a task by 25 to 50 percent. Our children would entertain each other with Legos if they knew family game time was coming later. Jane saved one educational television program that her children loved for times when she needed to concentrate. Natalie, a high school teacher with a toddler, recommends having a list of activities you can try if something isn't working and setting clear boundaries around when you're available to answer emails and questions from students and co-workers.
Norm: Narrowed Choices
Consultant Mike Freedman defined "initiative fatigue" back in 1992 as the frustration that stems from moving onto another program or reform when you don't have enough time or resources to do what's already on your plate.
As new initiatives or strategies come along, teachers often voice things like, "But what do I do tomorrow with this information?" "How do I make room for this on top of the other strategies I'm supposed to be using?" "I've found a dozen new distance-learning discussion strategies on the web, but don't know which will work!" Think of these comments as their brains begging, "Please, filter our choices so we can turn to the real work of using the strategies with students."
Think of going into a shop to purchase blue jeans, with separate sections for boot cut, relaxed, skinny, distressed, classic. How do you know which is best without hauling three of each (so you can try three sizes) to the fitting room? We think of choices as great, yet having too many can be overwhelming (Schwartz, 2004). Don't you love it when an experienced clerk says, "Here's the one that will probably work best." How you can function like the proverbial store clerk?
- In planning professional development, be certain to include ready-to-go ideas so teachers can try things out with confidence. These immediate "wins" energize people to dig into the harder concepts and applications. For example, in Jane's differentiated instruction workshops, she demonstrates a dozen wait-time strategies that increase student participation and critical thinking.
- Know that if you give lots of choices (in the interest of not wanting to tell anyone exactly what to do), a good chunk of your teachers are hard-wired to consider it their duty to try every single one of them—a clear path to decreased bandwidth (Kise, 2017). Give fewer choices or be clear that you expect them to try one and perfect it.
- Ask teachers what they're searching for and how they might help each other. If teachers are struggling with student engagement in hybrid and distance learning models, allow them to opt into a group message thread or online discussion board. Emphasize posting suggestions that work with your school's chosen platform rather than adding too many tools. Ask teachers to use voice memos or quick videos to share info with those interested in specific topics.
We know far too much about how our brains work to not use that information when shaping school culture. Our hope is that you'll be motivated to dig in to shifting learning community norms to ensure that everyone has the energy they need for the huge task of helping every student succeed.
A Brain-Bandwidth Quiz
Consider how you might rate yourself on these items for the factor "Balancing Priorities." Use the following scale: 0 (Almost Never) 1 (Seldom) 2 (Sometimes) 3 (Frequently) 4 (Almost Always)
__ I feel rested when I get up in the morning.
__ I have activities that allow me to relax my mind such as reading, listening to music, TV or web surfing.
__ I make sure I take time for rest when I am ill.
__ After work, I still have plenty of patience for the most important people in my life.
__ I feel satisfied with the amount of time I spend with family and friends.
__ At important family and personal events or outings, I can keep my mind in the moment and let work issues go.
__ I take advantage of opportunities to maintain relationships with my coworkers.
Educator Bandwidth Survey
You are 5 minutes away from assessing your own bandwidth and getting your score.
You are 5 minutes away from assessing your own bandwidth and getting your score.
