Why are we all so tired all the time?
How can I drag myself into school, exhausted from planning lessons and brainstorming and writing feedback and writing up students and wracking my brains for how to win students over and talking to parents, and pump up students, exhausted from computing math problems and singing in musical numbers and leading faith groups and scoring goals and practicing play lines and studying for tests that determine some part of their future and saying insightful things in class, every day? And it’s just simply normal?
How have we created a system where everyone is tired? Employed, unemployed, abled, disabled, rich, poor—how can everyone be tired? Isn’t someone winning out from all our exhaustion? If someone isn’t tired, who are they? Can they stand up?
My half-baked political activist cries, “Capitalism wins!” and “The rich aren’t tired; they are bathing in yachts of gold!” But, level with me. Take just my school. Why are we all running ourselves ragged—leadership, board, teachers, staff, students, parents? Who is benefiting from this? Couldn’t we be doing this all better?
I try to pull back on assigning homework, and I get a parent asking, “Why don’t you assign more worksheets? What do you all do in class anyways?” while their child is in my class, completing their final project the day it is due, telling me that it was low on their priority list and they had too much other work. I think about how maybe it’s a bad thing, actually, that everyone above the age of fifteen is stressed, and then a colleague shares a story about how college is easy for our students after what they went through at school, and I wonder why we have to push them so hard as children in order to be college-ready.
I don’t know who to blame anymore. It feels pointless to rage at the hustle culture or the inequalities in our economic system. I’d like to subscribe to rest as resistance, but my imagination wimps out. Even in my own classroom, where I supposedly have full autonomy, I cannot seem to strike the balance between “rigorous learning environment” and “work them kids.”
I am currently not giving my students daily homework this week because I have too much of their previous work to grade, and I feel guilty about it. My panopticon tightens around my neck; I picture students coming home and that parent, the one who doesn’t think we do enough in class, asking, “Where’s your English homework?” I grade all Saturday and then on Monday I add another two assignments on my “to-grade” running list. My mentor says she’s buried under grading, and I use the phrase the next time someone asks me how I am.
When I was weighing whether to move jobs, I did a lot of thinking about why I wanted to stick with teaching, and the number one factor was that deep connection with students. I felt like I was making a difference—yes, I taught them what a variable was in Java, but I also showed up with them every day and taught them that other people are looking out for them.
I knew that I would have to start from square one, being the newbie. But I feel like I can’t even build towards the part of my job that brings me my deepest joy because I’m too doggone tired.
So I continue to drag myself, drag my students, until the break. Until I get through year one. Until I have a grip. Until our view is big enough and our imagination is wide enough to wonder what our students truly need and what is killing their spirit.
Or until the trumpets sound. I’ll take the rapture too.
Alex Johnson (‘19) is a high school English teacher in Massachusetts. She spends her days being an uncool adult who enjoys reading romance novels and explaining niche rhythm game strategies.
