How to Recover when you are an ND Teacher

I know.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Danielle and Vida with ND Out Loud, and we're talking to neurodivergent teachers. And Vida, you are muted.

Yeah, my dog decided to bark right when we went live. Of course.

So we're talking about being a neurodivergent teacher, not working with neurodivergent kids, though that's also true in some of what we talk about. But we're talking to you teachers that are neurodivergent yourselves. I have talked to so many of my teachers that are in their, like, their last week and they're cleaning their rooms and they are Heart out.

So being a teacher is, I mean, it's amazing and there are so many wins and it is a much needed profession. But okay, just from a neurotypical standpoint, there's so much that you have to do in the amount of hours you have that, you know, teachers take work home, they do it in the summer, they do all kinds of stuff and, and we know. Teachers are a beleaguered profession. However, if you are a neurodivergent person who also happens to be a teacher, many days you start the day with zero spoons. And so you're consistently putting yourself in the negative because there's just zero time to take care of yourself. Now, every professional development that you have at the school, like they bring people in to pump you up and to tell you that self-care is a priority. And then they give you 9 billion tasks to do and to complete. And then somehow also we're supposed to do self-care. So they say you need self-care. They do not give you time for self-care. You're overworked, overstressed. So what do you do? You capitalize on every school holiday and break. That's what you do. And you let us work with you so that we can put some systems in place. So when school starts in August or September. We can sustain you through the marathon.

I think the other part of it is understanding that not everything has to be done in the first week of vacation. And you can take a vacation. You can stop answering your emails. You can walk away. for your summer vacation and have a true time to relax. And so, Vida, what is some of the stages of the grief of your school year being done? Because there is a grief stage that comes with that.

So it's kind of— everybody wants to think that they're Bradley Cooper In, uh, The Hangover, when he's walking away from school and the kid tries to talk to him and he goes, I'm on break. I don't know you. You know, everybody wants to think they're that person, but really, if you're a neurodivergent teacher, the first week of break is sheer exhaustion. And it, and the older you get, the more it hits you. So you go home and you're just like wiped out on the couch. You're sleeping late. You're just— and then after about a week, you start feeling a little bit better because you've gotten more rest and less stress than you've had in the last 9 months. And then you start looking around like, do I want to do something? Do you know, um, some teachers never get off the couch and they spend all summer there. Some teachers try to cram 6 years worth of vacation into A two-week period, but okay. There's the world we want to live in, and then the realistic world we live in. The realistic world that we live in is that most teachers do not have a lot of money to travel, so you can still make the most of your break on the cheap. No one says you have to go to Fiji. Like that is something that the eighties and and shows like The Love Boat and The That's not it. But you can go for the weekend somewhere. You can go on things that are free. You know, you can do anything you want. And I think it is this switch, this total autonomy from being so micromanaged, that is the hardest transition for neurodivergent. teachers?

So one of the things that I always walk my, my teachers that I work with through, and right now I've got 3 of them. So one of the first things that I always walk them through is transition. How are you going to transition from the crazy chaos of being a teacher to the crazy chaos of being home and possibly being home with children? And they're also having that transition problem. And And I have one teacher that I work with whose husband, who's also a teacher— no, it's not Vida— and they're both going through those transitions. They're both neurodivergent and they have 5 neurodivergent children. So it's a huge transition period. And one of the things I tell my teachers is I want everybody in your home to make their dream list of the summer. Of everything that they think they're going to get done this summer. And I said, think I'm gonna get done this summer and write it all down. And then I make them take that list and throw half of it out.

Yeah. Because everybody thinks like, okay, this is— I'm gonna write—

Renovate the whole entire house this summer. Paint the whole entire house this summer.

And I think this is a problem of so many things. It's like, okay, I have a cheat meal, so I'm going to eat all of this stuff, or I'm going to make this giant to-do list. I'm going to do all this stuff. Everybody's eyes and concepts of time are so much bigger than the reality of what you have. And a lot of times I tell people, I'm like, just start with one thing and then let's see how you feel after the one thing.

Exactly.

Start with a small thing.

Start with a tiny, tiny thing. Starting with a tiny thing is good. But the big thing that I want teachers to hear here is you don't have to do it all. You do not have to. It is not lazy of you to spend the whole entire summer on the couch binge-watching TV shows.

No, no, it's not. And I have spent summers doing that. I've also spent summers working second jobs and and trying to hustle. A lot of people do work second jobs because they're trying to make ends meet, and I really feel like this is so prevalent in the United States. There's the hustle culture, and then there's social socioeconomic status. There there's so many things, but this is also why. Teachers and school administrators have like the highest heart attack rate of any other profession. We do not take care of ourselves. We pour from our cup. We pour when the cup is empty. We pour when the cup is negative and it's through the bottom of the cup and it's just pulling stuff up out of the bedrock. You have to, even if only you're doing it during School breaks. You have to prioritize self-care for you.

And everybody's self-care looks differently because, again, some of us, some teachers have to work during the summer. And they— I had a teacher a while back, a few years ago, that him and his 5 other teacher buddies painted houses all summer long. That's what they did to make extra income because they needed to. I know other people that DoorDash, do whatever. That's okay. But are you prioritizing outside your necessary? Are you prioritizing self-care? Because if you start out next year burnt out from last year, which most teachers do, it's like multiple years of burnout piled on top of each other. That's why heart attacks, mental health—

It's also why teachers are leaving the profession in droves. If you enjoy being a teacher and you want it to be your forever career, That's amazing, but we need to help you put some things in place so that you are paying back into your cup. You are, you are training for a marathon. It's not a sprint. And I think a lot of teachers live their life like every day is a sprint, and they're like a whole football field behind. Yeah.

Yeah, at least a football field behind. I really want my teachers to take the time that they need to give back to themselves this summer and to their families, because your families— I mean, just like any job where it's taking everything out of you to do the job, your families do suffer for that. And if you are neurodivergent, probably your children are too. So you need to pour back into yourself and your family big time. And I encourage you to binge watch TV shows as a family. I encourage you to take those bubble baths. I encourage you to take a nap out on the deck and not do a darn thing all day long. What do you need for your body to recover from the burnout from the year?

Yeah. And the recovery from burnout is not more things. It's not, I'm just going to be busy, busy, busy. No, I get it that there are times that it's a necessity, and that's okay. But the cure to burnout is not filling up your free time with more activities. It's to let your body rest. It's to let your mind and your soul rest. And again, it looks different for everybody else. It may be binge watching every single Star Wars movie in order and It may be that. It may be like the summer that we watched every single Doctor Who episode from the beginning of time to the current one. Um, it may be loading everybody up in the car at midnight and just driving around for an hour. Like, we, we call those drives to nowhere, and we do it in the summer, and we just turn on the radio and we just enjoy the quiet.

So what do you need as a teacher? If you're not sure what you need, if you're not sure how to get out of burnout mode, if you want to not go back into burnout mode next year, any of those things, please reach out. We have multiple teachers on staff. I am not a teacher, um, but we have multiple teachers on staff who can, from personal experience, One, work with you as an ADHD coach, but to work with you as a teacher. And one of our teachers— actually, we have 3 that are currently teachers and finishing out their school years right now before they dive back into coaching for the summer. So we're here. We have the support you need. Find the support you need. And maybe it's coming in to just hang out with us every day for body doubling because you need that 1 hour a day to accomplish something so you don't feel like you're losing your mind. Come do that. It's just $20 a month. If you need a place to just complain, vent, and have a safe space that as a neurodivergent teacher, you could do that for free. Come on over. We got you. But come join us because we have the space for you. We have the support for you. And I want my teachers to get the care that they need for this summer because I have one that currently messaged me about half hour ago. I'm melting down. She said today is the last day students are in school and she's melting down today because she's just, she's done. So are the students though, I'm sure. So I hope you're having a better day than her, and I hope that you get the support you need and get the self-care that you need, because that self-care is so important and it looks different for every one of us. So come find out what works best for you and how we can support you. Have an amazing day, everyone.

Bye, guys.