Twenty years.
Sometimes I have to sit with that number for a minute. I’ve spent twenty years in classrooms—planning lessons, rearranging desks, analyzing data, attending meetings, answering emails, creating activities, solving problems and loving a whole lot of children who have passed through my door.
And somehow, after all this time, I still enjoy teaching.
I still like creating a lesson and watching it come together. I still get excited when I find a better way to explain something. I love engaging students, inspiring them and helping them discover that they can do something they didn’t think they could.
I even enjoy helping other teachers find ways to make their classrooms work better.
So why haven’t I burned out?
I think the answer has always been surprisingly simple.
I never made teaching my whole life.
I Care Deeply About My Work
Not making teaching my entire life doesn’t mean I don’t care about it.
I work hard. I plan. I worry about my students. I want them to grow. I want my classroom to feel safe, calm and engaging. When something isn’t working, I think about how to make it better.
There have certainly been seasons when school required more from me than others.
But somewhere along the way, I learned that being a good teacher doesn’t require giving teaching every part of me.
There has to be something left when I walk out the door.
I Built a Life Outside of My Classroom
For me, that life has changed over the years.
These days, you might find me walking through the garden after school, checking to see what has grown. I might come home and work on a project around the house, sit on the porch with my Bible, cook dinner, write, or simply spend an ordinary evening at home with my husband.
None of those things make me a better teacher on paper.
And maybe that’s exactly why I need them.
I need things in my life that have absolutely nothing to do with school.
I need places where nobody needs me to analyze data, answer a question, make a decision or figure out what comes next.
The garden doesn’t care about my lesson plans.
And there is something incredibly freeing about that.
Protecting My Peace Made Room for Me to Keep Loving Teaching
I don’t think the goal is to care less about our students.
Maybe it’s learning that we are allowed to care deeply about our work without allowing our work to consume us.
Teaching is something I do.
It’s something I’m proud of. It’s something I’ve spent twenty years learning how to do well. It’s a place where I get to create, engage, inspire and serve.
But it isn’t all of me.
And perhaps that’s one of the reasons I can still walk into a classroom twenty years later and find joy there.
Because when the school day ends, I have somewhere else to go.
Not just physically.
I have a life waiting for me.
A home. A garden. People I love. My faith. Creative things I want to try. Quiet evenings. Ordinary moments.
Things that remind me that there is a whole person underneath the word teacher.
A Reminder for the Teacher Who Needs One
If teaching has started taking up every corner of your life, maybe you don’t need another productivity system.
Maybe you need something that has nothing to do with teaching.
Plant something.
Bake something.
Read something simply because you want to.
Take a walk. Make your home cozy. Learn something new. Sit somewhere quiet long enough to remember what you enjoy when no one is asking anything from you.
It doesn’t have to be impressive.
It just has to belong to you.
After twenty years of teaching, I still love what I do.
But I think part of the reason I’ve been able to keep loving it is because I never asked teaching to be my whole life.
