I want to talk about the people who leave.
Over the years, I have watched a lot of good educators walk away from this work: colleagues I once stood beside on the floor, students I taught thirteen years ago, and people I studied with back in 2010. Most of them still loved working with children: watch them grow, support their learning. They left because they were exhausted. No one had informed them that exhaustion was a workplace issue and not a personal failing.
I know that tiredness from the inside. There was a stretch where I fell asleep anywhere I sat down, missed appointments, and caught every illness going around. I developed asthma and chronic allergies during those years. I walked into a glass door once, and I tripped over toys more often than I would like to admit, because I was moving through my days half awake. At night I took the documentation home and lay awake planning the next week in my head. I was completely drained, and I was calling it commitment.
Here is what I understand now that I did not understand then. There are two traps waiting for us, and both look like virtue.
The first is the one Anne Stonehouse pointed to, the belief that we are “nice ladies who love children”. It sounds like a compliment. It also strips the profession of its knowledge, its training and its claim to fair conditions, because love is treated as its own reward.
The other trap is the superhero, the educator who absorbs everything, sets no limits, and treats their own depletion as proof of how much they care.
Self-care is what protects you from both traps and keeps you in the work for the long run. By self-care, I mean something practical and often uncomfortable. This includes being assertive at work and knowing your rights and your award. It also involves speaking up about ratios, breaks, workload, and pay, both in your own centre and across the wider profession. Protecting your health is part of your professional practice. A drained educator cannot do this work well. Often, they cannot stay in it.
So here is what I would ask you to think about. Where in your work have you been told, in words or in silence, that caring means having no limits? What changes if you treat your own wellbeing as part of your professionalism? Consider it a necessity rather than a reward once everyone else is looked after.
Storykate 🪇💌
