At Friday's staff development day, we had a training on compassion fatigue and burnout. I have heard of and even studied compassion fatigue but had never thought about it within myself. We all had to take a quiz to rate our potential for burnout and compassion fatigue. I scored at Extremely High Risk for both. The burnout was not surprising. I love what I do but am tired of where I am doing it. I feel as if I don't have time to actually teach because I am always doing paperwork. Head Start has so many requirements that there is no time to enjoy the children. So yes, I feel burnt out.
We were asked to make a commitment to do something for ourselves that will de-stress us, or make us feel good about ourselves. This could not be something that we were already doing or something we chose for a New Year's Resolution. My first thought was running but that is something I am already doing. I decided to start journaling. I haven't kept a journal since 6th grade. I thought that blogging would be like journaling but there are a lot of thoughts and feelings that I have had that I am not going to put out here. I did my first entry last night and it was really hard at first. Then I felt like I couldn't stop writing down. I am hopeful that writing down all of things that I don't want to say out loud will help me from keeping it all inside!
