This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 95 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.

In this episode, I'm going to talk about 12 ways teachers can build their own emotional

resilience.

When talking about a profession that loses 50% of its workforce in the first five years

of their careers, it would be an understatement to say teaching is challenging.

It traps us in small rooms with an unpredictable assortment of personalities, energies, and needs.

It forces us to make hundreds of small, exhausting decisions every day, and over and over again,

it puts us in predicaments that test our confidence, wear out our patience, and break our hearts.

You can learn all the techniques, plan outstanding lessons, and set up a watertight classroom

management system.

But to do this work and stick with it long enough to get good at it, you need a level

of emotional resilience most other jobs will never require.

And at this particular moment in history, it may be harder than ever.

Systems have been put in place that make the work seem almost impossible, and the powers

that be seem to be rooting against our success.

A lot can be done to change that, to make the challenges of teaching more satisfying

and less soul-sucking, but on most days it can seem like those changes are pretty far

outside our sphere of influence.

Finding the courage and energy to push for change despite how hard it is, that requires

resilience too.

And our teacher training never prepares us.

Never teaches us exactly how to develop that resilience.

...