The Burnout Cure: Learning to Love Teaching Again by Chase Mielke

I started reading this book in January and had to take a break on it for a while. I teach high school culinary which hadn't been a easy thing to do with the pandemic happening during my first couple of years as a high school teacher. I had had several near breaking points in the past. So when my admin team offered this book as part of a book club for CEUs, I jumped at the opportunity.

I actually started out the 2023-24 school year pretty good. Aside from being the only teacher still wearing a mask, and being like the only person at my school to still not get COVID, the first half of the year started quite well. The winter holiday came, my wife and I dodged a bullet by not going to visit in-laws who all got sick and I started out the new year forgoing ice cream and OTC pain killers that I was taking way too many of and having fatty liver issues with. Through January, I was feeling really good. And then it was February...

Around February 2nd, I started feeling pain over not just all my joints, but in the very center of my bones. Especially my femurs. But worst of all was my skin condition from having a family genetic issue. I was feeling every inch of skin over my entire body at the same time. It was this burning itch, constantly. I couldn't sleep. I was so exhausted. I was miserable. 

Thankfully, the admin team leading the book club behind about this book was so supportive. The other participants were too. I still went to the meetings, but I gave up on the book because I just couldn't concentrate on it and I felt like I could only devote my small remaining energy to lesson plans and teaching. 

Things thankfully got better at the end of March, right before spring break. I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. Put on a couple of meds that calmed things down. And I learned about my condition and started figuring out ways to cope with the disease. 

So I started up the book in April. Nope. Then my goat was stolen. I went into an obsessive depression trying to find her. Then my Siamese cat Sarakit got sick and died. Needless to say, it took a while before I was in the right frame of mind to finish this book without giving in to burnout.

I set a goal to finish this book before I started back to work for the upcoming school year. I completed the last 100 pages with just over 4 weeks to go. Based on what I read in this book, I would like to think that author Chase Mielke would consider that a success! Goal achieved. 

The Burnout Cure is aimed at teachers because Mielke is a teacher himself. Or at least he was before winning some awards and then probably became administrator as what usually happens to the good ones. Anyways, despite the education career focus, this is a book that anyone needing help and encouragement surviving a job or career that just didn't turn out as well as expected could benefit from. It gives a ton of tips on how to interact instead of just dealing with the current generation of students. Plus it offers tips on finding the good based on the worth you place on yourself instead of how you interpret your management team values you.

For example, my program and school has produced 2 consecutive district Teacher of the Year winners. (One actually was eventually named TOY for our entire state). My department boss really made me feel valueless because of those winners and how she told me once that she shouldn't have hired me based on a lesson plan that was a huge success with the entire school, despite being a tad extravagant. Anyways, as I was continuously passed over for TOY (heck, I've never ever been nominated), I began really thinking that I was a terrible teacher. That thinking got extremely worse during my massive fibro flare over the winter. Yet, my book club and my wife pointed out that with having students asking if they could put up flyers for my missing goat, asking me to come to prom and then graduation and then after graduation requesting to have lunch with me over the summer as a group with me, the only teacher, it's those kind of relationships built that is way more important than winning TOY. 

Chase Mielke, has helped me reframe my thinking. Heck, I'm looking forward to going back to work... mostly. (I mean, what teacher wants to lose their vacation days?) With my illness, plus diabetes and anxiety disorder, I feel more empowered to say no and not for reasons of being a jerk. I also feel ready to focus on the student and parent relationships instead of just checking off boxes for the admin team's approval. 

If a book like this can win over a pessimist like me, even to the point that I am recommending this book to other teachers, as well as my bride...

Look, I'm still not a fan of the extra admin work we teachers are forced to do. And I'll continue to keep a secret weapon in my arsenal: my sarcastic and slightly dark sense of humor used to disarm tense situations in my classroom. But I feel that thanks to this book,  I can feel better in myself as an educator when I decide that my caring teaching relationships with my students are far more important than filling out busy work data projects for the department of education. If you're a teacher, especially one in need of encouragement because you'll on the cusp of calling it quits or pondering early retirement, you really should give this book a read! It very well could be the life preserver you need in order to keep making a difference in the life of a child.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.