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Teaching is one of the most rewarding professions; however, the duties increase each year and can easily lead to burnout. Learn how to avoid this and continue to love your job.
Teaching is one of the hardest professions in the world. With the constant demands of countless children, topped with difficult curriculum, demanding parents and an unending stream of marking papers, teachers can easily feel overwhelmed. To avoid teacher burnout, follow these suggestions.
Step 1:

Realize how much you can do. Teachers enter the profession with high hopes and sparkling dreams of the perfect classroom. But those dreams quickly fade when they realize how much work is required of a teacher. On top of writing and delivering daily lessons, there are parent meetings, marking papers, playground duty, staff meetings, extracurricular commitments and specialized education plans for high needs students. It can all be a bit too much for even the most seasoned teacher. That's why it's important to avoid teacher burnout by knowing when to ask for help. There are plenty of volunteers who can take mundane jobs off of your hands (parents, grandparents, your spouse and even older students). Don't over-exert yourself. Know what you can accomplish, and ask for help with the rest.

Step 2:

Let things slide. When you're a teacher, there are going to be surprises every day. Things you weren't expecting always pop up, since you absolutely cannot plan out every minute of your day when you're working with kids. To avoid burnout, you need to learn to let the little things go. Don't worry about the small things that don't have a huge impact on the rest of your day. Nothing has to be perfect. That bulletin board doesn't need to be color-coordinated with your art project for parent teacher night. And kids won't care if that super-duper lesson you've been planning never actually gets delivered. (Actually, they won't even know!) Go through your day doing what needs to be done, but realize that some things can go without doing.

Step 3:

Leave your job in the classroom. Teaching could be a 24/7 profession, if you allow it to be. You could spend hours at home each night carefully cutting out things for tomorrow's art project, marking papers, and writing lessons. But you'll quickly get burned out if you don't separate your job from your personal life. Learn to get the necessary things done at school, and leave the rest for the next day. Bring in morning volunteers to help you with mundane tasks. Do marking during your prep periods so that you don't have to take it home. (And realize that you don't need to mark everything to get an idea of how a child is performing.) Set a time to leave work every day, and stick to it. Otherwise your entire life will be devoted to your job and you'll quickly lose your zest for your job.

Step 4:

Treasure the good moments. Teachers have such a powerful influence on children, but they rarely realize it. When something arises in your day that reminds you why you went into teaching, take a moment to treasure what happened and remember it. Congratulate yourself for being a good role model for the children you teach. Feel-good moments will keep you motivated and steer you clear of teacher burnout.

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