This is my response to the latest bi-weekly question from @abundance.tribe
I remember when I was back in full-time teaching a question frequently posed by many teachers was 'how do I just go on?'
As in quite literally - 'how the hell can I continue without burning out and possibly having a mental breakdown leading to enforced early retirement?'
And I may be mis-remembering this, but I'm sure 'how do I go on teaching?'was the title of a training session during one of our Inset days, and if I have mis-remembered this and it wasn't the concept of 'coping or survival strategies' was certainly normalised at all levels.
I think at my college the concept of 'coping' and the question of 'how do I cope?' had to be institutionalised, i.e. dealt with by management because it was a very 'cliquey' college - most SLT had networked their way up, there wasn't much fresh blood coming in, and a lot of staff were local and it was quite an old body of staff too - so 'caring and coping' with frankly a workload that was unsustainable for any number of years was the way we went.
Note that in many academy chains run by distant management - their strategy is literally to just not care, put it on individual teachers 100% to 'suck up the stress and just work 70 hours a week' and burn through staff in a few years.
My point of bringing this up is that to work in mainstream education is completely disempowering - the system puts on to individual teachers multiple performance targets, which often contradict (like having to recruit under-qualified students to get funding who have no chance of passing the courses they're not qualified for).
(I dread to think how much worse this has got with Covid-19 - having to educate half the class in-situ and half while at home. You see what I mean - completely impossible.)
So I chose Empower myself by removing myself from the system that disempowered me
In other words - I quit.
During my time in teaching, after the initial years of youthful energy and enthusiasm had worn off, and with the gradual encroachment of more and more systemic imperatives (more and more demands for better and broader results ) we all knew that 'thriving' in teaching was literally impossible, the only people who 'played the game' were those aiming to climb the greasy pole.
So the only option I had was to get out - hence why in 2014 I set up a blog, put the entire A-level sociology specification online and eventually built up an online income that allowed me to quit 4 years later in 2018.
And now I continue to earn an income through that blog and the resources I sell via it, and I'm relatively free - I can maintain it with around a dozen hours of work a week (although I do more as I enjoy it) and I have considerable freedom to write about what I want on said blog as my subject is VERY broad.
And as to where I draw my strength from - Buddhist inspired self-discipline, manifested in a daily routine, and meditation and exercise, but the thing with those is that they are now truly life enhancing rather than being used to 'cope' by offsetting the stress of working in a disempowering system, which was the case for the last decade of my teaching career (I had to hang on for those last few years while my online income increased!).
Final thoughts - The first steps to self-empowerment...
Remove yourself from disempowering entanglements, and then everything else will follow.
NB that doesn't necessarily mean everything will then automatically be wonderful, but at least you've got rid of the external forces which disempower you, the rest is your shit to deal with as it comes up!
This is why I am a contractor and only work if I'm paid well. It's a shitty system and I loathe it. Call me a merc or a hoare, I don't give a fuck.
I don't blame you at all - paying some one a decent whack for a decent job is fine by me.
Much better than being employed permanently where you end up with mission creep - I know teaching isn't the only place this happens.
You are truly inspiring! I do wish you many more years of living the dream by blogging and sustaining off it.
What do you think of this now crypto video service @offgridlife posted about?
https://peakd.com/hive-173575/@offgridlife/earn-crypto-and-us-dollars-watching-and-sharing-videos-on-hideouttv
✌️❤️😀
I've never heard of it, but there's probably an affiliate link in there so do yourself a favour and sign up from a different device if you've already clicked through from his blog post.
I don't like affiliate links.
Also he might be taking about his earnings from the equivalent of Steem days - the earnings potential could have come down 20 times or more since then.
Having said that I might check that site out. I am interested in other crypto social media sites after all!
I haven't tried it yet but to be honest if I was to it would after I post to @threespeak first. I love the functionality there except for how you can skip to the next video but cant go back.
Thanks for your response, maybe ill try it out!
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