Keep the Fire Burning: Avoiding Teacher Burnout

by Franchesca Warren (co-author)

In Keep the Fire Burning: Avoiding Teacher Burnout, seven classroom teachers give an unparalleled look into their everyday life in the 'pressure cooker' known as a classroom. While some of the teachers survived tremendous pressures, others decided it was time to change what it means to them to work in education. Throughout the book, these educators provide real world strategies for overcoming burnout, becoming the best professional you can be and sustaining yourself as an educator. This book will help you refocus your teaching and encourage you as a true expert in your field.

128 pages, paperback

First published February 28, 2013

Reviews

[Amanda]

I had the opportunity to read this book today in an ideal setting. I was in an all day Read a Book in a Day workshop with some fellow teachers from my school district. This was the first day back to school for me after summer vacation so we could start talking about teacher burnout before we became burned out. We were assigned to read a couple chapters on our own and were told we could read it wherever we wanted to in the building or school grounds. I chose to read outside on the bleachers facing the football field where the high school band students were practicing. It was a beautiful sunny day with a cool breeze too. Then we'd regroup and reflect about the reading after each section. Our facilitator had broken the book up into three different groups of related articles so we didn't end up reading the book in numerical order but according to type of essay. The following groups were: 1. Taking care of yourself (Chapters 2, 3, 4, 9, and 13) 2. Professional Relationships (Chapters 5, 7, 8, and 12) and 3. Profound changes in your life (Chapters 1, 6, 10, 11, and 14.) We had an amazing discussion about finding a balance between our personal and professional lives. I feel like there wasn't anything completely new or earth shattering in this book about burning out from teaching but there were definitely some healthy reminders. Combined with the dialogue I had with peers I feel like I was reminded of things that I need to do more of to help me deal with the stress of teaching. I would recommend this book to other teacher professional learning communities. The group I was with had teachers from K-12, special education, music, and foreign languages departments so it appeared to be applicable to all types of teachers.

[SaraKat]

I identified with a few of the chapters and felt like these people had lived some of my life! The tips tended to be in the categories of making a change in your life, taking care of yourself, and working collaboratively with your colleagues. I am still enjoying teaching and have already incorporated many of these tips into my life. I've heard most of these tips before in professional development and from mentor teachers, so most of this isn't new. But there were a few very interesting tips.