INTRO Aviva Levin: [00:00:07] Welcome to Lesson: Impossible - An exploration of educational innovation. I'm your host, Aviva Levin, and as always, I'm chatting with educators of all types who are on the forefront of pedagogy, or making effective changes to old practices. Your lesson, should you choose to accept it, is to examine the factors contributing to, and find strategies to prevent or recover from, teacher burnout. The special agent assigned to help you with this task is Dr. Marquita Blades of Atlanta, Georgia.

INTRO Aviva Levin: [00:00:50] Before we begin, I wanted to let all of you know that one of my former guests slash special agents, Charles Williams, has started his own education podcast. It's called the Counternarrative Podcast. And its goal is to challenge the dominant narrative surrounding our marginalized populations by highlighting the amazing work being done around the world by educators, students and communities as they face daunting odds. I've put a link in the show notes. And as of this recording, there's one episode already posted. This episode's guest, Dr. Marquita Blades, also has a new podcast called Powerful Teaching Strategies, where she recently interviewed another former guest of mine, Kwame Sarfo Mensa, which just goes to show what a small world education can be. Dr. Blades and I spoke in late April over zencastr.

Aviva Levin: [00:01:42] Well, first of all, thank you very much for being willing to come and talk to me virtually today. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:01:50] Well, it's my pleasure. Thank you for the invitation.

Aviva Levin: [00:01:53] And so to begin, if you don't mind just giving a quick summary of who you are, what you do.

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:01:59] My name is Dr. Marquita Blades and I've been an educator for 19 years now. I started out as a high school science teacher, and I spent 16 years in the classroom in the traditional role of a teacher. And the past three years, I started my own consulting company. So now I travel around the country helping teachers improve student engagement. Specifically when it comes to the next generation science standards. And then also for teachers across all content areas as well.

Aviva Levin: [00:02:33] Awesome. Yeah, I know in preparing for interview today, I was looking at all the different things you do. And I have to say, I don't know when you have time to sleep or eat or or do anything, you're doing so many things.

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:02:49] If there's anything, any work to be done in education, I probably have done it before or I'm currently doing it now.

Aviva Levin: [00:02:58] I would say so. So you have a talk show, a podcast. You consult, you do workshops on general engagement and the next generation science standards. You write books. You write papers. Is there a favorite of all of those things?

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:03:21] No. And that's why my hands are in so many pots, because I always grew up wanting to be a teacher. But reading and writing was my first passion. I guess you could say. And so the intent was to become a language arts teacher. But when I got to Georgia State University, I was required to take one science course to fulfill my degree requirements. And I said, well, let me just take this biology class first semester and get it out of the way. But the professor came in and she blew my mind. She made me look at biology in a way that I hadn't looked at it before. And at that point, I decided, excuse me, that I didn't want to become a science teacher instead of a language arts teacher.

Aviva Levin: [00:04:06] You obviously continued on to get your doctorate. Were you doing that simultaneously to being in the classroom?

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:04:13] So during my first year of teaching, I started my master's second semester of my first year teaching. I started my master's. And so I did that. And then several years lapsed in between working on my doctorate. From the time that I finished my master's. But yes, I did do doctoral studies full time while teaching full time as well.

Aviva Levin: [00:04:34] Wow. So that actually brings me very nicely to the topic among many that I wanted to talk to you about, which is you've done work on teacher burnout and hearing the schedule that you were on I imagine that that seems like a recipe for burnout. How did you manage to do that?

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:04:54] It wasn't really the the school and work that that led to the burnout as much as some personal issues. So I've always had multiple jobs even when I was in high school. So I was accustomed to having to work a lot of hours in addition to having to study. My burnout came at a point where I just wasn't in the right teaching environment for me, that was number one. And number two, there were personal issues going on in my life that then compounded the fact that I was in a bad teaching environment. And that is what led to me resenting going to work and not having the support of administration and working with students who were not necessarily my ideal audience, if you will. I know that sounds like business, and that's something that's probably not popular to say in education, but I do believe that all teachers have a niche audience that they are most effective with. And at that particular point in my career, I was not working with that audience of students. And between that and trying to balance some of the life issues that occurred at that time is how I came to experience teacher burnout.

Aviva Levin: [00:06:18] What was your solution? Did you leave the teaching job?

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:06:23] Yeah, well, I didn't leave voluntarily. I was basically told. And this was the thing because it showed everybody knew that I was not happy there. The students knew it. The parents knew it. Administrators knew it. And I knew it deep down as well. But because I did love teaching so much, it would have never been appropriate, in my mind, for me to simply quit and walk away. It was my plan to just finish out the year and not return. Now, you know, I would find something that was a better fit for me, my personality and my teacher skill set. But because it had become so evident to everyone around me that I was miserable there. And on top of the health issues that I was experiencing, I mean, I literally was taking off days as quickly as I could accumulate a sick day, I would take it. And so I was basically sat down the day before we were released for spring break. And I was kindly asked to clean out my classroom during the break.

Aviva Levin: [00:07:30] Wow. And so was that the spark that made you decide to look at it more in depth?

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:07:39] Not really. So at that point, I was pretty much unemployable and I wound up taking a position in a district that I swore I would never teach in. And so initially while I was there, I would say I still experienced a fair amount of burnout. Even though things got better and I loved the team that I was working with, I think it took me a while to dig myself out of that burnout. It took me a while to change my mindset and learn how to appreciate what was my new reality. And that's how I kind of started to turn things around. And even though it wasn't the best fit for me, it was a better fit for me. And I stayed there until I was able to get into a place that was a really good fit for me. And so once I found that happy place again, sadly, at that point the health issues had continued to compound because at this point we're talking about maybe five years into a chronic illness. And so once I did get back to my teacher happy place, my health was at a point where I couldn't even work anymore if I wanted to. And at that point, I resigned and started the consulting business.

Aviva Levin: [00:08:56] Probably should have done this at first. How do you define teacher burnout?

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:09:03] Yes. So teacher burnout and how I define it in the Mediocre Teacher Project, which is the anthology that I led of teachers telling their stories of how they went through and got to the other side of burnout. But I describe it as when you are a teacher who loves teaching, but you hate going to work. And so it's not the job itself. You know, it's not the act of planning for your students and standing in front of your students and interacting with your students that you dislike. It's all the other stuff. It's the bureaucracy. It's the limiting, the limiting of your creativity. It's the restricting of autonomy. It's the constant meetings. It's not getting the support or possibly being bullied by administration. And all of those things happened to me over the course of the years that we're speaking about when I felt like I was in that that burnout zone or what I call the mediocrity trap. Because when you're at a point of burnout, or at least when I was, I was literally just showing up and doing enough to get through the day so that I could make it home and then just try to show up and do enough to get through the day again. And here and there in between. There would be some spectacular times where the teacher who I know lived inside of me would come out and she would make her appearance and, you know, kind of do a grand thing for maybe a week or two and then it would be back into that slump again.

Aviva Levin: [00:10:44] Wow, that that really hits hard for me because I looking back in my career, I think that I've been in those places, but I never really had the words to say, oh, like, I'm burning out. And usually it would just end up being that I would get very, very sick. And then when I came back, it would be better. And I just feel like, oh, it must have been a physical thing. But hearing you talk now, I'm like, you know what? It likely was my own mental stuff and having that feeling contributing to these physical things.

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:11:24] Oh, absolutely. It is the mental, the psychological, emotional aspects that then manifest through our physical being. And so when I was first diagnosed with my chronic illness, lupus, I was still at the school that I really kind of call it like the best place I ever taught. I noticed it when I was still there. I never really had that many flare ups with lupus. I was like, I had it and I didn't have it. And it wasn't until I was in a working environment where I couldn't thrive and I couldn't really be myself as a teacher. And I felt like my talents were under utilized and I wasn't appreciated. And that's when the symptoms started to exacerbate. And, you know, once I corrected that situation or, you know, it corrected itself by them asking me to leave, and I wound up somewhere else. But once I was there, it was so far gone. At that point and there were times when I knew I should have taken a leave of absence to get myself back together. But the reality of it was, was that I needed my income and I needed my insurance. I wasn't in a position to do that. Or if I did take that time off, would I even have a job to come back to? And so I guess the fear of the unknown kept me working longer than I should have. And that allowed the symptoms time to exacerbate. And so by the time I was in a better place, my body was like, no, we can't do this anymore. Period.

Aviva Levin: [00:13:04] Yeah. I first of all, I just want to say thank you so much for being willing to talk about the things that I think we as teachers really feel like we can't talk about. One of them would be how candidly you talk about an experience where you were asked to leave a job, because I feel like what you said, sometimes there's just not good fits. But that's definitely something that people don't speak openly about. And secondly, I feel like a lot of teachers see this idea of burnout as a reflection on themselves, not necessarily a symptom of a larger system that is making them feel that way.

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:13:44] Well, I just appreciate you having a platform to say these things out loud. And I know they're not popular to say, but hopefully through myself and my co-authors writing the Mediocre Teacher Project, which is also not a popular thing to say, to say that I was a mediocre teacher at one point when I knew deep down I really was an outstanding teacher still, and I knew that. So I'm just happy now to be able to put it out there and have people to hear this and let them know that it is OK to realize that this environment is not for me. And you can love your job. You can love your students and still not want to teach. Teachers are guilted to believe that we have to self-sacrifice. And if we're not self-sacrificing in all areas, then that means we're not devoted to the mission of educating children. And that's just a false narrative that we really have to reverse.

Aviva Levin: [00:14:41] Especially being such a female dominated industry. It's almost like the double whammy of the teacher sacrifice narrative. And then you have the female and mother sacrifice narrative. And it just creates, I imagine, a lot more burnout than there needs to be.

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:15:04] I can only imagine it and I'll say this because I'm not a mother and I was single most of my teaching career. But if it was that hard for me and I only had to take care of myself, then I don't know how the mothers are doing it. The mothers and wives that I don't know how they're doing it all.

Aviva Levin: [00:15:23] I guess this comes to the million dollar question, which is if a teacher is listening to this and identifying like, yeah, I think I'm in a burnout state, what should she or he do?

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:15:35] I think the first thing that a teacher who feels as if he or she is experiencing burnout should do is to assess when did I feel my happiest, most effective, most productive in my teaching career. What time was that in my career? Where was I working? Who were the students that I was working with? What was I teaching? We have to look at all of those things. You know, what type of administration did I have? And then we also have to look at our personal lives and say, OK, now what things have changed over the years that may also be contributing to this feeling of overwhelming sense of fatigue and unhappiness on my job. So we have to look at what were the conditions when we felt like things were right versus what are the conditions now and then we have to start asking ourselves now, what can I do to get back to that spot? And of course, we're going to start within ourselves. And we first want to look at what are the small changes that I can make daily to get back to that sweet spot or that happy place, because I know that everybody can't just up and leave their job as soon as they realize that it's not for them. It's not what I did. You know, I stayed much longer than I should have in certain places. So we have to start with ourselves and say, what is it that I can change to make this a better situation for me until I can change the situation. And so I would say make those small changes day by day.

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:17:15] One of the main ones that I made was really setting boundaries between how much time I would spend working on my teaching job versus how much time I'm going to spend doing other stuff. Be that my side hustle business, be it taking classes at the dance studio or traveling or whatever it is, but set those boundaries and stick to it and don't allow people to make you feel guilty for not wanting to spend your entire weekend at school events. The weekend is your time. You have a right to use it however you choose. And while you're making those personal changes and working on yourself, then you start doing the research and you start looking for a place that has the type of environment where you can thrive professionally and you start taking the steps required to get yourself into that space. You know, we don't do a lot of networking on the teacher level of education, but it might require us to start doing some networking and finding out who we need to talk to and who we need to meet so that we can get into that district or that school building that we feel like is the ideal fit for us and just actively take the steps required so that we can move in that direction.

Aviva Levin: [00:18:31] And for teachers right now, because I see a lot on Twitter, I see some teachers that are really thriving with this change in the distance ed, due to Covid, almost like this is that wakeup call that they needed to really change their practice and find love again. And then I see some teachers that are openly questioning, like after doing this can I realistically keep teaching? How do you think that this new reality is going to be changing what teachers are doing?

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:19:06] Oh, I think this new reality is just revealing a lot about who we are as educators and our mindset around our practice. As educators, I think that for some of us, more than anything, it is just going to reveal what we want to do versus what we don't want to. And we're gonna have to be very honest about that as we go forward. I don't feel that schools should go back to what it was before, even though I do understand the plight of teachers who weren't prepared to teach under the current circumstances. And so I do get that.

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:19:49] But as with anything else, when you're trying something new, it does take time to kind of get the hang of it. Some people can jump in and get it right away, and then some people take more time, more training and more coaching, just like instruction with our students. And so just because something doesn't feel good in the beginning doesn't mean that perhaps we shouldn't continue to do it. And I feel that way with distance education. But for the teachers who truly, truly feel that it's not for them, they should not continue in it. And that's the same advice I would give in a traditional setting: if something is really, really not right for you, that you shouldn't continue in it.

Aviva Levin: [00:20:28] And then for the other side of the coin, which is administrators who don't want a building of mediocre teachers. If there's an administrator who is able to identify that they see one or their teachers heading towards or in the middle of a burnout, what would you recommend that they do?

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:20:50] I recommend that administrators do for teachers the same thing that they ask teachers to do for students, and that is to pay attention and build relationships. I have worked in buildings with administrators who I only saw them when it was time for a faculty meeting or if they were stopping by to evaluate. And then I've had other administrators who literally came by all the time and you could chitchat with them and have conversations. And they actually knew the names of your family members or they knew my mother because she was always there helping me in my classroom. And so I think that administrators are going to have to start putting in the work to pay attention to their teachers and understand their personalities and know when something is a little bit off. And you can't know everything about everyone.

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:21:44] But if they are just doing those pulse checks and checking in, you know, just taking the time to speak to teachers about something that's probably not work related, they can kind of pick up on one when something's not right with the teacher. And then they need to establish some type of practices in the building, you know, develop a culture where it's okay for teachers to not have it together all the time and provide support that teachers need so that they don't feel alone or bullied or overworked, recognizing their efforts and also utilizing teachers' talents in more effective ways. I think that's a big one, because a lot of times we have ideas that could improve the entire culture of our building. But because we have administrators who only see their own ideas as valid, then we don't have an opportunity to express or implement those ideas. And I think by highlighting the unique talents of each individual and allowing them to do things that are rewarding for them. I think that's a great way to combat burnout.

Aviva Levin: [00:23:05] If I, as a colleague, see someone that I know going towards a burnout stat is there a good way for me to, like, slip them a website or recommend a book? Like, what do you think would be a helpful friend thing for me to do?

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:23:27] As a colleague, I would say just to recognize the person's efforts.If you notice that they're doing something really well, just making sure you tell them that, because a lot of times we don't tell people the things that we see them doing well or the things that we admire about them. Sometimes we assume that people know they're doing a great job like that teacher down the hallway who teaches her heart out and all of the kids love her. And so we just assume, well, she must know that she is doing the thing and we don't tell them that. But a lot of times people just need to hear it from someone else. And so just reaffirming for them that, hey, I noticed that you did so-and-so last week. And I just want to tell you that you're doing a great job. Or you can do something simple, like offering them lunch or, you know, offering a book as you stated or dare I say, offered to cover one of their classes if you see that they they need a break. Of course, you have to go in accordance with your building rules, but just little things like that can go a long way. Some of the things that helped me when I was burning out was to have my colleagues come to me and say, You look tired today. So what can I do to help you? And a lot of times I couldn't even tell them what I needed them to do to help me because it felt like I was so snowed under that I didn't even know where to start. But just having someone say that they noticed it was even helpful for me.

Aviva Levin: [00:24:54] Just because you have so many amazing projects that you're working on, and I wish I had the time to ask you about all of them. But my favorite is the 'Write like a Gyrlfriend'. If you don't mind just sharing a little bit about what it is and then maybe how listeners can help contribute to the project.

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:25:24] The class of 2020 write like a gyrlfriend scholarship program is something that my business partner, Maureen Carnegie Baker and I decided to do to give back to young ladies. We started the gyrlfriend collective in 2018. And it simply started as a book project where we were getting women together to write an anthology about the issues that we deal with as girlfriends. And the idea just kind of took off. And so here we are, four books later into the Gyrlfriend Code series and we wanted to give back. And so Write Like a Gyrlfriend will be a special edition of the Gyrlfriend Code Anthology series, where we will feature twelve high school seniors who are writing about their experiences as young gyrlfriends. Out of those top 12 entries that we receive or will, the top 12 will all be published in the book. And of those, one young lady will receive a five hundred dollars scholarship award. And so I am asking any and all educators who are teaching, mentoring, know of a high school senior young lady to please send her to our Web site www.gyrlfriend (that's g Y r l f r i e n d) collective.com so that she can apply for the Write like a Gyrlfriend class of 2020 scholarship. And the deadline for that is May 15th.

Aviva Levin: [00:26:56] Awesome. And if listeners wanted to find more of your work and projects and more about what you do, how can they find you.

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:27:03] All of my education and work and projects can be found on my Web site, Dr. Marquita Blades dot com or on Facebook. My Facebook page is powarrful teaching and that's p o w a r r f u l.

Aviva Levin: [00:27:25] I'll put links as well in the show notes. Again, thank you very much for sharing this and also thank you so much for just shining a light on some of the darker areas of teaching that we're not always willing to talk about in education. And I really appreciate having such an amazing voice being there to do work around that. So thank you again.

Dr. Marquita Blades: [00:27:48] What I want teachers to understand is that having a mishap in education, you know, having a few bad years or even being fired, you know, it is not a death sentence to your teaching career. I went from, you know, relatively unknown, even though I was a great teacher in the classroom, but no one knew me and went from relatively unknown to having a national platform in just a matter of a couple of years. But I couldn't have done that if I allowed myself to devalue what I knew I could do, all because I had a few years where I didn't do it well or I had a school to tell me not to come back after spring break. We have to stop defining ourselves as teachers by the mishaps or the mistakes that we make, or our poor judgment when we pick the wrong school to teach. And we really have to define it by the amount of passion that we have for students and the things that we have done effectively and focus on what we do well, get in a place where we can, you know, do more of what we do well. And that's how we're going to be able to find success in this career, regardless of all the other things that we may have experienced before.

OUTRO Aviva Levin: [00:29:20] So there you have it: Dr. Marquita Blades with strategies on how administrators, colleagues and even the teacher themselves can deal with teacher burnout. If you want to find out more about what innovative educators are doing around the world, go to lesson impossible dot com. And if you like the podcast, please consider forwarding it to your colleagues and rating and reviewing it on iTunes. This has been Lesson: Impossible, and I was your host of Aviva Levin.