99. Defiantly Hopeful: Navigating Teacher Burnout with Community, Humor, and Advocacy with Special Guest Andrea Forcum

[0:00]Hey, Andrea, I am so excited to have you here on the Resilient Teacher Podcast.

Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. Yes, I have been wanting to do this forever.

For people who may not know you because maybe they aren't on TikTok or maybe

they're not on Instagram and they aren't familiar with your face and all of

that, can you tell the teachers who are listening just a little bit about you?

[0:25]How'd you get into teaching, what you taught, that sort of thing? Yeah.

So I taught high school English for nine years and absolutely loved it.

And I started making TikToks like the last two years of my teaching.

So like kind of post pandemic, was looking for community.

So I started posting videos about

like the chaotic, insane things that my students were saying in class.

And that's kind of where I found my feet online because there were so many other

teachers that are experiencing the same and also kind of seeking community.

And while I was doing that, I was also working on my PhD in curriculum and instruction.

And so as I finished that, I was kind of growing on more and more.

And then this past fall, I transitioned from teaching high school into teaching college.

And now I am a professor of teaching and learning at Indiana State.

So I have the absolute honor of working with future your teachers and giving

them a perspective that is very rooted in the real experience of being in a classroom.

Because you know, I taught pre pandemic through the pandemic post pandemic.

[1:31]And so I'm able to give them a much more up to date version of what's going

on in the class than, you know, some of the professors who've been out of the

classroom for 20 or 30 years.

So and now I still create content about what it's like being a high school teacher

based on what what my experiences were, and all of that.

But I make no secret of the fact that I'm not actively in a high school classroom.

Like the people who follow me know kind of where my journey has come from and

where it is now and all of that.

[1:57]But yeah, my goal is just to support teachers and make them laugh and make them

feel a little less alone in this chaotic job.

[2:06]Yeah. I mean, you know, when you said that about, you know, moving from teaching

high school to then teaching future teachers, I think that's so needed.

Because if you can think back at your time, like throughout college,

I don't think I had a real picture of what teaching would be like until I was

in the classroom, out of college, already had my degree in my first classroom,

and then being like, almost feeling like being thrown to the wolves. You know what I mean?

Because the professors that I had were a lot older. I don't know that they had

been in the classroom for years and years. Amen.

[2:42]And then now moving into post-pandemic teaching, you having those experiences

is just giving those teachers such a better picture, being a little bit more prepared.

You can provide that to them, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

And it's interesting, too, because you think about like the past 20 years in

education, like not only have we had some serious historical events,

but also like cell phones were a thing.

You know, when I was in high school, I remember we had like flip phones and

T9 texting and stuff like that.

So like, yeah, really weren't messing with their phones during class.

So, you know, if you're trying to help prepare students or future teachers to

enter the classroom, but you yourself haven't dealt with some of those challenges,

it makes it very difficult, even if you're trying.

And that is kind of the dichotomy of this transition

I made in fall is the second I left the classroom I start

losing the losing touch you know I can

do everything I possibly can to kind of stay grounded

in what the reality is of being a high school teacher and the the rigors of

that and how very draining it can be but the reality is is that right now I

teach three classes three days a week so I teach Monday Wednesday Friday I'm

actively live with students nine hours a week.

That's it. Yeah. That like that is not the same in any way, shape or form to

the, you know, 34 hour a week.

I was live with students with my five or six hours of planning or prep time. Right. And so that's.

[4:09]It's really easy to become complacent and be like, well, I'm still teaching, but it's not the same.

And so that is something that I have to be very mindful of in trying to make

sure that I am in classrooms as much as I possibly can be.

Because the students that I work with, they have immersion time.

So half of the semester, they are actively in the classrooms with other teachers

and getting some practice and stuff. So I do get to pop in.

But but you know how it is. If you're a strange adult in a classroom,

the students think that you're there for them and they're going to be on their

best behavior, which is a real shame because content-wise, it would be great

if they just said the craziest things, but they usually behave when I'm in the room.

You said that about content-wise. I love the things that you say.

[4:57]It's like comedic relief, but it's real. Those are things that real kids said in your classroom.

As TikTok famous as you are, you know, and how much I love your comedy stuff.

One of the reasons that I asked you to come on and just join me here was because

of your doctorate dissertation.

So I'd love if you tell a little bit about what you did your dissertation on

and what made you want to research it.

Yeah. So it's so funny because the TikTok stuff is like, when I think about

my accomplishments, like the TikTok stuff is so tertiary because I'm like,

I got a PAD, you know, But that's never what my students care about.

Or when people are like, oh, yeah, she's the TikTok, the influencer teacher.

And I'm like, I have two masters and a doctorate, though, also.

But nobody cares about that. I do. I'm delighted that you're asking because

people usually do not ask.

[5:50]So I basically started the process and was really just looking at how can I support teachers?

How can we look at this massive issue of teacher attrition that has kind of always been an issue?

You know, it's an issue post-pandemic, but it's always been an issue.

And so I wanted to see, because I also knew relationships between teachers and

their students was predictive of all sorts of things, right?

Like the teacher's satisfaction and the student outcomes.

And so I wanted to know the amount of stress that we're putting on these new teachers.

I had student teachers in my class that were freaking out because they had all

of these insane, like, testing projects that the states were putting on them

to get done during their student teaching.

And I saw how much stress they were under. And I know how I am when I'm stressed.

And so I wanted to look at the question of how stress impacts first year teachers

relationships with their students.

[6:44]And how it impacted their ability to cope.

And so I, I did what is called a case study.

So basically, I took a group of first year teachers that were in the district

that I was in, and interviewed them, and had them do a,

like a journal writing prompt, and had them do a group,

group like interview basically so those

were like my three data sources and ask them

a bunch of questions about how they feel like their experiences

are going how do they you know feel stressed what

helps when they do feel stressed do you feel like it impacts your relationships

with your students and it was really interesting because what i found was most

of the students or most of the first year teachers felt like they were managing

their relationships with their students really Like if you ask them directly,

like, how is your stress impacting your relationship with your students?

They would say, it's not really, I'm able to cope really well.

But then if I ask other questions, like, when you're stressed, how does that come out?

They would say, oh, I'm shorter with my students and snap up a little bit. I'm not as creative.

[7:56]I have a harder time managing class behaviors.

And so while they aren't necessarily cognizant of the impact,

they later kind of came around to be to like talking about some of the impact.

You know, yeah, yeah. And what I found that I thought was so fascinating was

the students who are the first year teachers who struggled the least,

and seemed to be assessing their stress and all of that is less,

they were the ones who have really strong support systems at the school.

[8:27]And vice versa. So if I like there was one of my participants that was at a

school, and they were a special education teacher,

and they were trying to provide supports for all of these students and working

with the primary teachers and the primary teachers were not wanting to work

with her and they were being really combative.

And she felt very isolated and very alone.

And she talked to admin about it, but they couldn't really do much.

And so she had a miserable time so much so that she left that school at the end of the year,

and then I had others that had these amazing

supportive teams or they had a spouse or a parent or a sibling that was also

a teacher that they could vent to yeah so how was the other thing that blew

my mind because I thought it would have to be somebody that you work with someone

who knows the same group of kids all of that but it wasn't that it was literally

like oh I call my mom mom on the way home from work,

and we talk about it, because she was a teacher for 20 years.

And just being able to have that, like kind of sounding board where someone

just gets it, they're not going to judge you, they're not going to,

you know, try and give you platitudes or tell you to do self care,

they're just gonna be like, I get it. Yeah, that's hard.

Like, that's really tough that you dealt with that today. And that's what made

the biggest difference.

And it was fascinating, too, is I kept on thinking, like, okay,

like, what do we do with this information?

[9:52]And number one, stop putting stupid policies in place, like holding teachers

to this insane workload where like during their first year, because it was in California.

[10:06]And during the first year teaching, the teachers had to do this huge portfolio

basically about teaching and all of that kind of stuff.

Meanwhile the administrators are

not held to any accountability for how well they do or

do not support their teachers there is like no no

system in place saying like hey don't give this first year teacher for prep

don't give this first year teacher a bunch of adjunct duties don't give this

first year teacher like a random class that they're not even licensed for because

that was was the case in several of the classes where it's like,

oh, you're going to be teaching like this early level remedial English as a second language class.

And this teacher was a science teacher. And she's like, right.

[10:52]Because she was bilingual, basically. And so they put her in there.

And so, you know, that was one of my suggestions at the end was,

let's put the accountability on administrators to better support their teachers

in such a way so that you say for the first three years teaching,

you get no more than two prep, you only have to, like work and prepare for two classes.

And then after that, if you want to do more, do more.

And, you know, have a mentorship system in place where it's not not another

teacher who's also stressed, bring in a retired teacher twice a week to come

in and mentor and work with that first year teacher, somebody who's fresh from

the classroom and gets it. Yeah.

So you know, I made recommendations like that. But the funny thing about dissertations

is basically no one reads them. So like your committee reads them.

And then I talked about I'm actually working right now I'm trying to do possibly

an article and talk about kind of what what my takeaways were.

I'm like, here's my take on how we should do a better job supporting teachers.

[11:53]And so I'm hoping maybe that, I mean, that'll be peer reviewed.

So it'll be other people that are like in the college atmosphere and are also

aren't in the classroom.

But that is one of the benefits of my social media platform is that hopefully

it can reach kind of a broader audience.

Yeah. I think that's one of the, one of the huge parts of having that,

the large social media platform that you have is that you can bring awareness to that.

And that's something like my friend Jen and I were talking about this and we

were saying like, when we have social media platforms,

it's almost a disservice to teachers if we're not bringing or if we're not advocating

or if we're not talking about some of the issues that are coming up.

Not that we're complaining about that, right? Because like I talk about teacher burnout.

That is the thing that I, I, that's my main thing to talk about is teacher burnout.

But if I don't talk about the real struggles that are going on in the classroom, then I.

[12:51]What am I doing? You know, I'm not bringing awareness to that.

And so I think that's really cool that you can, you can bring that awareness

to, you know, the things that you see in the classroom and things like that.

It's funny that you said that about the teacher who dealt with,

was a special educator. I was a special educator.

I do instructional coaching now.

And so when I taught special education, I can remember one of the hardest years

that I had was because I didn't have the support of the teachers that I was working with.

When I was in inclusion classes, they saw it as almost like a power struggle.

And so I can totally feel that first year teachers struggle with that because I too dealt with that.

And I kind of look at it from the lens of there's like three spheres to making teaching sustainable.

[13:45]You've got your action piece, like we have to take some action, right?

We have to have a mindset piece because that's a big component,

but then we also have to have that support.

And really kind of what you were just talking about with your dissertation,

that kind of feeds into that, you know, like we need to have that support.

And one of the things you said on social media was it wasn't the class size.

It wasn't the grade level.

It was the humans that the teachers know that they could go to,

that they or couldn't go to rather that impacted their desire to really keep teaching.

When you did this research, were there any specific things that teachers could

do or that schools could do to improve the support of the schools other than

maybe the administrative part?

[14:34]So that was one of the big challenges, right? Because it's one thing to say

like, you should go and hang out with the people you work with.

Because sometimes there's not great options.

[14:47]Because I remember when I first started, they were like, avoid the lunchroom.

That's something I heard a lot. Because sometimes, depending on the culture

of the school, the climate of the school, there could be a lot of negativity there.

But I think that one of the best things you can do is pick and choose.

And it really took just one person.

So if you could find Find one person that you work with that you can make a

weekly lunch appointment with to go and have lunch with.

Like that is very as like from a teacher level, because that was always really

frustrating for me is like, there's so many challenges, so many big things that

are hard, right? I can't fix everything.

I can't fix what's wrong. I can't increase pay. I can't increase respect,

you know, all of those things.

[15:29]But something I could do was make sure that on Thursdays, me and my group,

closed our classrooms and went and had lunch together. And that seems so small.

But it was the highlight of my week. So many days, there were days where we

were crying in there, there were days we were laughing, like that.

And that group of women that I worked with, are still like we send like Marco

polos to each other little videos to each other, like, all week to this day,

because we form such like a consistent bond.

And it really has informed my, like my practice for teaching because they were

such phenomenal educators, and they're so powerful in the classroom.

And so I think about that. And I think like, if, if that is available at schools,

and we're just treading water enough to survive, we're missing out on something

that could actually really, really help support us.

That I think is the number one thing.

I think that for institutionally, you know, providing time for teachers to work

together to collaborate is huge paid time, not unpaid. Right.

Give teachers a workday, like get a sub, put the sub in the classroom,

and then get that group of teachers out of the classroom and have them plan

out and do their pacing for the next month.

Do not fill your professional development days with random things that are not

actually going to be beneficial.

[16:51]Those pieces, I think, are so important.

And I think a lot of times schools are, and I don't want to like approach admin

with no empathy, because I would never want to be admin, like their job is so hard.

And they are also trying to answer to their people, right?

Like they are, they're trying to do their job, and they have people to answer

to. And so it is a very delicate balance.

But I mean, if you are so concerned about whether or not the learning goals

are posted when you come in and check on your teacher,

but you don't know how many times that teacher has like fallen apart and cried

that week, like there's probably something wrong. Like you should have a better...

Feel on the pulse of what's going on in your faculty so that you're focusing

on the right things. And I've had both.

I've had some that were really focused on things that I got really reamed one

time because I didn't have an exit ticket.

So much so that he said, no, if that doesn't change, then we're going to have

to put you on an improvement plan.

[17:54]Because I didn't have an exit ticket? That's a little much. Yeah.

I'm sure there was other formative assessment happening within the classroom that day?

The whole day. And that was the thing that kind of blew my mind is like,

you're, you're nitpicking this one tiny thing. Not that there wasn't room for improvement.

Not that I shouldn't have an exit ticket. Although who has an exit ticket every

single day? Nobody, nobody, nobody.

And it was an unannounced, uh, like observation.

So like, nah, but it was one of those things where I'm like,

you're, you're kind of missing it.

You know, like if you don't see the humanity and all of that and,

and kind of affirm what someone's doing right while at the same time being like,

here's just some things we can do to improve,

you know, I think that's a huge perspective shift that needs to happen is like,

a lot of admins see it as a top down type of leadership style.

And right, I don't, I don't think that's the way it should be.

It very much needs to be like a community driven, like, if you are admin,

your job is to support your teachers

and to advocate for your teachers and make it a better place to work.

[19:02]To the best of your ability, you know, because there's things out of their control as well.

But I think those are some of the things that can be done on like a smaller level.

Obviously, I have a whole list of things, like get me in front of like Congress

and stuff, and I've got a list.

But from like a community-based perspective, those are some of the things I

think would really help.

Yeah. And you were saying that about, you know, like, you've got administrators

who have these little nitpicking things. I was just thinking about this.

[19:33]I had an administrator one time nitpick some things that I was doing.

I was going through a super rough time.

So that time period in and of itself could have been, I mean,

you could ask me some questions about what was going on with me,

you know, as a person. Maybe there was something, you know, behind the scenes.

But I can remember an administrator being that way towards me.

And looking back, that administrator was stressed out too.

And I think when you look at cultures of schools, if the administrator is stressed,

the teachers end up being stressed.

It's like a ripple effect where the teachers end up being stressed,

then the students are stressed.

And so it's like, it's like this ripple effect of, it's like,

yes, or contagious. like it's contagious.

Um, the, the stress, the burnout that we're all experiencing is just going back

and forth and ebbing and flowing through administrators to teachers, to students, you know?

And, um, because I can look back and see, man, that administrator,

while I did not like it during that time, she was also dealing with a lot of stuff too.

And if we can become self-aware enough as teachers and as administrators,

I think we'll see a big shift in that community piece too. If we can have those open conversations.

[20:54]Communications, those dialogues where we're being more human than just this

is a job, then we could have a big change too.

One of the things that you say, and you'll have to share it.

[21:10]Is it's like defiantly, what is the term? It's on my sweatshirt.

I have it like defiantly hopeful.

It's like woven on this sweatshirt that I made. Yeah.

It's that teaching is the the most rebelliously defiantly hopeful thing that

we can do in this world. Yes, I love that.

Thank you. Yeah, I when I spoke to the Indiana State Teachers Association,

I wanted something at the end that really kind of conveyed how I feel about

teaching because I my fear anytime I talk to teachers is to seem trite, or cliche,

you know, and I never want them to feel feel like I am just giving them platitudes.

I wanted to make them feel seen and encouraged because I do feel like teaching

is the most hopeful thing that we can do.

Because if we're not hopeful, like why are we bothering?

If we don't think we can make this world a better place, make teaching a better

place, like why would I be doing what I'm doing unless I truly believe like

something can happen, we can get better, we can make teaching a better practice

and help our our students be successful.

And, you know, I very much believe that education is the way that we can open

doors for our students and change their lives.

And, you know, so I, that's something that I'm kind of trying to turn into something I, I.

[22:28]Have like, on my website, and as part of kind of my brand identity,

because being defiantly hopeful is what teaching is, right?

Like that is like the very heart of what we do is like dealing with how challenging

it is in the classroom and still going and still putting on our lanyards and

walking into class and, you know, putting in the work for for the kids.

And for me now, it's putting in the work for teachers who, you know,

as now somebody who is is no longer in the classroom.

It's insane, because the people that should be listened to are the people in the classroom, right?

Like, right, those are the when you go to the school board meeting,

the people that should be listened to should be the teachers and and obviously

families and stuff like that. But teachers should should be on equal footing.

And I, I know from having attended meetings in the past, but being a doctor

of education, who works at a university that studies education,

they're going to listen to me more openly.

And I can be a lot more more forthright about the fact they need to pay teachers

more and they need to support them more because it's not going to benefit me.

You could pay teachers a million dollars and I'm not getting a penny of that.

Well, I guess maybe if they buy my merch, I might, but like,

you know, me advocating for the teachers no longer seems self-serving because

that like, I am a little bit removed from that.

And for whatever reason, they won't listen in the same way as when I was a K-12 teacher.

And so I think that's one of the really exciting things about this shift for

me is I can sit there and be like, no.

[23:56]Teachers work so hard, like so much harder than any university professor,

by the way, like any, any other job that I've seen, I'm sure there are jobs

that are harder, and it's very dependent on the specific teaching role and class and all of that.

But on a whole, teaching is a very challenging job.

And it seems like people who are not in it just don't see it.

And sometimes it's like, if I can tell the war stories, and on my platform,

do it in a way that it's is, you know, satirical in some ways and funny in some

ways that, you know, it's like all satire.

It's to point out, hey, there's an issue and we need to do something to make

it a better place for teachers, but doing it through comedy because I always

feel like comedy is the best way to convince people of doing anything. Yeah.

[24:45]You know, just because you said that defiantly hopeful,

I love that because when I think about who can fix, and you kind of said this,

but the way that I think about this is the people that can make the change in

the system of education are the teachers.

We have to heal from the inside out.

But like you said, very often, either teachers who are in the profession are

working so hard that they don't have the opportunity or the bandwidth to be

able to advocate in the way that maybe sometimes you can when you are removed. moved.

And so when, when we hear things like, well, if you're not a teacher,

then you can't really say this.

I get a little bit like, ah, because people like you exist because you were

a teacher, you are still educating.

Um, now you're just educating in a different sense with the future teachers of America.

Um, and you use your platform in a way that advocates.

[25:42]In a way that some teachers may not be able to in because they are part of a

district or because they're, you know, they're almost held to that.

Like, I know that there's contracts out there that will say you cannot speak

negatively about, you know, teaching or your district or whatever.

And when you don't, when you're not in a district, you can say whatever you want to.

Exactly. Well, and I, you know, I worked in a district that was pretty understanding

and had had a pretty good sense of humor.

But at the very end there, I was strongly encouraged because I'd been there

for three years at that point hadn't joined the union just because it was expensive.

[26:21]And I was strongly encouraged that I should probably make sure that I was a member of the union.

Because my tick tocks were making their way into like school board conversations.

[26:33]Yeah. And like some of the people in power, and it wasn't that there was a complaint.

It wasn't that a parent was mad. It wasn't that a kid was mad.

That was never I literally never once had a parent or student complain about any of the content.

It was a fear of a hypothetical complaint, and a hypothetical issue that it could possibly cause.

And so I, you know, joined the union, started putting like disclaimer on the

bottom of it and all of that.

But yeah, it, it is interesting, because now I visit the schools with my students.

And I went to one of the orientations at the high school and they were like,

hey, FYI, before you start student teaching here, you need to lock down your

social media, make everything private.

Don't post this. Don't post that.

And to some degree, I get it, right?

I get it because I have kids that are going to school. school.

And, you know, I, I understand that we want our, the people taking care of our

kids to be people of high moral value.

And that's in, to a lot of people, very subjective, right?

On the other hand, there's not a lot of professions that don't allow you to

show yourself on a girl's weekend, having a glass of wine with your friends. Right.

It's, it's another level for sure for teachers.

[27:52]And teachers deal with so much more like the, Oh, my gosh.

When I was doing that same tour, they were like, also, if you're on the dating

apps, be very cautious, because they could be matched with a student.

You know, some of these teachers are 20.

[28:11]Yeah, they could be matched with an 18 year old who's a senior in high school

accidentally, like they don't know what happened before.

And so they were like, be very aware of all of that.

And because they had to fire somebody because of that, like the student wasn't

in their class, but went to the same school and all of that.

And so like, there's a lot of just accidental issues, and then a lack of judgment

issues, and then a lot of like hypersensitivity.

So for me, to be able to post the things I post, you're right,

like I couldn't be in the district, like I was, I'm able to be a little bit

spicier now that I'm not actively in a district and worrying and all of that.

And like, I taught for almost a full decade.

So my stories are from three different schools, from a public school in Orange,

Virginia, a private school in Southern California and a public school in Southern

California, like you're going to tell me that you know what kid it was, I doubt that.

I highly doubt that. Highly. Yeah.

[29:35]Making a difference in the lives of teachers, even though you're not in the classroom.

I think that that's a really powerful thing to be able to do.

I know as an instructional coach, because I'm not tied to a district,

I can make a lot more statements than I was able to.

We don't have a union here that is similar to other states. I think South Carolina,

North Carolina, Texas, and then.

[29:59]Uh, Georgia might be the only ones who don't have that kind of pull with unions.

Um, and that is one of the reasons that I was like, I don't want to be tied

to it because I feel like when you're able to say things and advocate for teachers,

there is some backlash if you're in a district.

And, um, that has been part of the reason why I made the choices that I made

today to be able to to do what I do now.

So I just want to thank you, Andrea, for coming on to the show and for talking with us today.

I would love for you to leave a little bit of advice for any teacher who's listening

who might be burned out thinking about leaving. How can they be defiantly hopeful?

Give yourself permission to have those feelings and be human.

I feel like sometimes we try and push down our humanity because we don't have time to deal with it.

So I think that is number one, like give yourself permission to be to be not okay sometimes.

[31:00]And seek out those people in your circle that you can go to invent.

Because that is one of the biggest predictors that you're going to be able to hang out and go on and,

you know, find find the will to kind of go back after after a really tough day

and seek to find the joy and the laughter in the chaos,

because it is a hilarious job and it is a really fun job.

And there are so many wonderful things about it that I think we kind of lose

sight of sometimes when we're stressed and we're tired.

[31:38]But, you know, finding that those little moments and not letting one thing.

[31:44]Bad class, ruin the whole day. Because for me, I know that was a challenge.

Like I would have my set, my sixth period was really challenging one year.

And I'd be like, it was a horrible day. Like, well, actually,

five periods were great. And one was really hard.

Yeah, you know, give yourself permission to find find the happy and laugh at

the chaos and all of that. And don't grade everything.

Don't grade everything. I love that one. That's my favorite. That's my favorite.

Awesome. Well, before you leave us share with the teachers where they can find

you any services you offer. I know you have like, yeah, a membership. Yeah.

To help kind of address some of these issues and feel free to like share where

they can find your new podcast because you have a podcast coming out.

Yes, absolutely. So I have lots of merch and stuff on educatorandrea.com.

Some of it's like very specific teacher stuff.

Others like, like vague allusions to books because I'm a former English teacher can't help myself.

So I have a lot of merch and stuff on there, educatorandrea.com.

And then I have digital resources on teacherworkroom.com.

And there's also a link there to the membership that I have that is $10 a month

for like unlimited access to all of the resources.

We have over 175 right now. And there's a lot that are like seasonal catch ups,

like sub plans that will work for any class,

like lots of different things just to build community and culture and give you

a break so that you can grade and your students or doing something and not burning your classroom down.

[33:12]And then the podcast that's coming out is called Those Who Can't Do,

and we are hoping to launch in March.

[33:20]Sounds great. Well, we will put the links for everything down in the show notes.

That way teachers can go and check you out.

And I know that they'll want to go follow to just get a couple of laughs after a hard day for sure.

But thank you so much again, Andrea, for being a part of this.