If you subscribe to The Good Project Newsletter, then you already know we are pausing to reflect on the realities of many American workers and students. We’ve been collaborating with an amazing set of schools and educators as we pilot our new lesson plans this fall (freely available here).
Over the past few weeks, as we read headlines about worker “burnout,” we also heard firsthand anecdotes about student and teacher burnout from our contacts. Despite the fact that many schools are back to in-person learning, things are not back to the way they were pre-pandemic. Some might argue that this is to be expected. However, it seems that while in the throes of arguments about whether or not to return, vaccine requirements and mask mandates, many were caught off-guard by the reality of a bumpy return to the classroom.
It seems that, across domains and age groups, people are struggling with pace and stamina in their work. With that in mind, we want to share a few of the articles that resonated with our team as we collectively navigate our way towards “normal.”
1. Students have endured a year and a half of online school. Along with the rest of us, they have also carried stress and trauma in this tumultuous time in our world. In our desperate attempts to “fix” what was broken by COVID, many are now rushing to play catch-up. Is this helping or hurting students? What is the effect of the push to academically “recover” on teachers and schools? Vicki Abeles pushes back against this frenzy to immediately regain ground in her recent essay, “It’s Time to Cut The Narrative of Loss” (here).
2. In a recent opinion piece, Jonathan Malesic describes how Americans have conflated dignity with work and suggests ways to break out of that mindset to recover meaning and fulfillment. Malesic asks readers to re-evaluate the sacrifices they once made for productivity and encourages us to support one another as we strive for a more humane and virtuous life. Read “The Future of Work Should Mean Working Less” by Jonathan Malesic (link here).
3. Whizy Kim of Refinery29 reflects on the intensity of emotions described by millennials facing burnout at work within the context of The Great Resignation in her piece “The Burnout Generation Wants Some Answers” (here). Kim explores how this generation has pursued the goal of purpose or engagement, one of the 3 E’s of Good Work (link here), to the point that when a job or employer doesn’t live up to their expectations, it can feel like an emotional betrayal.
4. If you haven’t listened to The Jubilee Center for Character and Virtue’s podcast Conversations on Character, you are missing out. The podcast is hosted by Dr. Tom Harrison and features an impressive guest line-up covering issues ranging from education, to business, to philosophy, and medicine. Harrison asks his guests to describe their own character development and how they view their field through the lens of character and virtues. There are currently 19 episodes available on their site (here).
5. Greater Good Magazine’s Jill Suttie reviews journalist Jennifer Moss’s new book The Burnout Epidemic: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It in her article “Six Causes of Burnout at Work” (here). Suttie explains Moss’s argument that employers need to accept their own culpability in the burnout epidemic. She outlines a systemic solution that organizations can employ to preemptively avoid burnout in their employees, rather than the smaller efforts that many have used as reactive measures in the past (spoiler alert--the answer isn’t more yoga classes or mediation apps). Interestingly, making sure that employer and employee values align is an important factor in avoiding burnout. The Good Project’s Value Sort Tool allows groups to explore values together. Try this with your team to see if you are in alignment with one another, and if not, find meaningful ways to discuss fault lines (value sort here).