The Teacher Burnout Podcast

Episode #51: Triage Your School
[00:00:00] In today's episode, I'm chatting with Chris Jensen, a former physician and high school teacher. And we're talking about his newest book, triaged your school, a physician's guide to preventing teacher burnout. We're going to be having a conversation about how you can help prevent teacher burnout and create systems in your school to mitigate burnout for good. That's all coming up next, right here on the teacher burnout podcast. So stay tuned.
Are you feeling overwhelmed or do you struggle setting boundaries? If so, I have the solution for you. My new course, the Teacher Overwhelm and Boundary Solution will help you conquer, overwhelm, and establish boundaries, helping you steer clear of burnout. So transform your approach to stress management and boundary setting today.
Click the link in my show notes to access the course.
Welcome to the Teacher Burnout Podcast, where we explore the challenges of burnout for teachers and share practical strategies to support teacher well being. I'm your host, Barb Flowers. If you're a teacher looking for ways to prevent burnout or an [00:01:00] educational leader searching for strategies to support your team, this podcast is for you.
Well, hi everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited today to be here with a guest. I have Chris Jensen, who wrote Triage Your School, a Physician's Guide to Preventing Teacher Burnout with us today. And he's going to be talking to us about teacher burnout and about his book and what we can do to implement some of the tools that he shares.
So Chris, if you want to go ahead and just introduce yourself and tell us about your experiences and how you decided to write this book. Sure. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. It's, it's a joy and privilege to be here. Yeah. So my background, wow, it's been guided by serendipity and a very kind wife.
I was an ER physician for more than a decade and, , am familiar with the concept of being overwhelmed and burnout because I think that's what was starting to enter my life. And I made a career change at the time. And funny enough, I went from the emergency department to classroom [00:02:00] teaching, to being a high school teacher.
And, , the joke has always been, , you know, we're both equally traumatic and,, and rigorous in terms of the schedule. And I dunno, , it seems like they were at times. , and finally, fast forwarding, , it dawned on me that there were a lot of health related issues in schools and having taught in the classroom for 10 years and having this prior medical experience.
I came very interested and involved in working with health related issues in schools. , and so, you know, that ranged everywhere from, , plans to support diabetic students to asthma protocols to student mental health, , to, you know, the impacting stress points for staff. And really it just became kind of my passion and niche.
, and so I was fortunate to have some great friends and family that supported me with this process. And,, one thing led to another. And after I kept getting one request after another, , You know, to work with staff regarding strategies to mitigate burnout, it dawned on me that maybe I should try and write a book.
Solution Tree was the perfect forum [00:03:00] for that. And we took these presentations that I was using one district at a time, and they helped me shape it into something that's readable, , and hopefully very impactful for those that choose to dive into the work. So how did you go from being an E. R.
physician to a teacher? ? What made you want to take that leap? Yeah, well, I mean, obviously the improvement in finances. Um, sorry for that sarcasm. But, , no, when I was working as an E. R. physician, one of my favorite things to the moments was working with medical students or junior residents.
I always loved teaching at the bedside, teaching about patients, , sharing what little tricks had been taught to me and then passing them on to people junior to me. And so that was kind of a surprise. , you know, , as I was sizing things up and saying, okay, I need to move out of this environment and try something different.
I don't know if I'll return to medicine, but I just need something different. But one thing that stuck out of me when I was examining, well, what do I love about my job still? And it was [00:04:00] always teaching. So, big leap to go from the ER to the classroom. , and I have no problem making fun of myself. It was a rather ignorant leap because I thought I knew what I was in for.
And, you know, taking a few education classes and student teaching, but All of a sudden, when the door closed and 35 kids were staring at me and it was my room to command, , it became a way harder job than I would have ever imagined, but one that I really loved. The kids probably thought that that was really cool that you had been a doctor too.
What was their response to that? , I think, you know, everything from, um, what went wrong or did you accidentally give someone the wrong medicine and now you're here? To being really excited, you know, like, , Hey, I think I want to go into health care. Can you tell me more about it? Or I have dreams of being a nurse.
What science classes should I pursue? , so just, you know, it was, it was a fun environment. , and coming from a second career, I was admittedly a non traditional teacher. , and as you might imagine, I asked if I could teach [00:05:00] science and got certified in that area. , and it was fun to try and relate so many concepts that we had in the classroom to the real world out there, and pulling from the ER, which has a variety of cases, , made that enjoyable for me and enjoyable for them.
Well, yeah, that's really neat. Well, let's go ahead and dive into the book. You talk about in the book, which I really like, When you're exploring career burnout, you're talking about why self care isn't enough. So give us a little bit of an overview about where you go with that in the book and why you feel like self care that we talk about so much in education and it's really important, but why is it not enough to just mitigate burnout for good?
Sure. , so first I do believe in self care. I use it in my daily life, , from runs to try and burn off some nervous energy to really bad guitar playing at night to just calm my mind. It's got value. And there's, you know, many a quality paper that supports the valued offers. The issue that I have is we've been kind of [00:06:00] hanging our hat, at least a lot of school districts have been hanging her hat on the idea that self care will eventually fix all the problems that come with overwhelming workflow, expanding duties, you know, that teachers and principals are taking on, , and just the never ending barrage of the average educator fields.
And if you think about what self care does, it's a pause in your day for hopefully some calming effect and a little bit of satisfaction or joy, right? And that's good. That's got value. But what it does not do, it does not mitigate the driving forces of your job that are requiring you to look for self care in the first place.
So if I've got a class of 39 students and I have four to five sections of that, my guitar is not going to fix that. If I feel like I don't have adequate time to hit both state standards and skill proficiency and whatever other initiative that my district has going for it, A run in the morning is not going to [00:07:00] fix that.
And so I really started looking at, you know, the data from 2003 all the way up to 2022 when school districts really pushed a lot of time, money, and effort behind self care. And I was like, it didn't work. It wasn't bad, , maybe things would be worse if we hadn't pushed for it.
, but it didn't solve the situation. And so what else should we be doing? And, and so I tried to lay out in the book a really honest discussion about, look, I believe in self care too, but it's irrefutable that it hasn't fixed the problem. So let's talk about why. Yeah. And I thought that you had some great solutions to that.
So let's start with the idea of triage. So for, , people who don't know about triage and what that means, since it's a medical term, can you explain that and how you talk about triage to help with burnout? Sure. , well, the first thing is, , it has, you know, Grey's Anatomy and The Good Doctor and some of these shows that throw around that term, make it [00:08:00] sound like it's a life saving maneuver, but I hate to disappoint, it's an approach to workflow.
, and so Triage, right out of the gate, let me just tell you, accepts the simple reality that you cannot be, in all places, at all times, solving all the problems. You just can't. And that's really important for teachers and principals and superintendents to hear because they tend to have huge hearts and they want to take on everything.
You know, let's solve it all. , and what triage does is it prioritizes and it says, because you can't be everywhere doing all the things, from the first level down to the lowest level, What are the issues that we need to deal with today? What order should we do them in? And let's just assume, which is the reality of most educators, that we don't have enough time to complete all the issues today.
So therefore, what order do I need to go through? What do I start with? What's second? What's third? What's fourth? And here's the clincher, okay? Because I know a lot of teachers already [00:09:00] prioritize. Within your district, or within your building, however it starts in your school, maybe it just starts with you, you will agree of a definitive cutoff of once you get to this point, we want you to go home.
And that's really hard for teachers, so like, maybe level one concerns at the highest priority are something immediately dangerous, like a student that's considering harming themselves, or an unsafe situation in the building. Obviously that's dealt with immediately, like to the point of you even run out of your classroom.
A level two priority might be something that could become a problem quickly, such as A threatening or vicious rumor on social media that's impacting students and staff and started last hour and moving into the next section. , it could be something along the lines of something unsafe is occurring in your chemistry lab.
, you know, all of these things have to be dealt with quickly, but most of school is what I would call like a level three priority, which is. I have to get my activities set up. I have to grade papers. I have to, , you know, help out this [00:10:00] teacher that I've made a promise to. Things that matter, right? , and that's most of our day to day operations.
We don't deal with a lot of level one and two emergencies. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. The problem is teachers, bless them, , and I'll pick on myself, when I would finally get through the daily operations of my level three priorities, I would feel guilty if lower tier stuff like, well, the students turned this in three days ago and I feel the pressure to grade it.
Why? I just did like 19 things that were level 3. Don't I deserve to go home? And so what triage does is I'm oversimplifying it for the time that we have, but it forces teams of teachers and principals to come together and say, can we agree what's really important? What's really fast to move on? And then what's the next tier down?
And then what's the tier below that? And oh, by the way, once you clear these three tiers, we want you to go home. Well, what if I have stuff remaining? Hear me again. We want you to go home. Well, my activity won't be perfect tomorrow. That's fine. We want you to go home. [00:11:00] Now, the immediate criticism when you try to pitch this to a hard charging type A personality in education is, well, I don't want you Yeah, but I want, I want to know things are set up for tomorrow.
You know, if I walk in tomorrow and it's not all perfect, I'm, I'm giving less of myself. And what I'm going to say that may initially not sit well with people, but I would like them to think about it as you operating at 85 percent of what you could be because you went home the day before and recovered.
Right, but your lesson's not perfect, your activity's not cut out, your kindergartners are going to have to do some of the cutting for you, or your chem lab students are going to have to do the rest of the setup for you. Yeah, that's 85 percent of what you could be, but you at 85 percent will probably make it 20 years in this career.
You at 110 percent burning out after two to three years, we all lose. The community loses, the kid loses, the school loses, and you lose. And so it's really just a mitigation strategy for the long haul. And triage, if you follow it correctly, [00:12:00] forces you to save yourself from yourself. And I love that because I think right now, I'm in an elementary school, but we are in this Pinterest society and Instagram society where part of the things that teachers want to do, and I was guilty of this too as a teacher, is you want to spend the time doing things to make your classroom cute and perfect and You know, a Pinterest worthy classroom.
And like you're saying, you can't do that for the long term because that might be a level five thing. But if you're doing that and being at work until seven o'clock, setting up your classroom to make it Pinterest worthy, , it's not worth it. You know, it's not worth the long haul. Absolutely. I really like how you said that.
And I think, , You know, diving into it. What is really forcing teachers to do is when you make that cut off of when can I go home, right? , you decided it with your peers. You hold each other accountable. Your boss knows it. Your admins want you to leave because if you come back refreshed, you're still going to have that desire to make your classroom [00:13:00] cute and exciting.
If I burn you out in two years, you could care less about what the walls look like. You're just trying to survive. , you know, and I think it's managing that. And that concept being pulled from health care into education really works well. And a thing that I would ask folks, especially coming from the emergency room is, you know, the ER never stops.
Patients are always coming in. The chart racks are always got charts to be seen, patients to be cared for. So how is it when you're coming off a shift, you know when you can go? It's a way to force doctors and nurses who also have huge hearts to go home. Hey, you've addressed everything.
All I'm looking at right now is a whole bunch of fours and fives. Please get out of here. And that's one thing that, , you know, if you think of the personalities of your average healthcare worker and your average educator, they're really similar. They want to help. They're perfectionists. They care a lot.
They'll give of themselves right up to the point of exhaustion. But we don't want you getting to that point. , and you talk about that in the book about educators being caretakers, like healthcare [00:14:00] workers as well, and I just love that because there is a certain educator personality, and you address that, and I think that that is what it is.
Why it's so prevalent in education because we have so many type A personalities. And I know the teachers I work with, they just want to do things right. You know, they want to listen to what I say as the leader and they want to do things right, and they want to do what's best for kids. And so they put all this pressure on themselves, even when I, as their principal, I'm telling them go home or, you know, that's not necessary.
You don't need to do that. But a lot of this comes from even just themselves. Yeah, absolutely. And and I deliberately chose the words of save yourself from yourself. , because what's really cool about it is , maybe you test it out at a great level. Maybe your second grade teachers roll it first, right?
But when you get this building culture of, When you've done the things as a building that we agree are have to be done before you go home, the second you're done with that, please leave. [00:15:00] If you have a magical day, you know, where the photocopier is being kind and your kids are all listening and whatever, And you don't get hit with any level one or two stuff and it's 305 and you don't normally go home to four fine, jump into some of those level four or five priorities, you know, , and, and that's great, but if it's four o'clock and you finally just did your last level three task.
Please, at 401, be sprinting for your car because we want you to have a smile on your face tomorrow. And when you have a common understanding of when you can leave and what has to be done, and it's, and also a common level of accountability where you are pushing each other out the door,, it's a big paradigm shift for educators.
It's, it's taking guilt away and now saying you've got proof that you did many valuable things today. That's great. Leave. , and I think that's something we desperately need. You know, regaining time in the life of an educator is one precious thing we [00:16:00] can give our teachers that doesn't require state budget approval.
. And when, one thing you said in the book that I thought about myself, I look at a day and it's a productive day to me if I got all the things on my list done instead of, , I did handle a lot of these like level one and two situations that were really difficult and caused a lot of stress.
So I did not get a lot of things done on my list. I consider those not productive days when I'm like, really, they're probably more productive than the days I'm getting everything done on my list. Right, right. Right. And, and, you know. We've been talking about teachers, , but this also works for principals.
You know, there are times where an administrator might be wrapped up with one or two, or let's just go back to one, one massive thing consumes their day, but that's the magic. They worked, you know, they were the person in the building that could handle that one, you know, explosion of who knows what, , that they probably got no training for and had to adjust on the fly to solve.
, and that's fine, [00:17:00] you know, and. It's interesting in the culture of education. One big difference between medicine education is if I on an emergency room shift saw in eight hours, one critical patient an hour, so I only see eight people, right? And I'm supposed to see 16 to 20, but the nurses and the tax and the orderlies and the pharmacist saw that I saw the eight sickest patients.
In the last eight hours. No one's going to say, Oh, well, would you mind running some photocopies for the med students next? I mean, they're going to be like, you're a rock star. Thank you. Go home. And I think we need a little bit of that in education. It's okay to do that. And, and for those that say, well, I don't want to leave things behind.
Yeah, but what you're leaving behind honestly can wait. And when you set up your triage protocol as a building, you decided that. So you have permission, so do it. And it was interesting as I was reading about the triage as an administrator, I was [00:18:00] thinking about how when I first started as an administrator, you know, everybody thinks So many things that happen in the building are a level one and over time you learn what's a level one, what's a level two, you know, and down the list.
And so I think helping your team sitting down and really helping as a team, everybody being on the same page of what a level one is. what a level two and what a level three is, because that'll lessen the stress of a principle, because everything was coming to me as an emergency. And when I was new, I didn't really know what was an emergency, what wasn't.
I had to handle it based on everybody else's stress and what they thought was an emergency. And so I think, as I was reading that, having those conversations could be really helpful for reducing burnout and stress with administrators. Absolutely. And you know, it's a nice bring us together moment between teachers, paraprofessionals, administrators, everyone in the building that's working with kids.
Simply because [00:19:00] you're going to define initially what you think level one through five are, but it's going to get better and better and better. And everyone's going to have a, a much, you know, more confident understanding of, , this is probably a three. I don't need to run into the principal's office. You know, this really could wait for 24 hours, , versus my principal likes it when I come talk to them about these issues, they consider them a two, so I know what to do.
I have no hesitation. , and it really sounds counterintuitive at first to think of it this way, but, , triaging made working in the ER easier because I knew exactly what was in front of me and what order I needed to do things. Yeah. You know, , and also my, the folks that I work with going back to your comment, , you know, I worked, I was always blessed to work with fantastic nurses.
They knew when to come get me like right now versus, Oh, we can do this and this and this while we're waiting. Right. And, , teachers and principals, I really think it brings them closer together. Hey, we're all in this together to run this building. Here's when we worry. Here's when we [00:20:00] don't worry.
Here's when we go home, you know, here's when we hold each other accountable. Yeah, and making clear expectations all around. I like that a lot. Absolutely. Absolutely. , what are some other tips you have for teachers to mitigate burnout? Maybe something from the book that you want to share with them? Sure. , one of the first ones I'd mentioned is the idea of shared workflow and If you're thinking, I already have plenty of work.
I don't want to share anyone else's. That's that's not what I mean. What I'm actually getting at is I'm gonna use an example. , if you go to a decent sized pediatric office, right, they'll have a several doctors, several nurses, some office managers and stuff like that. But regarding the medical care, what happens is it used to be much like a teacher model where each doctor did all the things for their patients.
Mhm. Just like each teacher does all the things for their kids. And then they sat down and they're like, we could be a lot more efficient if, let's say we have four doctors, Dr. A is gonna follow up on the labs and x rays and call patients at home. [00:21:00] Dr. B is gonna shorten their , clinic schedule to take on more sick visits that tend to blow up our office practice.
So their whole afternoon will be sick visits. , Dr. C will handle some easy tasks such as any e mails or administrative meetings. That's it. And Dr. D, believe it or not, , is going to do a couple telehealth appointments, but then leave early. And so each month they would rotate, and Dr. A would take B's job, and B would take C's job, and all the stuff.
And what happened was they only had to worry about one thing. All the things were still being done for their office, but they only had to worry about one thing each month. And some months, If you're taking care of the sick patients, maybe you do stay a little late, but if you're the person that has to deal with the occasional administrative meeting, right, you're leaving, you're flying out the door the moment you're done with your last scheduled patient.
And so these physicians in their outpatient practice loved it because they could be like, oh, this is my hard week. This is my easy week. This is my okay week. And [00:22:00] they knew when to schedule their dentist appointments and when they could go to their kids games. And, you know, it was no longer just a never ending monotony.
And it became predictable life outside of work. And there's no reason that educators can't do that, too, by grade level or teams or departments. And so that's shared workflow, and you can read way more about it in the book. , and another one that I would toss out, especially as we enter into an election year, Is, , we as educators tend to care about a lot of things.
That's good. Please don't stop caring. But there is a process called energy with efficacy. And I walk you through the line of thought and the thinking of what's the difference between being informed versus what's the difference of committing energy towards something. And teachers like to do both and principals really like to do both.
Yeah. Yeah. And I will engage this. And energy with efficacy is a process when you read about in the book that forces you to go through a series of questions that basically will tell you when it's smart [00:23:00] to engage versus when it's not, simply because you could pour your entire heart and soul and every drop of energy you have, but you're not going to make headway.
If if you answer the questions in a certain manner, , that is a process used in health care a lot because, as you might imagine, health care workers like educators want to help want to fix everything. And there are times in health care where you just have to be informed because now is not the time to throw all your energy in.
, and you continue to be informed, but you're careful how you ration your energy. And I think , that's going to be very important for educators as we move forward. , you know, I mentioned an election year when a lot of education issues pop up in the media and we all care. , But limiting how you use your energy really matters.
, you know, are you getting a return on it? And so that's, that's another strategy that teachers can use. And it, it takes a nerdy strategy. Sciency analytical process, which I slightly apologize for, but it saves a lot of folks from themselves when they go through that process and [00:24:00] saying, okay, I agree to still be informed because I want to follow this, but no, I'm not going to engage with this right now because based on these questions and my answers, I can't do anything.
, I really like that chapter because you were actually talking about, educators have to feel like they're making a difference to enjoy teaching and to want to stay in the career because we are caretakers. And so knowing the things that we can control and actually see a difference
There's so many systematic problems in education, you know, that we want to fix. But what happens, obviously, it's broken systems from outside that come into schools. And so that makes it really hard. And I love how you talk about focusing your energy. on the things that you can actually control basically and make a difference.
And I think that's a great approach. Well, I appreciate that. And funny enough, I mean, your listeners may find it interesting that that all came from me banging my head against the wall and not listening to my own advice. When I was a [00:25:00] resident physician, I used to get so upset that children would come in and their parents couldn't afford to fill their inhaler prescriptions.
So these little asthmatic kids would keep coming back and coming back and Some would have really bad outcomes. And I was like, this is, this is so dumb that their inhalers cost so much money. But Chris Jensen versus insurance companies or pharmaceuticals, Chris Jensen is going to lose every time. Right.
When I directed my energy in a different way, and I started working with organizations within, in the city that I was practicing my residency, then I was getting discounts on inhalers. And you know, was I making a worldwide or nationwide impact? No, not at all. But in my little tiny corner, I still saw a return on my energy, right?
And I wasn't feeling frustrated because was it what I wanted? No, but was it working? Yeah. You know, one kid at a time. , and so that kind of really got me to think about that more. And then I looked around and saw like, Oh, people way smarter than me actually have a process for this. I should share the [00:26:00] process with my colleagues in education.
, and like you're saying, you can see the difference you're making even in that small, you know, way where you're getting inhalers, for just a small amount of kids, still over a larger impact, but still it's what you need to be able to keep going because you just feel like if you're hitting your head against a wall all the time, it's so frustrating and you think, why am I even doing this and putting my own energy into it?
So I think that's a good perspective. Well, I appreciate that. Yeah. And I think we share that in common. Well, Chris, how can people reach out to you if they want to get in touch with you? Sure, I appreciate that. , I love working with educators. That is my favorite thing still to do. , I have a website at www.
diagnosingeducation, those words smashed together, dot com. , and that's probably the most effective way. , or you can try me via email, diagnosingeducation at gmail. com. And I'll put a link to both of those in the show notes so that people can click [00:27:00] those if they want to get in touch. But thank you everyone for tuning in and I hope you take the time to get the book, Triage Your School, a Physician's Guide to Preventing Teacher Burnout.
It is definitely worth the read and you will get so many strategies that will help you reduce burnout. Thank you so much for your time. It was a pleasure to chat.
Hope you found this episode informative and helpful. And if you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to reach out to me. You can follow me on Instagram and please subscribe to this podcast and stay tuned for the next episode. Your support means a lot. And I look forward to connecting with you soon.