As a teacher, it is my responsibility to be the most curious learner in the room. This is a big part of the reason I, and many people, became teachers.

We love learning and sharing what we learned with others.

However, the truth of education is it’s not easy to have a room full of students and share that passion with them. No matter what you do, there will always be the few who just don’t care or will be antagonistic towards you for various reasons. 

This grinds away at you to the point of feeling devalued as a human being and a failure as an educator.

No approach is able to get through to these outlier students and sometimes, you have large groups in classes who don’t put any effort into their learning. They’ve become apathetic or disillusioned with a system that hasn’t served their needs.

Not being able to reach these students is painful and cause for burnout, which is very commonplace in the teaching profession today. 

While one should never give up on reaching out, at some point, we need to stop hyper-focusing on the few, take a step back and look at what’s happening with the many. 

See with fresh eyes the good things that are happening around you. Connect with coworkers about different interests.

In an effort to chase after the few, we can miss the many.

Seems like a good lesson for life, too.