Current school teacher feeling stressed beyond belief

By Miss Tearing My Hair Out


Kindly bear with me as I air my grievances. I’m a teacher, an overloaded and thoroughly burnt out one. I love teaching and I love children, but the real struggle happens when I’m tasked with taking care of stuff that go way beyond my core duties - it's always an additional project here or some odd affair to sort out there. How exactly do you expect us to keep up, when we’ve got students to teach, scripts to mark, events to organize among other things?


We’re overworked, we’re tired. I’ve been slogging my ass off till late every single day. Even on weekends after meeting my boyfriend, much unfinished school business awaits. Dates with friends were either cut short or cancelled altogether at the last minute, so much so these days folks snidely opined it was pointless to ask me out because I would most probably be a no-show.


When we don’t get sufficient rest, long enough exasperation cum disillusionment set in. Fact: most of us teachers do not helm just one class, we are placed in charge of a few. Take myself for example, I have to cope with five. This is apart from extraneous CCA commitments. Lunch usually equals chowing down in under 20 minutes. On occasion I seriously wonder, what I am working so hard for? More often than not, planning lessons and grading assignments involve agonizing races against time. I could hardly get a good night's sleep, constantly waking up at around 5am. Slowly but surely the whole situation is coming undone, my mask of sanity slipping away. Still I must put up a brave front for everyone - colleagues, students as well as parents.


Hitting rock bottom never felt so "fun". Pray tell, does IMH offer treatment discounts to patients who are education officers at the MOE?


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