I asked the editor to withhold my name. Not because I am ashamed — I am not. But because a teacher who admits to struggle is sometimes treated as a teacher who cannot handle the job. I can handle the job. That was almost the problem.

In my eighth year of teaching, I was the go-to person. Stayed late, answered parent messages at midnight, volunteered for every committee, wrote the most detailed lesson plans in the department, kept a smile during observations even when I had not slept in four days. I was performing excellence so convincingly that nobody — including myself — noticed I was dissolving inside it.

What Burnout Actually Looks Like

Most discussions describe burnout as exhaustion. That is accurate but incomplete. What I experienced was closer to depersonalization — a strange numbness toward my students. I would stand in front of a class I had taught for months and feel nothing. Not frustration. Not joy. Nothing. I was watching myself from a distance, performing the motions of a teacher without feeling like one. I started to resent students for needing things from me. That scared me. Resentment toward students is the signal you cannot ignore.

The Change That Did Not Come From a Seminar

I attended a mental health seminar. The speaker talked about self-care and mindfulness. I sat in the back row and thought: "I do not have time for any of this." Which was the problem.

What actually helped was reducing my mechanical workload enough that I had mental space left for the human parts of teaching. Our ICT coordinator introduced us to digital class records, AI lesson planners, and exam generators. I had resisted for years, believing that doing things manually was a sign of dedication. I was wrong. It was inefficiency mistaken for virtue.

When I stopped spending four hours every weekend on paperwork, I had four hours back. I used them to sit with a struggling Grade 9 student after class and actually be present with him instead of mentally calculating how many more papers I had to encode when I got home.

What I Would Tell Year-Eight Me

The things draining you most are the things that matter least. The paperwork. The encoding. The formatting. These are not your purpose. They are infrastructure around your purpose, and infrastructure can be automated. Your purpose is the student who has not spoken in class in three weeks. Protect your energy for your purpose. Let tools handle the rest.