When I first started teaching English to young children, I could never have imagined how often I would get sick.
I went from an average period of getting sick (usually just a cold) once every 18 months, to getting sick a few times a month. At one stage, I even had a cold that I couldn’t shake for more than five weeks.
It really wasn’t fun.
I know that other teachers have had a similar experience.
Thankfully, over time, that has settled, and I don’t get sick quite so often any more.
I’d like to say there’s a magic formula for getting through this period, however, I don’t know that there was. It would be very easy to say that I was picking up germs from the young children, although I’m not sure that would be totally true.
My sense was that it was a period of time where I was working unusual hours for me (later at night), and working in a stressful environment, as well as the personal stresses of being very new and unskilled at the job. Add to that, I didn’t have access to the kind of healthy foods I would eat at home. Instead, it was easy to go for the quick and convenient takeaway foods. This was probably another contributing factor to how often I was getting sick.
What I also know, is that the majority of teachers (myself included for a very long time) that I’ve known in the centres I’ve worked, need something to get them through the day. This is particularly the case at weekends, which is where the bulk of hours are worked by language teachers.
Mostly, teachers rely on loads of sugar or caffeine. It is very common to see teachers consuming energy drinks or several cups of coffee a day. Every teacher seems to have their own ‘flavour’ of what they need to do (or consume) to get through the weekend. Many teachers crash, totally exhausted, on the Monday. And some even sleep for much of that day.
It is a very difficult cycle to break.
One of the things that has helped me break the cycle was to first realise that I was in a cycle that was quite harmful to my well-being. Because I was working until 9pm some nights, I would get home late at night still ‘wound up’ from work. This meant that I couldn’t get to sleep for a while, and so I lost a good portion of the next day from sleeping-in. I’d recover some time again that day. However, the next day, I would do the same thing again that evening.
I still have unpleasant memories of that period of my life.
It was a time when I would sleep anywhere I could I could grab a quick 30 or 60 minutes nap. I would sleep on the floor, under the table, or in a spare room. Again, this is not uncommon in the teaching industry.
I went from being on a no- or low-sugar diet to almost living off sugar. Drinks with lots of sugar, like bubble tea, and sweets became staples of my diet.
The first part of what I did to try and break the negative cycle was to stop teaching the class that ended later in the evenings, and, instead, work the extra hours on the weekend.
Equally as important as dropping the class, I think was the fact that I made a decision to self-care and start getting out of the cycle, rather than just taking the easy extra money.
Next, I started to cook for myself, and take my own food in to work, rather than buying easy and convenient takeaway.
I started exercising again, making sure I drank lots of water (particularly when I was teaching), and got to sleep at regular times. In short, I started to re-adopt some of the healthy routines I lived by in my home country.
Things haven’t been perfect though. There are days when I’ve reached for sugar to get me through a weekend.
These days, on the whole, I understand much better what works for me and what doesn’t.
I’m also very strict with what I will and won’t do, particularly around the weekends where I work a lot of hours. I see the weekends as a kind of a marathon, and I need to prepare, and then pace myself appropriately. The alternative is to use some kind of stimulant to get me over the line, and then collapse.
As a result of my new approach, I’m finding that I’m sick far less often that I was when I began teaching, and I also feel a lot better in my body.
If you’re a beginning teacher, I would encourage you to treat yourself very gently as you start learning the job. It is better to start with fewer teaching hours rather than more, and slowly build. Understand your limits, and do the best to live a healthy lifestyle that you can.
