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Angie Pomeroy, M.Ed. | Teacher Burnout + Sustainable Teaching PD

@thepomeroymethod

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Teacher burnout looks like loving the job and having nothing left by four o’clock.
Day
after day
after day.

I’m Angie. I taught for twelve years in Idaho classrooms, and I left in 2020 depleted. I burned out at my dream job ~ the only job I’d ever wanted since I was really young.

Emotional exhaustion in teachers is a body state. Chronic stress in education holds our nervous system in survival mode, and pushing harder doesn’t fix it.

This page is nervous system regulation for teachers, to help you prevent burnout. It’s delivered in doses small enough to fit inside a real teaching day.

Evidence-informed, trauma-sensitive practices that you can do between math and spelling.

These aren’t meant to add one more thing to your plate.

Follow along and you will leave with something you can use before the bell rings tomorrow. 💖✨

Choose SUSTAINABLE Teaching Rather Than Sacrifice™
www.angiepomeroy.com
@thepomeroymethod

#TeacherWorkLifeBalance #TeachersFollowTeachers #NervousSystemSupport by @thepomeroymethod

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2 months ago

Being afraid of teaching a lesson to my peers was not the same as not wanting to be a teacher.

In my first education class in college, the syllabus said I would be teaching a lesson to my fellow students in place of a final exam.

That fear terrified me and paralyzed me. I withdrew from the education department that same afternoon and changed my major.

Then I walked two blocks to the nearest elementary school and signed up to volunteer. I went every week for over a year, with no major and no credit.

Years later I found my way back. I taught for twelve years in Idaho classrooms, I loved it, and yet, I left in 2020 depleted.

Both of those were my nervous system talking, and I did not learn how to listen to it until after I left the classroom.

This page is nervous system regulation for teachers ~ the science behind why teaching is this exhausting, and the tools that help you prevent burnout while you keep doing the work you love.

Comment INTROVERT if you are one, too. I want a count of how many of us are quietly running classrooms.

And, follow along for the evidence-informed tools I wish I had known when I was still teaching. 💖✨

Choose SUSTAINABLE Teaching Rather Than Sacrifice™ www.angiepomeroy.com @thepomeroymethod #TeacherLife #StressedTeacher #NervousSystemRegulation by @thepomeroymethod

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a month ago

Teacher survival mode follows you into the quiet.

A long weekend or fall break arrives, and you notice your body still will not settle.

I found that out on a lake in the Canadian wilderness, my teacher friend.

Seven days with no phone, no internet, and no roads out. I turned stargazing into a contest because I could not just lie there and enjoy the spectacular view.

The lake was perfectly still. My knees were bouncing anyway. I was fidgety and fussy.

It took rushing through an airport on the way home for me to see it.

That frantic, hurried feeling was my normal, and I had been carrying it for years.

Chronic stress in teaching keeps the gas pedal floored for so long that the brake pedal quits answering.

Time off is good for you, but by itself it does not re-engage a brake pedal that quit answering sometime in late September.

That trip is why I started studying the nervous system, and it is where The Pomeroy Method for Sustainable Teaching™ came from.

Nervous system regulation is a skill you can learn while you stay in the classroom you love.

Do you get restless the minute it finally gets quiet ~ yes or no?

Comment below, and follow along for the nervous system tools. 💖✨

Your CALM Creates Their Calm™ www.angiepomeroy.com @thepomeroymethod

#ExhaustedTeacher #NervousSystemRegulation #OverwhelmedTeacher by @thepomeroymethod

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4 days ago

My boos 👻 taken in Halloween Town by @thepomeroymethod

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a day ago

Parent conferences this month, my teacher friend? Save this for the night you get home from conferences and need to hear something kind said about you.

My very favorite principal used to say it to me on the hard days.

“YOU ARE AN AMAZING TEACHER AND YOUR STUDENTS ARE SO LUCKY TO HAVE YOU.”

I can still hear her voice saying it to me as I read the words.

Earlier this month I posted about where that line came from, and I am seeing so many of you take those words and post them in your own voice.

Keep going.

One calm nervous system steadying another is co-regulation, and it works between teachers just as much as it works with the child in front of you.

Conference week asks you to sit through and listen to every parent’s version of your reality, and not all of those versions are accurate.

Let this be the loudest voice in the room.

SEND it to your teacher bestie who may also be having a rough time with conferences this year, and SAVE it for next Tuesday when you are taking the year one day at a time and that day is a hard one.

FOLLOW along ~ every teaching reel I post ends with this truth and a 10 second breath practice, so it is here whenever you need it.

Your CALM Creates Their Calm™ www.angiepomeroy.com @thepomeroymethod #TeacherWorkLifeBalance #TeacherLife #TeacherStress by @thepomeroymethod

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3 days ago

Today it was a school shooting at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Oregon.

At least three children and one adult did not come home from an elementary school, a place that is supposed to be the safest building in the neighborhood.

The suspect was sixteen years old.

That makes at least 149 shootings at K-12 schools in the United States this year alone, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database.

How many more lockdown drills have to turn real? Which family got that call today? And, who among us is lying awake tonight replaying the sight lines of their own classroom?

We did not become teachers to scan exits during lunch duty or practice human shield positions during professional development.

We became teachers to nurture young minds, and somewhere along the way we were handed the job of last line of defense, too.

We cannot go numb. This cannot become normal.

To every teacher reading this tonight, I see you.

The weight you carry has little to do with curriculum standards. You check your classroom every morning and rehearse protection protocols you pray you will never need, and nobody puts that on an evaluation.

Thoughts and prayers are not enough.

Your students deserve action that puts their lives first, and our communities need to value education enough to protect the people delivering it.

Until then, you will keep walking through those doors. You will love your kids fiercely, and you will keep believing in what happens inside your classroom, even on the days the world feels broken.

That takes a kind of courage most people never see.

To Bend, Oregon, we are holding you in our hearts. 💖✨

Choose SUSTAINABLE Teaching Rather Than Sacrifice™
www.angiepomeroy.com
@thepomeroymethod
#SilverRailElementary #TeacherCommunity #TeacherWellness #TeachersOfInstagram by @thepomeroymethod

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4 days ago

You’ve repeated the directions a bazillion times, the classroom is loud, and your heart is racing?

Welcome back to the Wednesday Waypoint™!

Each Wednesday, I’m giving you a quick reset for your nervous system you can try right in the middle of your school day in the time it takes to transition from math to spelling.

When the room gets chaotic, your breath is the first thing to change.

It climbs up into your chest and gets short and fast, or you catch yourself holding it while you wait for quiet. Your heart keeps pace with that breath, so it stays fast, too.

Your heart speeds up a little every time you breathe in, and it slows down a little every time you breathe out.

So, take one normal breath in through your nose, then one long, slow breath out through your mouth, at least twice as long as the breath in. That gives your heart more time in the slow lane.

It’s teacher stress relief you can do mid-sentence, standing in front of the whole class.

Where does your breath go when the room gets loud ~ fast or gone? Comment below. 💖✨

And, follow along ~ this is a series, and it runs all school year long. I’ll be back next Wednesday right here with the one minute after the last kid leaves that you’ve been skipping.

SCIENCE NOTE: Your heart rate rises a little on every inhale and falls a little on every exhale (respiratory sinus arrhythmia), which is standard physiology run by the vagus nerve. In a study of healthy adults, breathing with the exhale twice as long as the inhale raised the heart rate variability measures tied to that calming vagus nerve activity, compared with even breaths, and the effect held for about four minutes afterward (Bae et al., 2021, Psychophysiology). Other studies on breathing ratios have had mixed results, and this one measured paced breathing over time, so think of one long exhale as a small dose of the same input.

Your CALM Creates Their Calm™
www.angiepomeroy.com
@thepomeroymethod
#TeacherWellness #TeacherCommunity #TeacherStress by @thepomeroymethod

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5 days ago

This is the fall break I always wished for when I was teaching ~ a Viking river cruise on the Rhine River, starting in Basel, Switzerland.

Basel is where we boarded the Viking Mani last week, but it was not the ship we originally booked.

What’s the saying? Something like, “Life is what happens while you are busy making plans.”

The Rhine was so low this year that parts of the river are closed to barges and river cruise ships, and our original ship was stuck in northern Europe.

So, the map in this carousel has two lines. The blue line is the trip we booked. The red line is the trip we took.

Any teacher who has had a fire drill in the middle of a lesson knows about plans changing, and I cannot change Mother Nature, so we went forward with the trip, even though it wasn’t going to be what we’d planned. We just decided to go with the flow. (Bad pun, I’ll admit!)

I’m sharing this trip one stop at a time, in the order we visited, and Basel was our first stop. So follow along for where the Viking Mani docked us next and come back for more pictures of Europe through a first time river cruiser’s eyes.

Do you get a fall break where you teach ~ yes or no? Comment below.

Send this to the teacher bestie you’d take on a fall break trip.

And, FYI the sign up for the weekly email I write just for the teacher who loves teaching and is tired of being tired is linked in my bio. 💖✨

Because REST is Wisdom™
www.angiepomeroy.com
@thepomeroymethod
#RestForTeachers #TeacherWellness #TeachersOfInstagram #vikingrivercruises taken in Basel, Switzerland by @thepomeroymethod

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6 days ago

Which one are you? by @thepomeroymethod

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10 days ago

Does classroom management feel harder with the one student who cannot seem to settle?

You greet them at the door. Your room is warm, your voice is kind, and you have done everything right.

And, yet, my teacher friend, you still have that one student who is watching the door, the clock, or out the window.

Dr. Stephen Porges, the scientist who developed Polyvagal Theory, writes that safety “is defined by feeling safe and not by the removal of threat.”

A student’s nervous system is always scanning for cues of safety, and it runs that scan below conscious thought. Dr. Porges calls it NEUROCEPTION.

Some students arrive at school with a nervous system that has learned to stay on guard. A loving classroom takes time for that body to believe and trust.

So, student behavior that looks like defiance or checking out is often a body that does not feel safe, yet.

Your room is already safe. The strongest cues of safety in it come from you ~ your face, your voice, and your own regulated nervous system.

That is why a regulated teacher is the heart of classroom management.

Your CALM Creates Their Calm™

Do you have a student who is slow to settle ~ yes or no? Comment below.

Send this to the teacher bestie who has tried everything with one student. It is an easy way to say, “You ARE doing it right.”

Follow along for more, and sign up to get the weekly email I write just for the teacher who loves teaching and is tired of being tired. That is linked in my bio. 💖✨

Your CALM Creates Their Calm™
www.angiepomeroy.com
@thepomeroymethod

#SustainableTeaching #TeachersFollowTeachers #OverwhelmedTeacher by @thepomeroymethod

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11 days ago

October tired, and sleep didn’t fix it?

Welcome back to the Wednesday Waypoint™!

Each Wednesday, I’m giving you a quick reset for your nervous system you can try right in the middle of your school day.

You didn’t decide to be this tired. August had energy in it, and September quietly spent it, the way a body does when it has been carrying a whole room since the first bell and the days keep getting shorter.

So, you catch yourself swaying at the copier, or rocking a little at the door during transitions, and you may not even notice it at first.

Your body does.

Slow rhythm is one of the oldest calm-down signals it knows, and it is asking for it.

Where are you most tired right now ~ your body, your brain, or your heart? Comment below.

And, follow along ~ this is a series, and it runs all school year long. I’ll be back next Wednesday right here with a three-second reset that slows your heart rate on purpose.

SCIENCE NOTE: Slow rocking stimulates the vestibular system in the inner ear, which has direct connections to the brain regions that regulate arousal. In a controlled sleep-lab study, adults who slept on a gently rocking bed fell asleep faster, spent more time in deep sleep, and consolidated memories better than on a still bed (Perrault et al., 2019, Current Biology). Standing and swaying is a small, waking version of the same input.

Choose SUSTAINABLE Teaching Rather Than Sacrifice™

www.angiepomeroy.com

@thepomeroymethod

#SustainableTeaching #EducatorWellbeing #TeacherWorkLifeBalance by @thepomeroymethod

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12 days ago

The honeymoon is over and the data collecting is done.

You know these kids now, and knowing all of it is heavy.

This round of Tapping for Teachers is for the one moment from this week that is still weighing on you.

Tapping is a nervous system tool for teacher stress. You tap your fingertips on a few pressure points on your face and body while you say out loud what is true right now.

Before we begin, my teacher friend, picture that tough moment and give it a number from zero to ten.

Tap the round with me, breathe, and rate it again.

One round on Instagram is just a sample of what tapping is really like.

Tapping works best over several rounds, and the full sequence is the newest Tapping for Teachers video on my YouTube channel.

Comment OCTOBER and I will send you the direct link.

A new TAPPING FOR TEACHERS episode goes up on my YouTube channel the first week of every month (same handle as here in Instagram @thepomeroymethod) built around where the school year is.

Follow along here AND subscribe to my YouTube channel so the next tapping sequences arrive for you when you need them.

Tapping is a self-help tool. It is not therapy and it is not medical treatment. If this stirs up something bigger than the moment you picked, that is the signal to work with a licensed therapist one-on-one.

Are your conferences this month ~ yes or no? 💖✨

You GET to Choose How You Respond™ www.angiepomeroy.com @thepomeroymethod #OverwhelmedTeacher #TeacherWellness #TeachersFollowTeachers by @thepomeroymethod

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13 days ago