• Are you neglecting paperwork or other duties required for your job?

• Are you disrespecting students/clients?

• Are you disrespecting co-workers or taking advantage of them?

• Are you not really present when at work?

• Are you trying to avoid going to work and doing your responsibilities?

• Are you lacking energy?

• Are you losing interest in your job or other activities you used to enjoy?

• Keep yourself surrounded with people you enjoy.

Avoid isolating yourself.

• Take breaks when you need.

• Have a support system set up both at work as well as

in your personal life.

• Keep your weekends to yourself.

• Exercise

• Eat healthy

Many people find themselves getting burned out with their career at one point or another. Make sure you can recognize when you are starting to slip so that you can help get yourself back on track!

1. Lack of Parent Appreciation -Most of the time, special education teachers do not receive as much recognition as general education teachers.

2. Lack of Parent Support -Parents don’t keep up with how their child is doing in school or blame the teacher if something goes wrong

3. Lack of Public Support -People often think as a teacher of special education you are “basically playing all day” plus you get the summers off. Your job can’t be that hard!

4. Paperwork -IEP’s for each student are at least 10 pages long and take careful consideration. Not to mention the other paperwork required by the district, state, and federal government.

5. Scheduling -Coordination the students’ class schedules in general education, APE, OT, PT, speech, as well as their time in the Life Skills classroom.

6. Training and Supervising Paraprofessionals -Each teacher has at least 2 aides in the classroom. They are there to supplement what the teacher is doing. The teacher has to train the aides of how they would like their classroom run as well as how often they can intervene with behaviors.

7. Collaborating with General Education Teachers -In a special education classroom, the students still have to follow the core standards, just accommodated to their needs. A special education teacher needs to collaborate with the general education teachers to adapt the information for their students.

8. Evidence of Student Growth -Making sure that student’s are progressing is part of the job for any teacher of any subject. The issue comes down to when you have worked for a year with a student for learning numbers and they may only be able to name numbers 1-5 80% of the time.

9. Variability of Students’ Needs -Every student is different. Even if they have the same diagnosis they are going to act differently, learn differently, and need different learning techniques used. You never know what you are really walking into at the beginning of the year.

Top 9 Challenges

Avoiding Burn-out

Knowing Your Job

Self-Care for Special Education Teachers

• The burn-out rate is much higher for special education teachers than most other professions.

• 50% of special education teachers will leave their jobs within 5 years.

• Another 25% will leave within 10 years.

• That means that there is a 75% turnover rate in 10 years!

“An occupational hazard that trips up too many of us is failing to stop and pay attention when we become too

exhausted, too discouraged, too frustrated, too sad, too angry, too disillusioned, or too cynical.”

(Pope & Vasque, 2011)

Find a strategy that can help you:

Know the red flags: