1:14 – Hey everyone, it’s Leah. Welcome back to if teachers ruled the world. I almost didn’t record this episode tonight, not because I don’t have something to say, but because I’ve been having one of those weeks. Well, to be honest, I’ve been having one of those weeks for a few weeks now. You know the kind I’m talking about. On Tuesday, I taught what I thought was going to be this great lesson. I’d spent time on it. Thought it through, had what I thought were engaging activities planned, and I looked out at my classroom, and I’ve got kids with their heads down. I’ve got kids sneaking looks at those watches we can’t quite get a handle on, even though we’ve been pretty good at getting a handle on the phones. I can’t wait for the glasses. I’ve got at least three kids clearly doing homework for another class, and in that moment, I just thought, am I even reaching anyone here? Does any of this matter?
2:14 – Then on Wednesday, I get an email from a parent, you know, the kind, the one where their kid has told them some version of what happened in class that was completely taken out of context, and now I’m the bad guy, and I’m sitting there at 7am composing this careful response, trying to explain what happened, and I’m thinking, why do I even care this much? And that’s when it hit me.
2:42 – That’s actually the question I want to explore today. Why do we care this much? Why does it hurt so badly when we can’t feel our impact? Why do we internalize everything? The bad lesson, the critical email, the glazed over looks, the student who just won’t engage no matter what we try.
3:04 – So I did what I do, I went looking for research, and what I found actually explains a lot about why teachers can feel so devastating in some days and so incredible on others. We’re going to talk about what it means to be mission driven. Why that makes us vulnerable, and most importantly, how we keep going when we can’t feel our impact.
3:30 – Because here’s the thing, you can’t feel your impact every day. Some weeks, you can’t feel it at all, but you’re making it anyway. So let’s talk about how we remember that.
3:42 – Okay, so let me start by telling you what I learned. There’s this whole field of research on motivation. That’s not shocking. Specifically what drives people to do their work, and it turns out there are basically two types of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic. That is nothing new for most of us.
4:03 – Okay, extrinsic motivation is when you do something for an external reward or to avoid punishment. You’re working for the paycheck, for the promotion, for the status, for the recognition. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We all need to pay our bills, right? But extrinsic motivation is about the outcome that’s separate from the work itself.
4:26 – Intrinsic motivation is different. That’s when you do something because the work itself is meaningful to you. You’re driven by internal satisfaction, by purpose, by the belief that what you’re doing matters. You’re not doing it for the gold star. You’re doing it because you can’t imagine not doing it. And here’s what the research shows very clearly: teachers are overwhelmingly intrinsically motivated. We’re mission driven people.
4:59 – According to self determination theory, intrinsic motivation is driven by three core psychological needs, autonomy in our work, competence, that feeling that we’re actually good at what we do, and relatedness, which is that sense of connection to others. Think about why you became a teacher. I’m willing to bet very few of you said for the money or for the prestige, at least, I hope you didn’t say it, because, surprise, you’re not getting it.
5:30 – You probably said something like, I want to make a difference, or I love working with kids, or I want to help students discover they’re capable of more than they think. That’s intrinsic motivation. That’s mission driven work. And here’s where it gets really interesting. Research shows that when teachers are intrinsically motivated, when we’re driven by that internal sense of purpose, it creates this chain reaction. Our intrinsic motivation affects our teaching style, which impacts our relationships with students, which ultimately influences our own intrinsic motivation to learn. So when we’re at our best, when we’re teaching from that place of purpose and passion, our students feel it. They can catch it from us. Our mission driven approach actually helps create mission driven learners.
6:24 – That’s pretty amazing when you think about it, but here’s what the research also shows, intrinsically motivated teachers are more engaged and perform at higher levels, but they’re also more vulnerable when we’re driven by that internal need to make a difference, and we don’t see the external validation, or when we feel like we’re being measured by impossible expectations; we can experience decreased motivation and increased burnout.
6:56 – Let me say that again, because it’s important. The very thing that makes us good teachers, our intrinsic motivation, our mission driven approach, is also what makes us vulnerable. We feel everything more deeply because we care so much. So let’s talk about what that actually looks like in our daily lives. Because this isn’t just abstract theory. This is our reality.
7:22 – You know what the research says about teacher expectations? We’re expected to manage, lesson planning, student behavior, grading, parent communication, relationships, politics, committees, virtual learning and actual lesson teaching, and when we’re measured by those impossible expectations rather than by the actual work we do every day. We lose self efficacy. We lose motivation. Think about it. Has your district ever gone crazy with the walkthroughs? It is stressful.
7:56 – But here’s what that clinical language doesn’t capture. It doesn’t capture what it feels like to plan a lesson you’re excited about and watch it completely bomb, to look out at a sea of faces and realize that half of them are exhausted because they were up until 2am on Tiktok, and the other half are stressed about something happening at home. And nobody, I mean, nobody, is actually present for your carefully planned activity.
8:23 – It doesn’t capture what it feels like to get that email from a parent questioning your judgment, your methods, your motives, to have a student tell their parents some version of what happened in your classroom that bears almost no resemblance to reality, and now you’re defending yourself. It doesn’t capture the constant administrative walkthroughs where someone with a clipboard is checking to see if you’re hitting all the check boxes for whatever initiative is the priority this month. Are the learning targets posted? Are students engaged? Can they articulate what they’re learning? And you’re thinking, I’m barely keeping my head above water here, and you want me to perform?
9:06 – And then there’s the constant noise from outside, social media, telling us we’re indoctrinating kids, or we’re not doing enough, or we’re lazy, and we get summers off, news stories about the crisis in education that somehow always seem to blame teachers, politicians who haven’t been in the classroom in decades, making policy decisions about how we should teach.
9:29 – Every single one of these things, every failed lesson, every critical email, every glazed over student face, every policy decision made by people who don’t understand our work. When you’re mission driven, when you’re intrinsically motivated, each one of these feels personal, because if we’re in this to make a difference, and we can’t see the difference, our brain tells us we’re failing.
10:00 – If we’re doing this because we believe in the power of education to transform lives, and the student in front of us clearly doesn’t care. It doesn’t feel like, oh well, not every day is a win. It feels like we’re not enough, like maybe we’re not actually good at this, like maybe we don’t belong here. That’s the vulnerability of being mission driven.
10:25 – Now I want to share something from the research that honestly kind of gutted me when I read it, but I think we need to talk about it. Studies on teacher career phases show that from mid career onward, we’re talking 20 years and beyond, teachers become more vulnerable to emotional exhaustion, and teachers with more than 24 years of experience often report high levels of what researchers call controlled motivation, which means they’re no longer doing it purely for the love of it. They’re doing it because they have to, because of retirement and other external pressures.
11:06 – I’m in year 25 so when I read that, I felt seen and also, well sad, because what the research is documenting is the slow wearing down of mission driven people by a system that doesn’t adequately support that mission. We start out on fire with purpose. We’re going to change lives. We’re going to make a difference. We believe in the power of education, and then the reality of the job starts to grind us down–the impossible expectations, the lack of autonomy, the constant criticism, the feeling that we’re swimming upstream every single day and slowly, for some of us, that intrinsic motivation, that mission driven fire, starts to dim, not because we stop caring, but because we’re exhausted from caring so much in a system that doesn’t seem to care back.
12:07 – And here’s what’s particularly concerning. Research shows that intrinsic motivation positively correlates with teacher engagement and leads to reduced burnout when the conditions are right, when we have autonomy, when we feel competent, when we have good relationships. But when those conditions aren’t there, when we’re working in environments that don’t support our intrinsic motivation, micro managing environments, we’re at higher risk for burnout.
12:38 – So what do we do with this information? Do we just accept that teaching will invariably grind us down, that by year 25 we’ll all be running on fumes? I say no, absolutely not, but I do think we need to be realistic about the challenge, and we need strategies for protecting our mission driven hearts in a system that doesn’t always value them. So let’s talk about how we actually do this.
13:08 – How do we keep going when we can’t feel our impact? How do we protect that intrinsic motivation that makes us good teachers without letting it destroy us first? And I cannot stress this enough, and I tell this to all of my student teachers, keep the evidence. You know what I have? I have a box. Actually, it’s a folder on my computer and a physical box in my classroom closet. And in that box, and in that folder, I keep every note, every card, every email from a student who took the time to tell me I made a difference. I keep screenshots of compliments from colleagues. I save the positive parent emails, yes guys, they do exist, even though they’re way less frequent than the critical ones. I document when an administrator says something nice. I write down the breakthrough moments, even if I’m the only one who saw them.
14:07 – Because here’s the thing, on the dark days, and there will be dark days, I need evidence. I need proof that I’m not making this up, that I actually do make a difference, sometimes even when I can’t feel it at the moment. Last month, I had a terrible week, just one of those weeks where everything felt hard and nothing felt like it was working, and there were mandates coming down from the county, left and right.
14:34 – And I actually went to my evidence box and read through some old notes from my students. There was one from a kid I taught five years ago who emailed me out of the blue to tell me about getting into college and how my class had helped him believe he was smart enough. That’s powerful, and I needed that. I needed the reminder that the impact isn’t always immediate, that sometimes you plant seeds, and you never get to see them grow, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t grow. So keep the evidence when you have it, because you are going to need it.
15:09 – Second, reframe the timeline. We’re not going to feel our impact every day. That is just not how this works. Sometimes we won’t feel it every week, sometimes not even every semester, and that is normal. That doesn’t mean we’re failing.
15:25 – Think about it this way. When you plant a garden, you don’t see growth every single day. Some days it looks exactly the same as yesterday. Some days it looks worse. Maybe there was a storm, or the deer got in, or it’s just a bad growing season. But that doesn’t mean nothing is happening. Underground, roots are growing, seeds are germinating. The work is happening, even when you can’t see it.
15:52 – Teaching is the same way. You might teach a lesson that seems to completely miss the mark, but six months from now, something you said today will click for a student in the moment. You’ll never witness it, or you might witness it.
16:07 – You might have a student who drives you absolutely crazy, who seems to reject everything you offer, and then five years later, you realize that you were the adult who never gave up on them, who believed in them. The impact is happening. You just can’t always see it on your timeline.
16:27 – Third, lower the bar, but do it intentionally. I know this sounds counterintuitive. We’re teachers. We have high standards, right? We believe in excellence, but on the hard days? We need to redefine success on the hard days. You know what success is? Success is you showed up. You were kind to at least one student. You were kind to another teacher. You didn’t quit. You planted a seed, even if you can’t see it grow. That’s it. That’s enough. Some days, just being present and not giving up is the victory, and that has to be okay.
17:06 – I remember years ago, I had this really rough class, just one of those groups where the chemistry was off and every day felt like a battle. And I had to lower my expectations for what success looked like. Success became, we got through the period without a major incident. We had one decent interaction, one kid smiled, one kid participated. The trash can wasn’t lit on fire. Okay, that’s never happened in my room, but it could.
17:39 – Were those kids getting the best version of me? Probably not. But they were getting a version of me that showed up every day and kept trying. And you know what? Years later, I ran into one of those kids at the store, and this guy remembered me. He didn’t remember the lessons, but he remembered me.
17:58 – And you know what? He was in his 30s, and he was showing me pictures of his baby, and he was one of those students who I thought I just didn’t reach, didn’t make an impact on, but he was really glad to see me. Sometimes, that’s the difference we make. We’re the adult who didn’t quit on them.
18:20 – Fourth, and this is hard. We have to find the boundaries between caring deeply and internalizing everything. This is the hard part for me. Definitely. You see, this is the hardest balance to strike. Because when you’re mission driven, the reason we’re good at this is because we care so much. But we cannot internalize every failed lesson, every disengaged student, every critical email, as evidence that we are the problem.
18:49 – Sometimes the lesson bombs because it was a bad lesson. Sometimes it bombs because the students are exhausted. Sometimes it bombs because it’s Friday afternoon before a long weekend. Sometimes it bombs because mercury is in retrograde.
19:04 – The point is, it’s not always about us. Sometimes a student doesn’t engage because of what’s happening at home. Sometimes they don’t engage because they’re 15 and their brain is a mess of hormones and social anxiety. Sometimes they don’t engage because the content genuinely isn’t connecting with them right now, and that’s okay.
19:26 – Sometimes the critical email comes because the parent is stressed and you’re the safest target. Sometimes it comes because there’s a real misunderstanding that you yourself can clear up. Sometimes it comes because you actually did make a mistake. And you know what that is? Okay, too. Not everything is a referendum on your worth as a teacher. You are allowed to have bad days, bad lessons, bad interactions without it meaning you’re bad at this.
19:57 – So here’s what I want you to take away from this episode. Being mission driven, being intrinsically motivated–that’s why we’re good at this. That’s why students remember us when they’re 30 years old and you run into them at the grocery store. It’s why we keep innovating and trying new things and refusing to just phone it in.
20:19 – Our deep caring is what makes us teachers, instead of just people who stand in front of classrooms. But it’s also our vulnerability. We feel everything more deeply because we care so much. The wins feel amazing and the losses feel devastating. The system is going to keep pushing. Students are going to keep being distracted and exhausted and dealing with their own stuff. Parents are going to keep sending emails. Administrators are going to keep checking the boxes and rolling out new initiatives. The news and social media are going to keep having opinions about what we are doing wrong, and we’re going to have those days, maybe weeks, maybe entire semesters, where we can’t feel our impact, where we look around and think, Is any of this even working?
21:13 – But here’s what I need you to hear. The impact is happening. It’s happening in ways you can’t see, on timelines you don’t control in moments you’ll never witness.
21:26 – Every single person listening to this right now, you’re in this because you want to make a difference. That mission, that drive, that intrinsic motivation, it’s real, it matters, and it’s making a difference, even on the days when you can’t feel it.
21:45 – So keep your evidence box. Remember that you’re playing a very long game. Lower the bar on the hard days. That’s okay. And protect that mission driven heart of yours, because the world needs more people who care as much as you do. Some days you’ll feel your impact. Some days you won’t, but you’re making it anyway, and that’s what makes you a real teacher. We’re all in this together, and you’re doing better than you think you are. I’ll see you next time.
