Redefining “Good Teacher” Without Martyrdom

The glossy “good teacher” lists look harmless until you read the fine print: love more, inspire constantly, and be willing to “do anything.” We pull that poster off the wall and take it apart, exposing how duty-laced love, performative inspiration, and endless adaptability become tools for empathy extraction and self-erasure. Instead of chasing approval through toxic positivity, we make a case for a teacher identity that is human first and sustainable by design.

We walk through each buzzword—love, communication, adaptability, inspiration, determination, passion, organization—and translate the code. Love as a requirement becomes a moral trap. “Strong communicator” quietly loads all failure onto the teacher. Adaptability without support rewards shapeshifting over sanity. Inspiration morphs into entertainment. “Do anything” is martyrdom dressed as grit. Passion gets romanticized as infinite fuel. Organization drifts from clarity into compliance. Against that backdrop, we name an alternative: self-awareness, authenticity, grounded limits, co-creation, curiosity, and self-respect. These aren’t soft; they’re the backbone of real learning and the antidote to burnout.

You’ll hear stories from the trenches—after-school “data theater,” compliments that feel like chains, and the quiet cost of staying late while your own kids wait at home. We center practical reframes: learning is shared, not shoved; boundaries are pedagogy; curiosity regenerates energy; self-respect models integrity. If you’ve ever been told to just be more passionate, this conversation offers language, clarity, and relief. Subscribe, share with a teacher bestie who needs it, and message “workshop” on Instagram at the burned out B to join us in unteaching the myth that broke us. Your worth was never measured by how much you can give away—come back whole and teach from there.

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Chapters

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Transcript

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We call up the systems that run on hill, glitter, and unpaid labor. And we absolutely do not accept toxic positivity as a wellness plan. Grab your lukewarm coffee, lock your classroom door, and take a breath. You're home. Welcome back, bees. Now we're into the school year and we've probably had at least one professional learning day. I know that our district here has. And a lot of times, you know, we get these lists of, you know, these are qualities of great teachers. I know you've seen them on the internet. I certainly have. And you'll see the one that I'm referencing posted to Instagram at the burned outb. And y'all, I honestly thought that this was satire at first. And then I thought it was just rage bait. But then I looked up the writer who calls themselves a soft skill trainer, motivator, writer, and you guessed it, high school administrator. I just sat there thinking, who asked for a motivator? And number one, and number two, you know, when somebody has to tell me what they are like that, usually makes me think that they're probably not. Like if you have to say it, you're probably not. And not only that, but what teachers need isn't more motivation. They're in this job because they're motivated. It sure as shit isn't for the money. They need boundaries, resources, and respect. So today we're going to deconstruct this idea of a good teacher as presented in this graphic, because the system's definition and the soul's definition couldn't be more different. So let's just jump right in. Because the first message here, here's what it says verbatim, verbatim in the graphic. The first and most important responsibility of a teacher is to show love and caring for each student. And her response was, I stopped reading right there. My responsibility is to respect all individuals and their right to have an opportunity to become educated. That was beautiful. Let me say it one more time. Listen, my responsibility is to respect all individuals and their right to have the opportunity to become educated. Oh my music. Music. And this is how we get gaslit because it does sound lovely. Wouldn't that that's one it's idealistic, okay? That's an idealistic world. It sets up a moral trap. And we fall right in that trap because we want so badly to serve children well. It defines goodness through emotional labor and implies that love and care are duties. Love and care aren't duties, y'all. The translation is that if you don't feel endless love and caring every day, you're failing morally, not just professionally. This is textbook empathy extraction. Teachers are morally obligated to give, regardless of their personal capacity. Tell me literally one other job where that is the case. So my number one, and this is about a real good teacher, not the idealistic daydream that we're all trying to fit into. A real teacher is a human, not a machine built for empathy extraction. Your limits, your rest, your feelings, those are sacred parts of what make your teaching come alive, what make you magnetic. Number two, a good teacher is a strong communicator. Bullshit. Like you're gonna find that on any job posting anywhere. It's neutral enough, except when you're in it, right? When you are in the trenches, and when you realize that implies that the responsibility for all breakdowns in understanding is right back on you as a teacher. If a student doesn't get it, that's your communication failure. It invisibly places the entire cognitive load on the teacher instead of acknowledging that learning is a shared process. I'm in it, the students gotta be in it too. We can't jam it down their throats or into their heads, they've gotta be receptive. So, my number two a real teacher is self-aware. When you teach from self-honesty and not perfection, when you know your own energies, boundaries, and truth, your presence becomes a lesson in and of itself. Number three, our our article says a good teacher is adaptable. Okay, well, number one, I have not met a teacher yet that is not adaptable. It comes with the profession. Okay, so like our that is our baseline, but this is code for you've got to shape shift endlessly to meet everyone else's needs. The expectation is perpetual flexibility with no systemic support and no reciprocity. What this really trains teachers to do is self-erasure. They're rewarded for abandoning consistency and personal preference to serve various learning styles at any cost. And by the way, I also don't know a teacher that doesn't differentiate their lessons. Okay, that is again, that's the bottom level. My number three: a real teacher is co-creative because learning is a relationship, not a transaction. You don't carry your students and you certainly cannot drag them along. They've got to walk beside you. Number four. A good teacher is inspirational. Well, gosh, isn't it wonderful when a teacher is inspirational? We all have different teachers in the past that have inspired us in different ways. And usually that was based on you know the connection that you formed with that teacher, the parts of themselves that they showed to you. This a good teacher is inspirational, is moving into a performative expectation of teachers as entertainers or heroes. We all know that we have run a three-ring circus, and you know, just to try and keep the engagement alive. The unspoken rule is that if you're not constantly inspiring, you're failing your students. It ignores the entire reality that real inspiration, real inspiration, not manufactured bullshit, but real inspiration that comes from honesty, rest, and authenticity, not performance. My number four, a real teacher is authentic. You don't inspire by performance, you inspire by being real, by being messy, funny, tired, your brilliant human self, all of it. It's what's in you that's unique to anybody else. And is it gonna jive with every single student? Absolutely fucking not. Does every other human jive with you? Why are you bending yourself into a loop to try to be inspirational for everybody? Oh, because it's my job? No, it's not. That's bullshit. Number five. A good teacher is determined. I am I almost opened my mouth just now. That was authentic. This is the paragraph that should make every teacher scream like excuse the fuck out of me. Verbatim, this article reads Teachers must be willing to do anything to ensure all students receive the education they need. Yeah, I didn't think that I would see systemic gaslighting in a single sentence, but like here we are. Here we are. It implies that if a student falls through the class cracks, leave it in. It implies that if a student falls through the cracks, that that's because you weren't willing to do anything. Meanwhile, here you have been showing up every day with a lesson plan, encouraging, helping, driving. It implies that you weren't willing to do it. That the burnout, the exhaustion, and the personal limits are moral failures, and that the solution to systemic underfunding and impossible class sizes is your personal determination. How does it feel when it's said like that? When it's like just plain, when it's bare, when it's out there, that it comes down to your personal determination. Jeez, Maurice, I almost said potty words just now. This is not determination. This is indoctrination into self-sacrifice. It is the perfect encapsulation of how the system absolves itself. You know, we don't need to fix the conditions, we just need more determined teachers. Ah, fuck off. If you were just more determined, this wouldn't be an issue. It totally removes the actual root of the issue. So my number five, a real teacher is grounded, not determined to death. Determination isn't doing anything to serve the system. But knowing when enough is enough so that you can sustain the work that you love. Yeah, that's it. I speak with teachers who, you know, still want to make it work in the classroom. And I see and speak to teachers who are just entirely done. They got ashes on the inside. There's nothing left for them to give. Either way, we can't run it until the wheels fall off. You are just an empty hole at that point. And so if you're still in it and you still want to be in it, we have got to start setting those boundaries because you can't go until the wheels fall off. You are no good to anybody then. Number six. A good teacher is passionate. To wake up just feeling passion every day. It doesn't exist. Passion here is romanticized labor. It's the fuel that makes exploitation palatable. Verbatim in the article. The love for teaching the subject can provide the energy. But okay, no, energy is not infinite. Passion doesn't pay the bills, it doesn't heal trauma, it doesn't replace prep periods. And as a chemistry teacher, I will tell you that energy is not infinite, it is conserved, it can change forms, but there isn't gonna be more, and it's not gonna disappear. It is what it is. This is the toxic idealism that teachers are told to ignore. And we're told to ignore our depletion in the name of purpose. Well, your purpose is not to go until the wheels fall off, your purpose is to experience life and love and to have all of the experiences, not just the ones where you are overextending yourself. So my number six, a real teacher is curious because it's curiosity that fuels growth, it's curiosity that fuels passion, and it's curiosity that fuels learning, both yours and theirs. Again, this is co-collaborative. It's okay not to have all the answers because the magic lives in the questions. Number seven, a good teacher is organized. This is just another productivity value that's disguised as a virtue. Organization here is not about clarity, it is about compliance and efficiency. So teachers who resist rigid structure or who work intuitively, which holy crap, isn't that so responsive to students if we are working intuitively? They get labeled as disorganized, even when their students are thriving. It's just another way that the system punishes individuality and truly moves us towards homeostasis. We are homogenizing humans. And the system was actually set up that way. Desks in rows, one central authority, all the subjects separate from each other subject. It's modeled after factories so that we can produce good employees, people who do what they're told, who know how to make their widget and who are looking towards the central authority in their lives. It's not there to cure, to fuel curiosity, it's not there to fuel passion and innovation and creativity. And we're all trying to get that innovative on our Marzano framework, but that's also not real innovation, it's innovation within our systemic boundaries, it's innovation within the game and the framework that we are ought to be playing in. Is there room for true curiosity there? So my number seven, a real teacher is respectful, starting with self-respect. Because if you'll go back to a previous episode, respect is not compliance, it is honesty. When you honor yourself, you model integrity for every learner in the room, and that's a lesson we could all learn. So root message of our article here to be good, you must adapt, inspire, sacrifice, and organize yourself out of your humanity. There is no space for authentic emotion, for boundaries, for rest, for individualism, for feedback that says the system is the problem. It's the industrial model of teaching disguised as virtue. And when teachers inevitably can't meet these endless standards because, for the love of God, you're human, the same narrative is used to shame them. You've lost your passion, burned out, become a troublemaker, try mindfulness, try harder, take a bath. Did you call home? Have you built a relationship? Every single one of these qualities centers on the system's convenience, not the teacher's well-being, and definitely not your authenticity. And I'm here telling you that your authenticity is what makes you valuable. It is what makes you special. Your uniqueness is your superpower. I remember being praised for going above and beyond, for staying after school, you know, to help students make up assignments, make up credits, which by the way, we like disgustingly lowered the bar on. Right. Like if you were one of those kids that had to come to those after school sessions, like the bar was way lower to just pass than the kids who had done it the first time in class. And so administrators would actually like walk around and they would have a list and they would go to classrooms and they would pull students at the end of the day to try and force them to come to these after school sessions to improve. And you know what they did? The kids? They ran away. Because what is this 50-year-old administrator gonna do? Like chase them? They're 15, 16, 17. Like it's a joke. And they ran away because they weren't gonna do it this time, just like they didn't do it the first time in class. They don't want to. And guess what? The reason is because that's not the root of the problem. We're not treating the root of the problem. All we're doing there is trying to have some kind of a somewhat ethical way to boost the school's numbers for funding. It all comes down to money in the end. So I would go and I would do that, and I would be just crumpling on the inside, thinking about how I wasn't home for my kids when they got home from school, the ones that actually wanted to see me. Keep that smile on the outside, though. And just like the times where, you know, I've singled out as, you know, you're the teacher that can connect with anybody. So I'm gonna put this student in your class because you can do it. Cue that smile on the outside while I am dying on the inside. I don't know where the energy for this new and what is purportedly a difficult student is going to come from. The compliments are like chains, they feel like chains and they're disguised like flowers. It's gross. So I want to focus real quick on the most gaslighty moment of the day. Teachers must be willing to do anything to ensure the students receive the education they need. Anything is the language of martyrdom, not the language of professionalism. Teachers are expected to be constantly absorbing systemic failures as personal responsibility. I did it too. I stayed up late rewriting lessons, trying to make them more engaging, more appealing, really cut to the core for my kids, not my blood children, my student children. Because that's what good teachers do. Do you know what good teachers actually do? They sleep, they love their kids, they live their lives so that they can come back whole. So what a real teacher actually is, they're human, not a machine for empathy extraction. They are self-aware, teaching from their authenticity. When you know yourself, you model truth for your students, they are grounded, they know when enough is enough. Authentic. They value realness over a performance. Students don't need you to inspire them, they need you to be human in front of them. They are boundried, protecting their energy. They are co-creative, teaching with not at. The magic of teaching is relational, not hierarchical. And they are respectful, starting with self-respect. Self-respect is the antidote to systemic disrespect. The system wants to call us determined. I call us divine. The system calls us passionate. I call us alive. The system wants us compliant. I want us conscious. Determination doesn't mean doing anything, it means refusing to keep doing everything. Your worth as a teacher has never been in how much you give. It's been in how truthfully you exist in front of your students. So if this hits home, share it with your teacher, Bestie, who's tired of being told to just be more passionate. And if you're ready to start unlearning the lies that led to burnout, if you're ready to start to deconstruct that conditioning, I want you in my next workshop. We are unteaching the myth that broke us. So if you want into that, I want you to just go to Instagram at the burned out B. That's the letter B, not B-E-E, and just message me the word workshop. I will get you all of those details. You're not broken. You're just exhausted from performing a version of teaching that was never human to begin with. Until next time, peace. Thanks for listening to the burned out bee, dear teachers. If it hit you in the soul or in the sarcasm gland, send it to your teacher bestie. You know the one. Follow the show, smash that subscribe button like it's a broken copy machine. And come hang out on Instagram at the burned out bee, where the real talk continues. And remember, you weren't meant to be a murder with a lineyard. You were meant to ride. See you next time.