Teachers, The Calling Trap Does Not Clock Out in June

 You made it through week one and week two. You named the crash. You named leisure sickness. You named the Calling Trap — that internal voice that tells you sitting still is falling behind.

But here is what I need you to know going into week three.

The Calling Trap is not only living inside of you. It is also coming at you from the outside. And it is sneaky. It is coming at you dressed up and looking like encouragement. Sounding like motivation. Showing up in your feed, your inbox, your conversations — before you have even had two full weeks off.

Make your summer count. Use this time wisely. Rest but also grow. Come back better.

That message is not being shared to help you. It is coming for your guilt.

This week on Teaching Without Losing Yourself — The Podcast we are naming the outside version of the Calling Trap. We are talking about what it looks like when comparison steals your summer, when your July starts looking like September, and why the education industry does not take a summer break even when you finally do.

You are getting stronger. You are learning to see it when it shows up. And this week we go one layer deeper together.

Week three of June. Come sit with us. 💚

🎙️ Teaching Without Losing Yourself — The Podcast
📦 After the Bells box: https://afterthebells.org/pages/box

Claude Fable 5 is currently unavailable. 

We’re not here to fix.
We’re here to notice. 

If this helped, pass it to another teacher who might need it. 

Until next time… 

give yourself the same care you give everyone else.

 ~Kim 🌿 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Okay, guys, so let me tell you a little bit about something that happened to me recently. So, you know, I was, you know, chilling out, just having a really good morning, one of those summer barefoot mornings, you know, where everything is super still, slow, very quiet, no calendar events, no agenda items, just a great summer morning here in Georgia. And as I relaxed, I decided to do what we all do on a quiet morning. Scroll, scroll away through social media. And within about two minutes of scrolling, I had three different posts from educators sharing their summer plans. I kind of expected to see things like on the beach, at the movies, having dinner with my babe, those kinds of things. But one was already knee deep in a new curriculum framework. One had signed up for two conferences and a certification course. So she was really all in. And one had a summer reading list that honestly kind of made me tired looking at it. And I felt something. It wasn't a pull. Um, but I guess the best word to describe what I felt was concerned because I've been there and I've done that. I've given away my summers, you know, lots of times to prove that I was a good teacher, a good leader. I was that person who cared enough to give it all away. And I recognize exactly what I was looking at. Teachers giving up the one season that belongs to them because the calling trap told them that they had to earn the right to enjoy it first. And I thought about you guys and whether you are scrolling through the same feeds this summer and wondering if you're doing enough with your time, and whether something from the outside is reaching in and telling you that what you're doing is not enough, that you should be making your summer count, and other teachers are already ahead. Teachers, that message it has a name, and you know it. Today we're gonna name it. Welcome back to Teaching Without Losing Yourself the podcast. I'm Kim. After 28 years in education, I realized I couldn't give teachers what they needed within the system, so I decided to support teachers from outside the system instead. That's why this podcast exists. This is After the Bells Beyond the Box, a moment made just for teachers, even on the moon. Everything we talk about here is built around this one simple belief. Teachers, you can stay in teaching without losing yourself in the process. Our goal is always to help you see what is getting in the way of that so you can see things more clearly than you did yesterday. Hey guys, welcome to week three of June. My goodness, y'all, it is going fast. Three weeks in, and we have been doing some real naming together. Week one, we named the crash called leisure sickness. Uh, that confusing, uh kind of heavy, not the way you think it should be feeling that shows up when the school year ends and your body finally starts releasing everything it held for 10 months. Guys, those of you on my social media have really spoken to this and how real this is for them. If you haven't had a chance, go take a look. Thousands of teachers have shared that they were really experiencing leisure sickness right at that moment and they gave details. And in week two, we named the calling trap. The calling trap is the belief that teachers who care a lot should sacrifice a lot. We talked about how that internal voice follows you right into summer and makes sitting still feel like falling behind. And we said together that the calling trap was just wrong, that it does not speak the truth to you. This week we're gonna go a little layer deeper because the calling trap is not done with us all yet. It's not only living inside of you, inside of me, but it's a sneaky one, guys. It is also coming at you from the outside, it is coming at you all dressed up and looking like encouragement and sounding all pretty like motivation. And most teachers they don't recognize it because it looks so different from the voice of leisure sickness that we talked about last week. And today we are naming it. You probably heard it already this summer. Something where someone said something like this Hey guys, make your summers count, use your time wisely, rest, but also grow, recharge, but also prepare, get a head start, level up. Hey guys, come back better, come back stronger, use this time. Hey guys, it's everywhere. It's it's in the social media, it's in our teacher blogs. Um, professional development emails are landing in your e in your inbox before you can even have your full two weeks off. You have those coming in from your district, from the state, from oh my gosh, even some federal level ones were kind of coming through. From your teammates, you have those coming in. Courses and certifications are there. We got book studies happening and summer institutes, they're all marketed directly at teachers during the one season that was supposed to belong to them. And here's what I want you to understand that message is not being shared to help you, and that's almost painful to say. Um, but it's not, it's not even being shared to grow you. Um, it is coming for your guilt. This message, these messages come to you because they know there's guilt there, they know the calling trap is there. The make summer count message knows you already feel like you should be doing more because you're a teacher. It knows the calling trap is already running in the background of you. Okay, so that calling trap is always there, doing its job. And the make summer count message knows that it's there and it uses that against you. It shows up right at the moment you are trying to rest, and it says, but look what other teachers are doing with their time. Why aren't you doing more? Why aren't you preparing for next year? Don't you care a lot? And guys, that's a trap. It comes from the outside, it is dressed up as growth and professionalism and love for the job, and now you can see it for what it is. If you care a lot, you should sacrifice a lot, even your summer. Teachers, make summers count is not motivation, it's a calling trap, not the internal one we already talked about. It's the external one, and you're starting to know it when you see it. So let's talk about kind of what it looks like. Let's make that vision a little clearer with some examples, right? So let's just say you're two weeks into summer, kind of like now, and your calendar is already filling up, not with things you choose because they bring you joy, rest, or peace. Now I'm all about those, but with things that found their way in because the calendar was open and someone asked, or you saw something and felt guilty saying no, or you signed up for something in a moment when the calling trap got loud and you needed to feel productive, you know, like that professional development at the district, the last three days of your amazing summer. Well, what about this? You're in July and it's kind of starting to look like September. So maybe it shows up like this. You are having a perfectly fine summer morning. Got the good coffee with the grape creamer, no rush. You have anywhere to be. And you open up your phone and see what another teacher is doing with her summer. She is in the workshop at the district level right now. She is reading a stack of education books. She is already planning her classroom setup for August, and your slow morning suddenly feels like a wasted one. Not because anything changed. It's still the same morning with the same great coffee. But just because you saw what someone else was doing and you measured yourself against it. Have you ever been there? Yeah, I have. So look, let's let's look at this. What about this? Like you are genuinely, truthfully, wholeheartedly enjoying a slow week. You know, that kind of week where every day you're like, what day is it? What's the day again? What day is it? I'm notorious for that, y'all. And a thought floats in. And I'm not I'm not talking about any thought. I'm talking about that thought, like, I'm not growing right now. You know, teachers think that sometimes. Like, what am I doing? I'm not doing anything that is going to make me better. Look at these other teachers that are getting ahead. And here I am on a slow week, enjoying my slow week, and I'm sitting here doing nothing. And what started as a good week quietly turns into a week full of low-level guilt. Teachers that feeling that if you're not growing, you're falling behind. That is not the truth about rest. It's not the truth. That is the calling trap. Using the voices around you to get louder than they would be on their own. Is using the things that are around you that you are already interacting with to be louder than it normally is. So here's why that pressure is so effective right now, okay? You're already in what I think is a vulnerable place. You've been through leisure sickness already. Again, guys, thousands of teachers were describing theirs. The internal voice is running, so you already have that internally going, right? You're trying to rest in a body and a mind that has been trained for 10 months to equate stillness, being still with failure. And right now, there is a whole industry, a whole system, ecosystem, federal system, everything built on telling teachers that their value is in what they produce, and that's even in the summer. The education industry as a whole does not take a summer break. The professional development market, the teacher content world, the curriculum companies, the districts, the federal government, the state system, they are all on alert, all on high. They do not take breaks. They know exactly when you are most likely to feel like you're getting behind. And guys, they show up right on schedule. And on top of that, comparison does something specific to teachers. It's just something internally within us that really want to be at least at the same level, if not ahead. Now, this is most teachers. There are some teachers who really don't care, but at the same level, or at least, or maybe even ahead, right? It does not just make you feel like you're behind this comparison, it makes you your actual summer feel like it's smaller. The good things that are happening right in front of you guys start to feel like they're just not enough. Because somewhere, somewhere, someone else, they're doing more. They're growing, they're working. And here you are, relaxing with your daughter, playing a video game, going to movie night with your husband, having dinner with your entire family all together. But you cannot fully enjoy what you have when you're busy measuring it against what someone else has. Teachers, I need you to hear this, okay? And I know that it's gonna be hard because I'm a teacher, and honestly, it's hard for me. But protecting what is yours this summer, it's not selfish to do that. It is not lazy to do that. Protecting your time, your mornings, your slow days, guys, your unscheduled weeks. That is not indulgence. That is what makes it possible to keep doing this work. We keep talking about making this a sustainable career. That is what your summer is for. It is to make the work, the hard work you're gonna do all year possible. Guys, boundaries are not walls, they are simply acts of preservation. And you are preserving yourself, your peace, so that you can actually go in and do this work. Teachers, there is a cost when the outside pressure is allowed in. When you fill your calendar before you have fully rested, you never actually arrive at rest. You move from the end of one school year directly into preparing for the next. It is already a short amount of time, guys. You're literally moving from the end of one year into preparing for the next one. And the summer, which is the only real window you have to rebuild, becomes more of a runway instead of a resting place. And when you spend your summer measuring yourself against other teachers, you lose the thing that made your slow, your slow mornings and all of your unscheduled days worth something. You stop experiencing what is actually good about your summer because you are too busy deciding if it's good enough. The cost is not a big one, okay? It's it's not that big. The cost, though, is a summer full of almost like almost rested. You were almost present, and and you were almost enjoying it. And then August arrives, or should I say July, because let's be real, July is around the corner, and most of you will be back in the building the last full full time the last week in July, and then you wonder again once that last week in July gets here, once you are all in in August, you're gonna wonder why does it feel so hard? So fast. I just got back. Why does it feel so hard? Why does it feel so hard so fast? Teachers, you don't have to earn your summer, you don't have to make it count by someone else's measure. You don't have to come back in August or again last week in July with a certification or a new framework or a planned out classroom to prove that you have used your time well. You don't have to prove anything to anyone. The next time you feel that outside pull, remember inside, outside. The next time you feel that outside pull, the whole make this summer count message, the comparison that you feel when you are looking at your your teammates and other work uh co-workers, that comparison that you feel, whenever you feel that guilt because you have a slow, I don't know what day of the week it is, week, I want you to name it the same way we named the internal voice last week. Just say it. I want you to say, there it is. There's that calling trap again. It followed me here from the outside this time. And guys, it's still wrong, whether it comes from inside or outside. The calling trap is wrong, but it is so very real because here is what I know you cannot keep giving from parts of yourself that never got protected, and protecting your summer is not a luxury, it is the work, it is what makes August, September possible. It is what makes the next 10 months impossible if you don't protect your time now, you will go back into the school year as though there was no time, and it'll be worse. Next week, we're gonna land this month because you know June. It's almost over. See how fast it's going. But we're gonna land this month, you know, right where it belongs. We're gonna talk about what joy on your own terms actually looks like, not as a concept, but as a real, ordinary, everyday thing that just belongs to you. But for now, guys, is a third week in June. Teachers, protect what's yours. Three weeks in, three things named. We talked about leisure sickness, called it the crash, which is your body finishing a very long year. We talked about the calling trap, and we'll keep talking about the calling trap. It is a power driver, but the calling trap, which is the belief that if you care a lot, you should sacrifice a lot. You know, that internal one, internal voice inside of you that's following you into the summer. And now this. Now we're talking about the outside version of the calling trap, the make summer count pressure, the comparison, the voice that comes from everywhere else and tells you that your slow days are not enough. All three of them have the same root, and now you know them when you see them. Teachers, you are getting stronger. You really are. As always, we're doing this slowly, one layer at a time together. Until next time, guys, give yourself the same care you give everyone else.