What 20 Years of Teaching Taught Me About Filling My Own Cup

Teaching is the most burned out profession in America. And Beth Schreiber lived that statistic for two decades before finding her way back.Beth is a 20-year classroom teacher, Master's degree graduate of Breathe for Change's inaugural cohort, and now Director of Curriculum for her entire district in Montana. She walked into her career with her whole heart and spent years pouring everything she had into her students, until the year she finally had nothing left. In this warm and deeply honest conversation, Beth shares how discovering Breathe for Change in her hardest year transformed not just her classroom, but her entire relationship with herself, her colleagues, and the work she was always meant to do.Ilana met Beth in 2022 during her very first Breathe for Change training, and has had the privilege of watching her go from depleted classroom teacher to keynote speaker at the Montana State Administrative Conference, to faculty in the Master's program she once graduated from. Along the way, Beth conducted original research that showed how just six weeks of simple wellness practices dramatically reduced stress and reignited job satisfaction in the educators at her school.This episode is a deeply human exploration of what it means to practice Human Intelligence as an educator:Somatic intelligence to finally listen to what your body needsEmotional intelligence to name what you feel and stop running from itSocial intelligence to find community when isolation is making everything harderUniversal intelligence to reconnect with the purpose that pulled you into teaching in the first placeYou will learn:Why Beth was ready to leave after 20 years and what changed everything in just six weeksThe research data that showed stress and job satisfaction can completely flip in a single semesterHow bringing simple wellness practices to her colleagues transformed the culture of her entire schoolWhat the "itty bitty shitty committee" is and how to stop letting it run the showWhy student apathy is not a student problem, and what happens when we ask them what they care aboutHow Beth went from one classroom to keynoting her state's administrative conferenceThe three practices you can start using tomorrow that take under five minutes eachWhy filling your own cup first is the most generous thing you can do for your studentsIf you have ever felt like you were running on empty and wondered how much longer you could keep going, this episode will make you feel seen, validated, and ready to give something back to yourself. 💜Check out the full episode, then share it with an educator in your life who needs permission to fill their cup first.