And do your students look at you like this? Or worse: do you AGREE with them?Well, honey, it ain't just the stuffing. And trust me, you are not alone. While we can speculate on reasons, teacher and student burnout after Thanksgiving is widely reported in educational circles. I think of it as something akin to hitting the wall in a marathon. If you are unfamiliar with the term, hitting the wall refers to how your body feels after running your first 20 miles. However positive you may have been feeling previous to mile 20, when you hit the wall something happens to the body that simply can't be explained unless you've done it. But let me try in 6 brief sentences:
1. You can't catch your breath (but you CAN feel the tendons all the way down the length of your legs).
2. You can actually TRACE the entire shape of your kidneys in your mind.
3. You're thirsty but your stomach is sloshing with water.
4. All your senses are dull except for your ability to register pain.
5. You keep registering images after they have long left your view ("Was that a car accident I saw at mile 18?" you wonder at mile 22).
6. And above all, you just want everything to stop.
If you do stop, by the way, it is often referred to in running circles as "bonking." (A popular sports drink now boasts the slogan, "Don't bonk.")
And the student equivalent to this, as I implied, happens precisely on November 29th. Yay for today! And here is a peek at some of the results:
(P.S. This is NOT a class doing a sleep deprivation study. It's just a class. And NO it's not mine. Rude.)
Ah, the merriment of the holidays! Well, now that I have set this festive tone, I'd like to ask teachers how they overcome the "after-the-holidays blues."
And so in today’s post I ask a simple question: what do YOU do when you hit the wall? (Besides cry.)
Oh, and don't bonk. 
(dramatization: no students were hurt in the taking of this photograph)
