Thanks for reading and responding, Jose. I appreciate your sharing how your own experience growing up and experiencing burnout in the workplace aligns with mine. I agree, burnout is not limited to people with privilege, but I do wonder if coming from more privilege makes people less resilient when burnout conditions arrive. If we’ve been constantly reassured as to how intelligent, powerful, and wise we inherently are, then burnout creates cognitive dissonance…“if I’m so awesome, how come I am doing a shitty job?” This is the subject of another piece if you’re interested: http://www.risksomething.org/blog/risk-surrender

One thing about this: “Keep doing what you are doing and do not feel bad for who you are! I know I’m not! You keep doing what you do and hopefully one day you can come back to the Inner City School system and infect other young students minds!”

I don’t feel bad for who I am. In fact, I love myself more than ever! I love myself so much that I believe that I deserve to live in integrity with my own values. That’s what I fight for. If I go back to teaching, it would probably not be in inner-city schools, but going to rich White suburbs to help the young people there who are at-risk of becoming stormtroopers for the Empire. Thanks for your response!