I enjoyed sharing my views about the importance of life-work balance with the senior agricultural education students at the University of Tennessee-Martin in November. Research shows the average agriculture teacher works 55-57 hours a week. Teacher educators in agriculture do a great job of preparing prospective agriculture teachers to do their job, but we often don’t teach them about the importance of maintaining balance in their lives. As a result, many teachers burn out and leave the profession after a few years. It was great that Dr. Will Bird at UT-Martin realizes this and invited me to speak with his class via zoom about this important topic.
