As someone who has spent nearly two decades writing about teachers and working with teachers, I often get asked some form of this question:

Two of the most finite resources in education are teachers’ time and energy. It’s always helpful to keep this in mind when deciding how much time and energy to budget for a task.

But that’s just part of the story. It’s also important to note that not all time is equally valuable.

There are times when comparing ourselves to others is motivating—even inspiring! There are times when we are genuinely happy for the success of others.

And, there are times that are. . . not those times.

Sometimes, comparing ourselves to others makes us feel so unlikely to catch up that we might as well just shut down entirely. A catchy term for this is “compare and despair.”

Much of the advice on avoiding compare-and-despair centers on selfless acts like volunteering. Helping others, the thinking goes, fills us with gratitude and offers a fresh perspective.

But teaching is all about doing things for others. And teachers are supposed to care about all kids, no matter whose class roster they’re on.

So why aren’t teachers immune to the toxic side of competitiveness? Why do other teachers’ chicken-soup-style success stories sometimes feel more like a sucker punch to your soul?

There is an idea out there that being a teacher takes “thick skin.”

This is one of those characteristics people seem to assign to teachers as a group, right up there with patient, or obsessed with color-coded folders, or interested in the strong opinions of people who have never taught but think they would be great at it.

How should students act during an academic debate? What are the expectations for presentations? How do you make sure the whole “group” actually “works” during group work? These are probably not questions you have to answer every day.