I’m going to be an adjunct for the first time at my graduate alma mater. Talk about pressure, anxiety, and a dash of imposter syndrome. Though all these emotions are normal, they tend to make the job more difficult. Ironically, we usually tend to think about all the negative possibilities when called for a great opportunity, instead of enjoying and wondering about the good this could bring for our growth.
“I can integrate this”, “I can assign this 1,000-page book”, I can complete this topic in 1-2 sessions, tops.” Sometimes we are acting as our own mentors, professors, and heroes. This is awesome because it affirms that you have the humility to learn from someone else and their experience. Then again, it was their experience. Building your own educational identity, vocation, and voice is what you should affirm, and it’s what your students are expecting from you. Whether it is your first time teaching or you’ve been in this for 40 plus years. Having expectations is good, but if not conscious, we can start our new semester with toxic productivity.
Therapist and author, Israa Nasir (2024), defines it as an obsessed mindset of “hyper-optimization” that tries to make the most of every hour towards outcomes, achievement, and productivity. Nasir also expands on it as “habits or behaviors that have crossed a threshold of intensity or frequency that makes them unhealthy.” The very thing we do as educators is design outcomes, strive for achievements, and work towards a productive life of teaching, research, and service. This direct definition put the faculty in reflection mode. What can I control? What is out of my control? How can I influence others this term? Who can influence me? What habits are going to be helpful for my achievement? What are possible complications? What is urgent and what is important? Can they learn this today or tomorrow? Asking ourselves how to approach our goals, course and class design, institutional relationships, and student-centered opportunities is going to be key for the development of healthy rhythms of setting, achieving, and changing goals.
It can become draining when our mission for the semester starts with an uncontrolled sense of urgency. When our goals are switched to thoughts of stress and anxiety, we must make a stop. This can lead to bad practices during the term of your course: changing the syllabus constantly, assigning more work to students, not following the topic sequence, and inconsistency in the topic being taught. McLean and Jones (2025) have researched the importance of educators’ ability to develop emotional regulation skills because of the possible impact this has on students’ learning process. Now, this is not in any way an “order” to not show emotions, but a call to acknowledge are goals as learning experiences; some happen, and some do not.
Another important aspect of toxic productivity develops out of the individual realm we’ve acknowledged and expands to the institutional realm. If the institution, department, or office faculty work does not have healthy parameters of work, expectations, deliverables, and key performance indicators, faculty will be left with vague expectations. If the institutional context facilitates toxic conditions, it is going to have a negative impact on the development of the teaching-learning experience, the professor’s vocation, and the student’s future. If our learning ecosystems build toxic patterns, learning will not occur. Institutions need to remember that faculty are humans and need flexibility to support and be supported (Samuels-White, 2025). When our job is centralized in one thing and one thing only, we lose perspective and vision of breaks, opportunities, conversations, being someone’s mentor or colleague, attending a family event, or worse, forgetting to have time to just be.
This is not a drastic claim. It is a call to be aware and reflect that we started to teach to make a change and not to lose ourselves in the process. Our vocation cannot be mediated by expectations that can harm, but must thrive in spaces of grace for us and others. If this is not settled before stepping into a new role, course, department, appointment, or chair, our priorities will become our puppet strings. Instead of being agents of change in a world that (really) needs it, we are going to be addicted to competing instead of collaborating, bossing around instead of leading, overstepping instead of influencing, and becoming numb instead of living. Numb faculty can speak, but I don’t think they can teach.
Leading productive lives is not a bad thing. Being productive is living as functional, but when our rhythms are not balanced, we are overcome by an intense sense of competition that will blind us from enjoying the process. As the Christian prayer goes, “And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil”, the evil of toxic productivity can be challenged in our educational process with these steps:
For Faculty:
Remind yourself that goals are open to change. Students expect a human mentor and not information machines. Education and Learning are messy, and that is the overall process of wanting to learn and teach. Planning is good, but not the end of our vocation. The best productivity activity is to find joy in who you are, what you do, and why you do it.
For Institutions:
Redefine and clarify faculty expectations. Connect educational and faculty developers for faculty consultation. Mentor faculty, in every stage, towards vocational management, so they can design their future with joy. Rethink faculty assessment tools for holistic development and not fragmented achievements. Recognize their personal and professional effort at the end of the term.
Let’s have a productive, healthy, calm, and relaxed semester!
Dr. Daniel Andrés Rivera Rosado is the Director of the JFU Bible Institute of La Iglesia Cristiana (Discípulos de Cristo) en Puerto Rico. He is also an adjunct faculty member of Christian Education at the Seminario Evangélico de Puerto Rico. He earned a PhD in Education from the University of Arizona Global Campus, researching the behavioral intention of technology integration in theological educators’ teaching practices. Daniel is the author of four books: Misión Activa: El quehacer del liderazgo en la Iglesia local (2022), El ABC de la Educación Cristiana (2023), Influencia Intencional: Liderazgo Educativo para el ministerio (2024), and Quietud: Otra manera de vivir la misión (2025).
References
McLean, L. & Jones, N. (March 2025). Using an observational measure of elementary teachers’ emotional expressions during mathematics and English language arts to explore associations with students’ content area emotions and engagement. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2025.102352
Nasir, Israa. (2024). Toxic Productivity: Reclaim Your Time and Emotional Energy in a World That Always Demands More. Eau Claire: Bridge City Books.
Samuels-White, Shellon. (October 20, 2025). Supporting the Supporters: Promoting Educators’ Mental Health. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/faculty-development/supporting-the-supporters-promoting-educators-mental-health/
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