By Herman M. Lagon

There is a kind of teacher you will not notice right away. No dramatic speeches in faculty meetings. No constant posting of accomplishments online. No habit of reminding everyone how busy they are. Yet when they are absent, something quietly collapses. Deadlines wobble. Coordination weakens. Someone eventually says, half-joking but not entirely, “Ay, nami gid tani kung ara siya.” That is usually the moment people realize who the real high performers are — not the loudest, not the most visible, but the ones who make everything work without asking for credit.

A LinkedIn post by Dr. Justin Bateh (2024) highlights that high performers are often overlooked because they work quietly, anticipate problems and elevate team performance without seeking visibility. In schools, they are the teacher who fixes a broken grading sheet before anyone complains, the department head who anticipates inspection issues before they surface, the adviser who stays late to polish a student’s output without posting about the sacrifice. They do not announce effort. They simply deliver. And because they deliver, they are trusted. And because they are trusted, they are given more. That is where the story begins to bend.

One Friday afternoon in a public school not too far from Iloilo City, a teacher I know stayed behind to finish reports that were not even hers. “Wala na time si sir, gin-akó ko na lang,” she said, shrugging it off as if it were nothing. By 6:00 in the evening, the campus was nearly empty. She was still there, quietly editing, checking, fixing. No applause. No overtime pay. No social media post. Just work that needed to be done. The following week, she was assigned another committee. Reliable people often receive more responsibility not because they ask for it, but because the system leans on them. Over time, this leaning becomes a quiet dependency.

Research shows that work is rarely shared evenly — a small group often carries a much larger portion of the output than everyone else (O’Boyle & Aguinis, 2012). In practical terms, this means a few individuals often carry the invisible weight of many. In schools, this shows up in familiar ways: the same names appear in multiple committees, the same teachers are asked to mentor new hires, the same individuals are expected to “step in” when something goes wrong. It is not exploitation in the dramatic sense. It is something subtler — an accumulation of trust that slowly becomes expectation.

At first, high performers do not resist. Many of them are wired to respond to need. They fix, adjust, improve. They ask questions that sharpen decisions. They simplify processes, so others can work better. They remain calm when others panic. These are strengths. They are also, as psychologists would caution, potential vulnerabilities. Because when one’s identity becomes closely tied to being dependable, it becomes difficult to say no. Saying no begins to feel like failing — not just the task, but the self.

Burnout, in this context, rarely arrives as collapse. It does not always look like someone breaking down or quitting dramatically. It is quieter. A teacher continues to meet deadlines but feels strangely detached from work they once loved. A coordinator delivers outputs but no longer feels satisfaction in doing so. A school leader attends meetings, signs documents, resolves issues — but senses a dullness creeping in, as if everything has become routine and nothing feels meaningful anymore. Clinical literature describes this as emotional exhaustion paired with depersonalization, where individuals continue functioning but feel internally drained (Maslach & Leiter, 2016).

What makes this particularly difficult is that high performers are often the last to recognize it. They are trained, in a sense, to push through discomfort. “Kaya pa,” becomes a quiet mantra. They attribute fatigue to temporary pressure. They tell themselves things will ease after the next deadline, the next quarter, the next school year. But the relief rarely comes, because the pattern does not change. Work expands to fill the space that competence creates. The more capable one is, the more the system assumes one can carry.

There is also a deeper layer that is not often discussed in faculty rooms but shows up in behavior. For some, performance becomes closely tied to worth. Not in a dramatic or conscious way, but in subtle internal scripts: If I deliver, I am valued. If I perform, I belong. These scripts are not necessarily created in the workplace. They are often formed much earlier, shaped by expectations, rewards and experiences. Over time, they become habits. And habits, once reinforced by recognition and success, are difficult to question.

This is why common advice — rest more, take breaks, go on leave — while helpful, often feels incomplete. The issue is not simply time or workload. It is the relationship one has with work. Some educators take leave but still carry the mental load. You know that kind of tired where you rest, but something still feels off? That is usually not about sleep anymore. It is something deeper. Sometimes, all it takes is a quiet pause to ask: Am I still choosing this, or am I just used to saying yes? That question alone can change how you see your work.

Schools are not built to wear people down, but they can quietly reward overextension. The ones who do more, fix more and carry more become the go-to people. Eventually, that becomes expected. What started as initiative turns into responsibility, then into silent pressure. Others adjust around it, and the load becomes uneven without anyone clearly naming it.

There are signs of change, though. Some are beginning to share work more deliberately and build systems that do not depend on a few reliable people. For high performers, the harder part is internal — recognizing when enough is enough, and acting on it early. Saying no is not weakness. It is how you protect your ability to keep showing up. Because success that drains you is not really success — it is just burnout waiting its turn.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with./WDJ