Hiring, training, and retaining phenomenal educators has always been key to success in education. Retaining teachers can be a challenge, especially now, but focusing on making the workload more manageable helps. Find the right place to put your teaching skills—apply now Education Counts: March 30th, 2022 to these amazing teacher jobs on The Muse » For those who feel that burnout is inevitable, exploring new career paths can offer fresh opportunities while still using the skills they’ve honed over their careers. If you’re feeling this way, it might be time to explore new paths that still tap into your skills and passion for helping others—but in a different role.

• All items were rated on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 7 (completely agree) (except for the stress item that was rated on a 10-point scale).
• See how Discovery Education can support teacher growth through impactful professional learning.
• This includes studying the factors that contribute to teacher resilience and developing interventions that can build this resilience early in a teacher’s career.
• An advanced degree in education leadership can prepare higher ed professionals to support educators and make a difference in students’ lives.
• And yet, many districts are moving toward making it easier for teachers to take a mental health day by creating flexible leave policies that let teachers to take time off without disclosing personal details.
• It often results from chronic workplace stressors, including high workloads, lack of support, and challenging student behaviors.

The Impact of Teacher Burnout

Another way to prevent teacher burnout is to care for their well-being. This way, teachers can handle their workload better and have a bit more personal time, too. To support this balance, schools should set clear rules about digital communication outside of school hours. When teachers experience burnout, the impacts extend far beyond individual teachers themselves. When teachers don’t feel appreciated for their hard work despite the heavy workload, it can lead them to question whether anyone truly values their efforts. Low salaries combined with high job demands can make teachers feel underpaid relative to all they do.

Engaging in these behaviors can exacerbate the effects of burnout and lead to further decline in personal and professional well-being. These can include binge eating, increased alcohol consumption, and emotional detachment from personal and professional relationships. Burned-out teachers often struggle with completing tasks, creating lesson plans, and grading assignments. This sense of detachment can lead to a lack of empathy and a robotic approach to teaching, further diminishing the quality of education provided.

Recently, there has been a growing interest in adopting a more holistic approach to supporting teacher well-being (Kern et al., 2014; McCallum, 2021; Taylor, 2018; Wessels & Wood, 2019). Little theoretical research on teacher well-being addresses the teaching profession’s specific traits, and there is still no scientific consensus on the conceptualisation of teacher well-being (Hascher & Waber, 2021). Within this framework, well-being involves nurturing positive emotions (P), fostering engagement (E), building meaningful relationships (R), finding purpose and meaning in both work and life (M), striving for personal accomplishments and self-improvement (A), and prioritising physical health (H). These approaches complement the understanding of negative aspects, such as burnout, by offering a more comprehensive exploration of the positive dimensions of life (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008; Dweck, 2008). Increasing evidence supports the interconnectedness of both teacher and student well-being (Tikkanen et al., 2021).

Adopt a Gratitude Practice in the Classroom

Stress and burnout are significantly related to a higher intention to quit teaching (Chambers Mack et al., 2019; Doherty, 2020; Ingersoll, 2001). The PERMA-H model’s contents were broadly consistent with the intervention’s contents, emphasising engagement (E), positive emotions (P), relationships (R), and health (H). The PERMA-H model of positive psychology is applied to unify the heterogeneous field of teacher well-being intervention research. Micro-credentials can also let teachers enhance specific skills they’re interested in. Schools can do this by letting teachers have more say in their classrooms and curriculum design.

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In turn, a lack of reciprocity in social relationships at work has been found to be related to increased levels of experienced burnout among teachers (Bakker et al. 2000). The effects of the proactive strategies on the perceived working-environment fit were mediated by reduced exhaustion and cynicism towards the teacher community. However, teachers do not simply react to a certain stressor, they can also make an effort to deal with future stressors. Salmela-Aro and her colleagues (Salmela-Aro et al. 2019) and Timms and others (Timms et al. 2012) showed that some teachers experience burnout symptoms simultaneously with work engagement, whereas others experience mere work engagement or burnout symptoms.