Why Are Teachers at Greater Risk of Burnout?

Co-authored with Noelle Segato

If we are looking for lessons from the chaos of the pandemic, one of them should be how difficult being a teacher is.

Teaching is more than relaying knowledge. Teachers must keep students focused, attentive, and engaged in material most adults would be bored to tears with. They are also one of the most prevalent adults in our children’s lives—shaping their morals, attitudes, and disposition. For students with unstable or insecure home lives, teachers also act as role models and guardians.

When kids were stuck learning online, parents got a taste of how hard being a teacher is. Parents who took on homeschooling during the pandemic reported more work-family conflict (which is linked with increased stress and poor mental health) and changes in drinking behaviour. Yet, we still are not providing teachers with the resources they need to do their jobs and protect their mental health.

Teachers are burnt out and stressed.

Source: Arthur Krijgsman / Pexels

Teachers are burnt out and stressed.

A 2022 study in the UK found that 75 percent of all education staff are stressed and 78 percent have experienced at least one symptom of poor mental health due to their work, whether it be behavioural (for example, difficulty concentrating, mood swings, or changes in appetite), psychological (for example, insomnia, depression or anxiety) or physical (for example, headaches, muscle tension or elevated blood pressure).

Moreover, 59 percent of staff said that they had considered leaving their job within the last year due to pressures on their mental health and well-being.

Similar statistics are found in North America.

In the United States, three-quarters of teachers (73 percent) report frequent job-related stress, 59 percent report feeling burnt out, and 28 percent report symptoms of depression (versus 35 percent, 44 percent, and 17 percent respectively for other working adults). Well-being was particularly poor among teachers of colour and female teachers. 90 percent of teachers consider burnout a serious problem and one-third of teachers say they will likely leave their job by the end of the school year because of the toll on their well-being.

In Canada, 29 percent to 40 percent of teachers report feeling emotionally exhausted, and 47 percent report experiencing fatigue as a result of their work. Moreover, though teacher insecurities, distress, and burnout had increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, the problems associated with teaching are far from new: 58 percent of teachers reported levels of high stress in 2006, 85 percent of teachers reported impaired functioning due to work-life imbalance in 2014, and an average of 30 percent of new teachers left the profession within five years in 2014.

Teachers must worry for both their own and students' social, mental, emotional, and physical health and safety.

Source: Katerina Holmes / Pexels

The causes of teacher burnout are many and varied. Lack of support, student discipline, and adequate training in classroom management increase burnout, as does negative team culture and inadequate resources to support student learning. Other factors such as higher workloads due to unfilled job openings, insufficient time for lesson planning, low pay, and lack of respect from parents and the public likely also increase teacher stress.

Additionally, since the pandemic, public schools have reported an increase in the number of students who do not meet the academic standards for their grade level, as well as stunted behavioural and socioemotional development in their students. All these stressors combine to create an excessively demanding work environment, which research links to occupational burnout and chronic fatigue in teachers.

Increasingly, teaching is not only a demanding profession but also a potentially dangerous one.

In a national survey, the American Psychological Association found that more than half (54 percent) of all teachers, staff, psychologists, social workers, and administrators have experienced threats or other verbal abuse on the job and 14 percent of teachers have reported physical violence from students. Since COVID, teachers have also reported more verbal abuse from parents and other adults.

Teachers must worry not only for a student’s social, mental, emotional, and physical health and safety but also for their own. Feeling unsafe can only add to the high stress of teaching.

It can be tempting to blame the individual, to say that teachers must just be high-strung or bad at managing student behaviour. While it is true that some people have more or fewer psychological resources than others, which can help manage external stressors and thus burnout, the protective effects of these resources are limited for even those with the highest self-efficacy. Even the calmest person gets burnt out in the right (or rather wrong) circumstances, and solutions must target both the individual and the system they work within.

Burnout Essential Reads

An Integrative Approach to Caregiver Burnout

What Interventions Are Effective for Psychologist Burnout?

Burnout, when related to occupation, is characterised by feelings of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job; increased negative attitudes about one’s job, and reduced motivation and professional efficacy. It often occurs in service occupations and occupations with chronic high levels of stress.

If you are experiencing any of the above symptoms, there is hope.

Teachers and their schools and take action to prevent stress and burnout.

Source: Yan Krukau / Pexels

What you can do:

• Rest. Sleep and rest are critical to functioning and protect against burnout.
• Connect. Quality time with family and friends, a supportive network (especially at work), and time out in the greater community help develop a sense of meaning and belonging, which protects against burnout.
• Be mindful. Mindfulness encourages you to nurture feelings of gratitude and pay more attention to personal health and well-being, which can help you manage both work and life stressors.
• Release. Exercise helps you release the stress that builds up in your body. Whether you prefer relaxing activities like yoga or more energising activities like running, being active can help release tension.
• Go to therapy. If nothing seems to be helping, therapy can help you connect with yourself, identify challenges, and build the skills you need to handle times of stress.

What your school can do:

• Compensate. Raising teacher salaries may improve teacher retention.
• Consult. Teachers have first-hand experience that can and should inform school policies, procedures, and interventions. Moreover, feeling trusted by superiors is associated with improved teacher stress, mental health, and well-being.
• Support. Providing support for staff and students benefits all. Support can look like additional mental health resources; implementing school-based mind-body interventions, which improve responses to stress, mood, emotional regulation, resilience, affect, and more; or implementing preventative school-based interventions that address school violence (for example, school climate improvement, social-emotional learning, classroom management), which effectively reduce violence against teachers.
• Hire. Hiring more teachers and support staff will allow each individual to have a more healthy and manageable workload, promoting both teacher wellbeing and retention.
• Train. Providing training opportunities sets up teachers for successful classroom management. Training teachers in social-emotional learning, trauma-informed practices, and de-escalation strategies are shown to be beneficial.

Noelle Segato, B.Sc., M.A., is a writer, communications co-ordinator at CRUX Psychology and student pursuing her MFA at the University of King's College.