If burnout is treated as proof of dedication, educators are helping to dismantle the teaching profession, write Robin Stern, co-founder and senior adviser to the director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Marc Brackett, founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor in Yale’s Child Study Center, and Dawn Brooks-DeCosta, deputy superintendent of Harlem Community School District 5 in New York, in a K-12 Dive essay.
Stress comes in many forms: understaffed schools, anxious parents, state mandates, federal regulations, community politics. Many teachers ask, “Can I keep doing this? School administrators, this is your cue. You can buffer the impact of outside pressures, shape school culture and realistically address burnout.
Burnout is not a personal failure. It is not a result of poor time management or emotional fragility. The World Health Organization defines burnout as a syndrome caused by chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.
To minimize unnecessary stress, foster psychological safety, and support the emotional sustainability of your staff, we must identify three truths too often forgotten.
- Teachers are not martyrs. Society too often treats teachers as saints or superheroes, expecting sacrifice and seeing overwork as a badge of honor. It’s time to change this narrative. Advocate for competitive pay, defend planning time, and ensure reasonable expectations around after-hours communication, committee work and data entry. Challenge unrealistic school board or parent demands to protect your teachers’ well-being.
- Emotional labor is real labor. Every day teachers might hold a child’s grief, de-escalate a teen’s rage, notice subtle signs of trauma or hunger. Any seasoned administrator knows that emotional labor is exhausting and cumulative. Investments in districtwide mental health resources should be supported by creating time for teachers’ professional development in emotional intelligence. This is a great retention strategy and a gift for teachers’ well-being.
- Attrition is a signal, not a failure. Research from the American Psychological Association shows that toxic work environments increase the risk of anxiety, depression and burnout — and individuals often experience measurable improvements in well-being when they leave these environments. Administrators must recognize that school culture is local. Leaders can either fuel or fight toxicity. When you invest in emotional sustainability through mentorship, fair workload distribution and responsive leadership, it pays off in both retention and results.
Here are tangible steps you can take as an administrator to make your school a place where teachers can thrive:
- Model emotional intelligence. As one superintendent in a large urban district discovered through emotional intelligence training, even small changes in providing emotional support can permeate staff culture and improve morale.
- Embed emotional intelligence into regularly scheduled professional development days. This leadership essential should include training on trauma-informed practices and managing your emotions.
- Protect autonomy. Give teachers a voice in curriculum and the freedom to teach with authenticity.
- Create space for truth and trust – a psychologically safe environment to openly discuss challenges and not be silenced by fear.
- Reframe well-being as nonnegotiable — no great learning happens in a culture of burnout.
- Guard against calendar creep by protecting professional time devoted to personal and group reflection, planning and peer support.
Teachers need school leaders who will fight for additional personal time and professional development, who protect autonomy and voice, and who understand that retaining great teachers starts with supporting the whole human.
The issue isn’t the price of change — it’s the price of standing still.
K-12 Dive
