Teacher burnout is one of the most pervasive challenges of working in education today.
Those carrying the greatest responsibility for their students’ wellbeing often find themselves under the most strain—juggling lesson planning, pastoral care, and administrative demands—while struggling to find time to recharge.
Data collected by Smiling Mind shows that educator wellbeing goes through significant peaks and troughs throughout the school year.
It’s clear to see how significantly educator wellbeing drops during each school term, with the largest drop in wellbeing occurring in Term 3. These fluctuations in wellbeing can make it challenging for teachers and schools to manage and prevent work-related stress.
Heavy workloads, expanding responsibilities and the emotional needs of students and other school stakeholders are three factors that can contribute to teacher burnout, overwhelm and stress.
In this article, we explore these factors and offer evidence-based insights on how to manage teacher stress and burnout—both for individual educators and at a school level.
Causes of teacher stress and burnout
1. Heavy workload
Educators juggle lesson planning, grading and administrative tasks on top of their hours spent at the front of a classroom. Their passion pushes them to strive to provide quality education, but it’s widely known that many teachers take these responsibilities into their personal time, leading to excessive working hours.
This can leave teachers with limited time for crucial self-care, personal pursuits and work recovery. It’s a recipe for exhaustion—especially if they don’t have good supports in place in the school environment.
When workload stresses become chronic and enduring, teacher burnout can quickly sneak up.
2. Expanding responsibilities
Teaching today is about so much more than just lesson plans and grading. Teachers are juggling different learning styles, bringing tech into the classroom, supporting social and emotional learning, and helping students who are anxious or have experienced trauma—all while keeping the day-to-day running smoothly.
Teaching the ABC's is just one part of the wide-ranging role of today's primary school teachers. In addition to foundational academics, they're also guiding and coaching students through a wide range of social and academic challenges—often taking on these extra hats without enough support, wellbeing resources, or professional development to manage the workload effectively.
It’s no wonder that this can quickly lead to stress, overwhelm, and, if left unaddressed, burnout.
3. The emotional needs of students, parents and other school stakeholders
Close connections between teachers and the wider school community can be a source of stress as well as support. Teachers often juggle the emotional needs of students, parents, and other school stakeholders, managing varying opinions, questions, requests, and advice about how best to support each child.
Sometimes, the weight of these conversations can carry an increased risk of burnout for teachers.
Signs and symptoms of teacher burnout
Experiencing burnout can have big implications for our mental health and wellbeing. It's important to recognise the signs and symptoms so you can catch it, manage it and recover from it.
Teacher burnout presents in a range of mental and emotional symptoms, including:
- Loss of motivation or passion for teaching
- Increased emotional dysregulation (feeling sad, angry, frustrated, depressed)
- Feelings of numbness, flatness or general lack of emotion
- Lowered self-confidence or self-worth
- Difficulty sleeping
- Physical exhaustion
How to manage teacher stress and burnout: mental fitness tips
1. Re-discover your purpose and reflect on what drives you to be a teacher
When we get stressed we start to lose sight of our ‘why’. When that stress is prolonged or chronic, we might forget it entirely. Teaching is a vocation most often pursued by passionate people with a strong purpose. Find your way back to the thing that drives you to teach and reflect on your personal strengths. Try expression journaling or prioritisation journaling to express negative emotions and find clarity in your thoughts.
Read more on how to find your purpose.
2. Practise mindfulness to avoid carrying yesterday’s stress into a new day
Mindfulness helps us to live each day as an individual experience. Through mindfulness we realise that nothing has to be fixed or permanent, including feelings of stress and overwhelm. Instead, it helps us to approach each day with fresh eyes and appreciate the unique moments of that day with openness and non-judgement.
Try some of the mindfulness meditations in the Smiling Mind app, or learn about informal mindfulness exercises (you won’t need to set aside time to practise these!)
3. Lean on healthy connections while setting the right boundaries
School communities are often very tight-knit. You likely have many strong connections within your school you can—and should—lean on if you’re experiencing stress or burnout. Alerting school leaders will give them an opportunity to properly support your wellbeing.
It’s also important to establish healthy boundaries with members of your school community, including parents. Growing healthy, respectful, non-judgemental relationships with parents and school leaders can protect you from any added feelings of pressure and responsibility and mitigate future risk of burnout.
4. Lean into your strength in flexible thinking
Become an agile responder rather than stuck in old practices. It’s a constantly changing environment, that agility is going to allow them to stay open-minded to change which can protect from burnout.
Teachers tend to have a knack for flexible thinking and agility. You’re able to think on your feet and adapt quickly. This strength is ideal in the ever-evolving education environment. Intentionally leaning into it helps us remain open-minded in the face of changes and challenges which can protect from burnout.
Want to develop your flexible thinking skills?
5. Prioritise physical health to support mental wellbeing
When you're taking stress home, it’s easy to let healthy habits fall to the wayside. We’re tired, looking for a quick and easy meal, a sugar rush and caffeine. Unfortunately, deprioritising our physical health to cope with work isn’t going to do you any favours in the long run. The way we move, eat, rest and sleep has massive impacts on our mental wellbeing. Try to move your body during the day, stay hydrated and eat well (and enough!). When you get home from work, make sure you take time to really switch off and rest your mind and body.
To get into a good sleep routine, try listening to a Smiling Mind sleep meditation before bed.
The Smiling Mind Primary School Program is co-designed by psychologists and educators to help schools boost mental wellbeing. Aligned with the Australian Curriculum, it offers ready-to-implement lessons and resources, while also providing tailored training for teachers, school leaders, and wellbeing coordinators.
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