Teacher Burnout: The Admin's Role in Prevention
Teacher burnout remains a persistent challenge for many educators. However, the conversation surrounding it is shifting—there's a broader understanding that teacher well-being isn't just an individual responsibility but an organizational one.1 The positive news is that schools have enormous potential to enact change that makes a real difference. School administrations can cultivate a more energized faculty by focusing on engaging and proactive solutions, creating a thriving environment that benefits everyone.
In this blog, we'll examine the key symptoms of teacher burnout and discuss what administrations can do to prevent it.
1 Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter, authors of The Burnout Challenge: Managing People's Relationships with Their Jobs (Harvard UP, 2022)
What is Teacher Burnout?
Burnout is defined as an enduring state of mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion induced by chronic stress leading to negative sentiments toward one’s professional self‐efficacy.2 In simple terms, it's a condition where long-term, high-level dissatisfaction with a job causes enough negative impact on personal well-being that individuals begin to disengage from their work as a coping mechanism.
When it comes to the education, burnout is especially prevalent. In fact, according to Gallup, teaching is number one on the list of careers with the highest rates of burnout.3 While there is no one reason for this to be the case, the way in which teachers gain fulfilment from their jobs and how it differs from other professions likely plays a large role.
Unlike lawyers or businesspeople, whose successes—such as winning a case or signing a new client—offer clear rewards for the hard work it took to get there, teachers rarely see the long-term impact their work has on the students they teach. Instead, they depend on "psychic rewards," or the small daily victories they experience in the classroom to stay motivated.4
Burnout can easily take root when teachers feel they're not winning in the classroom and don't have an ultimate win-or-lose metric to fall back on.
2 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333754784_Teacher_Burnout
3 https://news.gallup.com/poll/393500/workers-highest-burnout-rate.aspx
4 Lortie, D. 2002 (2nd Edition) Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study Paperback – 1 May 2002, London: University of Chicago Press
Organizational Causes of Teacher Burnout
Many factors contribute to teacher burnout, including low pay, increased social responsibilities, and work/life balance. These factors are out of the individual educator’s control. Still, administrators can empower their staff by working to improve a school’s culture, climate, and structure, making those small, psychic wins more attainable and teacher burnout symptoms less pronounced.
Let's look at some of the most prominent causes:
Lack of Agency & Empowerment
Having a degree of agency or autonomy in one’s role is a key factor when it comes to psychic rewards. People tend to feel more satisfied in their work when their self-driven actions directly contribute to their goals. However, in education, strict state and district mandates often limit opportunities for autonomy in the classroom.
Despite these regulations, there is still room for teachers to exercise agency—but how much depends on school-level policies and culture. When administrators impose too many additional controls or don’t actively support this kind of agency, they risk inadvertently fostering burnout.
Inefficiencies & Initiative Fatigue
While certain inefficiencies, such as limited classroom resource budget, are often beyond the administration's control, inefficiencies tied to teachers' time and energy are not, such as the number of admin-directed initiatives launched each year. Pulling faculty members into a plethora of new initiatives each school year can stretch already finite teacher resources, leaving little time and energy to focus on the classroom.
It's not just low energy that causes burnout. It’s also the cynicism that can develop when educators put precious time and energy into initiatives, only to see many of them falter or get abandoned further down the road.
Lack of Community Support Systems
A 2017 study on educator collaboration from Cornell University found that schools with higher levels of teacher collaboration correlated significantly with lower rates of faculty turnover, stronger teacher engagement, and even better academic outcomes for students.5 While collaboration isn't the only factor in this equation, these findings indicate that both students and teachers suffer when schools lack a strong culture of collegiality.
It's not just the missed opportunities for teachers to grow professionally through teamwork and knowledge sharing that contributes to burnout, but also the lack of peer affirmation—the celebrations of each other's successes that build teacher confidence and foster feelings of satisfaction in their work.
5 https://www.cecweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Union_Management_Partnerships.pdf
Lack of (Individualized) Appreciation
If cursory appreciation is all that teachers get for their work rather than a sincere expression of gratitude for specific successes, it can actually fan the flames of burnout rather than soothe them. The type of praise that resonates for one individual may not resonate for another, and failure to speak to individual "appreciation languages" can inadvertently have the opposite of the intended effect.
Positive Next Actions for School Leaders
Teachers' willingness to embrace and maintain positive change is only half the equation. Administrators must create a culture and framework that allows for those changes to happen. Taking on burnout may seem like a monumental task, but keep in mind we don't have to fix everything at once to make an impact. Treating individual symptoms has a cumulative effect where each success creates more room for satisfaction and motivation. Focus on a series of small, impactful changes, and results will soon follow.
Let's explore a few actions admins can implement to avoid teacher burnout.
Create Space for Teacher Agency
While admins do need to enforce state and district mandates, this doesn't mean that teachers should feel like they only have one lane to operate within. If admins can find ways to relax some of the structures that are within their control and make teachers feel more comfortable in expressing agency, it can go a long way towards mitigating burnout by showing teachers that their leaders trust them as competent experts in what they do.
Here are two examples for how admins can start facilitating more agency in their schools:
Encourage Experimentation in Teaching Methods
Teachers are often hesitant to try alternative instructional approaches due to uncertainty about leadership support. Promoting a more permissive culture for experimentation is the key to overcoming this. Consider investing in development sessions around creative approaches like playful hands-on learning or encouraging teachers to observe other classes where these methods are already being employed. When admins act to explicitly show their support for agency, teachers will feel more confident in utilizing available autonomy.Give the Gift of Choice
Agency suffers when teachers’ time is too tightly controlled. When it comes to extracurricular demands such as staff meetings and development days, look for opportunities for flexibility. Allow teachers more freedom with their time by recording regular staff meetings so they can watch on-demand or build in unstructured time during development days to take care of personal work needs. It’s not just about the permission to act with agency but also allowing enough time to exercise it.
Take the Lead on Learning & Community Building
Investing in community and professional development is a win-win for school leaders. Showing your faculty that their leaders care about their personal development can help to temper feelings of burnout. At the same time, the additional skills and efficiencies gained through these initiatives only serve to strengthen their effectiveness in the classroom.
Here are two examples of how admins can facilitate more community-building and learning opportunities
Encourage Peer Observation
Creating time for and encouraging teachers to sit in on each other’s classes are great ways to make community building feel more natural and teacher-led. Through this more passive tactic, we plant the seeds for peer learning and sharing to become the norm just by introducing the permission and time for it to happen.Diversify Professional Development
Effective professional development that can combat burnout isn't just about developing classroom competencies but also about supporting teachers' interests and ambitions. For those that show interest in moving up the organizational ladder, consider opportunities that contribute to management and leadership skills. For those with a creative passion such as art, sponsoring their attendance at an art history seminar is effective for personal fulfillment while also fostering applicable classroom inspiration.
Invest in Efficiencies
When it comes to initiative fatigue, any reduction that can be made in the scope of new organizational pursuits or teacher’s involvement in them is a good first step. But even with fewer initiatives it’s important that leaders examine the implementation process for further possible efficiencies. For example, leaders should opt for professional development and support options when implementing a new technology. By investing more deeply in fewer initiatives we increase chances for completion and create the perception that time and energy spent are actually worthwhile.
Outside of initiatives, there are other efficiencies for admins to explore. Consider how classroom resource budgets might be more efficiently used to help teachers remain effective while still doing more with less. For example, investing in resourcing programs that provide ready-made cross-curricular lesson plans, tools, and guides to streamline planning and reduce teacher workload.
Find Ways to Express Individualized Appreciation
If nothing else can be done, ensuring that teachers feel sincere appreciation for what they do can be a powerful tool for combatting burnout all on its own. Here are a few ways that admins can be more effective in this area:
Personalize Praise
To really make an impact through appreciation, leaders need to tailor appreciation to the individual by getting to know the "appreciation languages" of their faculty. A good place to start is to look for how teachers show appreciation towards others as people tend to express the language they prefer as it is the one they are best at receiving.Be Aware of Perceptions
As with any employee/employer relationship, teachers take cues from the way in which their leaders speak and act. Even seemingly innocuous interactions can be perceived as negative feedback if leaders aren't conscious of this dynamic. For example, if you're preoccupied thinking about an upcoming meeting and pass a teacher in the hallway without acknowledging them, they might mistakenly interpret that lack of acknowledgment as negative sentiment. Make an exercise of examining your own external presentation and ask yourself, "How would I perceive myself if I didn't know my own intentions?".
Focus on the Goal and the Results Will Follow
Recent stats are clear: supporting teachers' well-being is essential for schools to thrive. After all, happier teachers make for happier students6—and we all know that happy students are more likely to succeed academically. While boosting teacher well-being may sound like a tall order, it's achievable with the right systems—more support, trust, and a culture where praise flows freely. In short, it's about systemic change that genuinely values and uplifts teachers.
The best part? The effort is worth it! When burnout decreases, teacher engagement skyrockets, and the entire school community benefits, creating a more positive, productive environment for everyone involved.
6 Nalipay, M. J. N., King, R. B., & Cai, Y. (2024). Happy teachers make happy students: The social contagion of well-being from teachers to their students. School Mental Health: A Multidisciplinary Research and Practice Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-024-09688-0