Teacher Burnout: How to Prevent It in Your School

Teaching has always been a demanding profession, one that requires long hours, adaptability, and a deep level of commitment. So it's easy to see why burnout has become a major concern for the field. According to research by Gallup, 44% of K–12 education employees are burnt out and 35% of college and university employees feel the same way.

On top of affecting educators’ mental health, burnout is often associated with high teacher turnover. In University of Missouri research, 78% teachers say they’ve thought about quitting the profession since the 2020 pandemic, and they cite poor support, heavy workloads, low pay, and difficult student behavior.

But what can HR professionals in K–12 schools and higher education do about this crucial issue? In this article, we’ll explore the symptoms of burnout and some of the best burnout prevention strategies school administrators, HR professionals, and teachers can use to protect themselves and their schools.

What is teacher burnout?

Everyone has bad days, but when teachers feel exhausted, demoralized, and ineffective for an extended period, bad days can turn into burnout. And burnout can quickly start to affect the classroom.

Common warning signs of teacher burnout include:

• Exhaustion or energy depletion, even after hours of sleep
• Poor mental health symptoms, like depression and anxiety
• Withdrawal from social or family gatherings and other teachers
• Physical symptoms of stress, such as frequent headaches

Colleges and universities also aren't immune. Reports on public schools and higher education indicate the following:

• 77% of teachers say their job is often stressful
• 70% of teachers feel their school is understaffed
• 68% of teachers indicate their job is overwhelming
• 52% of teachers say they would not recommend that young people become teachers
• 53% of college faculty and staff have considered leaving due to burnout, increased workloads, and stress
• 76% of college faculty feel that student mental health support is now a job expectation

The true cost of educator burnout

The real cost of burnout is much more than a handful of tired, disengaged educators. It can contribute to teacher shortages, which in turn can significantly lower student achievement. Schools without enough teachers often cancel courses and increase class sizes. To make up for the deficit, it's common for schools to staff classes with substitutes and underprepared or uncertified teachers with expertise outside the subject matter.

From a financial standpoint, constantly replacing teachers can get expensive for public and private schools and universities, as the average cost to replace a teacher (at a larger district) is $25,000.

4 telltale symptoms of burnout

Knowing the signs of burnout can help you address it early. Recognizing burnout signs is especially important as your teachers may not always tell you when they’re feeling overwhelmed, which can cause compounding issues over time.

While not every case looks the same, keeping an eye out for these symptoms can help with burnout prevention.

1. Exhaustion

We're all familiar with the midday slump—the yawning, the drooping eyes, the fuzzy thoughts. It can be tough to work through those slow afternoon hours.

But teachers suffering from burnout may feel as if their midday slump never ends, which only adds to their already-long hours. Coming to work each day is exhausting—and not just physically. Mental exhaustion can be just as taxing, especially under the weight of neverending lesson prep and grading.

The biggest danger with exhaustion is that it’s often cyclical. An educator comes to work and becomes exhausted, and then the stress of the day weighs on them in the evening and prevents restful sleep. The next day, they come into school even more tired than before, and the cycle continues, leading to burnout.

What to watch for:

• Complaints of insomnia
• Fatigue while teaching or in meetings
• Inability to focus or think clearly

2. Cynicism

Another common sign of educator burnout is cynicism. While everyone feels frustrated or negative at work sometimes, teachers who consistently express pessimism, distrust, and resentment may in fact be suffering from burnout.

Even when educational organizations sincerely try to treat employees well, they may fall short. Trust in any workplace is relatively fragile, built and reinforced through repeated interactions. For instance, when a manager betrays an employee’s trust, such as taking credit for their work, the relationship is damaged, and that employee will be warier during the next interaction.

If teachers lose trust in their schools, they’ll start to feel isolated and unsupported, which can eventually lead to burnout.

What to watch for:

• Lack of motivation
• Frustration or apathy
• Isolation

3. Inefficacy

A burned-out, disengaged educator is often an ineffective one.

All organizations have busy periods where everyone needs to pull a little extra weight to keep things running smoothly. But when crunch time never ends, and teachers find themselves constantly swamped, they're at serious risk of burning out and underperforming.

Several things can contribute to an overwhelming educator workload, such as poor funding, high emotional demands, or a lack of preparation and resources by administrators.

For example, EdWeek has found that teachers work more hours than their principals estimate, and about half of teachers find their required professional development to be irrelevant.

What to watch for:

• Excessive work hours
• Sudden drops in performance quality
• High levels of stress
• Anxiety or feelings of guilt over not doing enough for students

4. Loneliness

Another sign of burnout is loneliness. If a teacher consistently withdraws from social activities or avoids interacting with colleagues, they may be on the brink of major burnout.

The average teacher works about 49 hours per week––importantly, this is 10 hours more than the average number of hours they’re contracted to work. If they don’t have any friends among their colleagues, then it’s likely their social time is limited to a few hours before or after work. That could lead to bad day after bad day and, ultimately, employee burnout.

Employees with close connections have a social and emotional support system to lean on in the workplace. Compared to lonely employees, they also tend to be more mentally present, miss less work, and are less likely to be looking for a new job.

What to watch for:

• Withdrawal from colleagues
• Lack of social interaction
• Few or no friendships at work

How to avoid burnout: 3 best practices for schools

Burnout occurs when educators feel overworked and undervalued. On an institutional level, this can lead to higher staff turnover, lower employee engagement, and a negative impact on the classroom or workplace culture overall.

But how can education leaders and HR prevent burnout at their school, college, or university? Complimentary food and social events are useful temporary measures, but these superficial perks can only go so far. Instead, it’s better to get straight to the source.

Here are three burnout prevention strategies for your school.

1. Evaluate your school's benefits

One proactive step you can take for your educators is to evaluate the benefits packages at your school. Many people turn to their employer-sponsored benefits for resources first since these are typically the most readily available.

Some key benefits to enhance or advocate for include:

• Mental health coverage: Mental health is just as important as physical health. Be sure your school's healthcare plan covers counseling, therapy, and psychiatric services.
• Employee assistance program (EAP): Educator EAPs cover a wide range of services, such as legal, financial, and healthcare assistance. If yours doesn't include mental health support, find a way to add that into the program.
• Wellness education: Do your teachers know how to recognize the signs of burnout and what to do about it? Building access to wellness workshops into your benefits package empowers your educators and staff to manage their wellbeing and support each other.

Next, examine your benefits communication strategy. Are your teachers, faculty, and staff aware of the services they have access to? It's not enough to hand out benefits information upon hire—plan to keep the conversation going.

Tailor your communications around specific perks to remind your educators of what's available, encourage them to ask questions, and teach them how to maximize your program's offerings.

As an added bonus, focusing on mental health benefits normalizes the use of those resources. This contributes to a culture of support at your school, which can help struggling educators feel more comfortable reaching out.

2. Regularly survey your teachers and respond

As an HR professional, it's also important to routinely check in with your workforce and see how they're doing. This commonly occurs during performance review season, but doing this more often makes it easier to stay on top of the overall sentiment in your school.

Survey your teachers, faculty, and staff. This step shows that your school is actively listening, which helps people feel heard and helps you figure out what to do next. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Make it quick. School employees are already short on time, so a quick, multiple-choice survey can ensure people will participate.
• Ask targeted questions. Specific questions yield specific answers. Figure out what you want to know and tailor your school survey accordingly.
• Give a free response option. Room at the end for suggestions and comments can provide greater clarity about their situation and what you can do about it.
• Repeat regularly. Sending out a survey at regular intervals during the year helps you keep tabs on the improvements you're making and stay abreast of any new challenges that arise.

Above all, keep in mind that doing the survey is just the first part—they'll be waiting for your response. So be sure to thank them for their time and let them know what changes the school is prepared to make.

From quick fixes to long-term plans, meaningful action could look like a number of different things depending on the feedback you received, your school's budget, and other factors.

3. Be transparent

In business, transparent leadership builds trust, encourages employee advocacy, sets expectations, and improves employee performance—and your school can use this approach to achieve the same results. Plus, eliminating ambiguity from the workplace gives your school employees greater peace of mind, which can ease some of the mental load that contributes to burnout.

So, what does transparency in educational leadership look like?

This could mean letting teachers know you're going to recruit more aides and parent volunteers for larger classes or keeping them informed about upcoming administrative changes. But it also means being the bearer of bad news sometimes, especially when some school improvements may not be possible.

Either way, clearly and compassionately delivering your school's message and preparing to answer questions can help those conversations go smoothly.

Honest, thoughtful communication about compensation, class sizes, budgeting constraints, and the other pressing issues that contribute to burnout can go a long way in reducing resentment, setting expectations, and finding solutions.

It also helps you maintain a healthy work environment where teachers feel respected and valued.

How HR professionals in education can manage burnout

The pandemic profoundly impacted the US education system, and we're still navigating its effects. Teachers continue to report elevated stress and burnout compared to other professions, with wellbeing levels that have not fully recovered since the pandemic. Schools are navigating ongoing staffing challenges, increased student needs, and learning gaps tied to disruptions from the pandemic.

But teachers aren't the only ones experiencing burnout—HR and people leaders are feeling the strain, too. School HR professionals have been responsible for remediating teacher shortages, supporting the transitions in and out of remote learning, and mitigating the institutional problems in education systems.

All of this can feel pretty grim, but we’re not just here to point out the hard stuff. We also want to give you solutions for when the strain of these additional, unexpected responsibilities gets to be too much.

Here are a few resources for you to start with:

Participate in school and HR wellness activities

Talk to your administration about incorporating specific activities into Mental Health Awareness Month that help combat burnout and stress in the workplace. Teacher Appreciation Week also happens to fall within this month, creating the perfect opportunity to help yourself and your colleagues practice better self-care or lean into your school employee wellness program.

Seek therapy and mental health counseling

As an information source for mental health resources and providers, school HR professionals frequently find themselves playing the role of counselor. Whether or not you have an EAP to direct employees to (or to use yourself), you’re still engaging in emotional labor (i.e., therapy work) on a daily basis.

Even therapists need therapy, and when HR pros fall into similar roles, well, you get the idea. Check out this list of top mental health resources, curated by Healthline, to help you find your own dedicated mental health professional.

Join online communities

The burnout prevention strategies don’t stop there! There are plenty of online HR communities waiting for you, including the HR Heroes community on Slack, hosted by BambooHR.

You can also check out other HR online communities and social media groups, such as subreddits like r/humanresources and r/askHR. Connecting with your peers will help you find new ways to support your mental health.

Remember: You’ve got this

Your day-to-day concerns as an HR professional in education may revolve around your school and its teachers, but when the responsibilities pile up, it’s easy to forget a simple but important truth: you’re an employee, too, and you deserve all the care and attention you give your people.

Just remember, when it feels like there’s nowhere to turn for that critical support, you’re not alone. There’s an entire community in your corner.