Building Resilience: How School Leaders Can Fight Teacher Burnout

People don’t get into education because of the money. Smiling toothless faces, aha moments, and unexpected high-fives from shy students keep teachers showing up day in and day out. Making a difference matters—sometimes even more than pay. It can be the invisible but languishing force field keeping educators resilient when morale is at an all-time low. Ninety percent of educators report experiencing burnout, and more than half want to leave their profession earlier than planned. 

Principals and teacher leaders can feel hand-tied. They often lack the resources, finances, or power to change largely broken facets of the system. But school leaders occupy a unique role in keeping teachers engaged and energized. When Education Week surveyed what keeps teachers in the profession, Helen Chan echoed a typical response: “My principal, she trusts me,” said the fourth grade math teacher of South Loop Elementary School in Chicago. Other than school leaders, few have the power to make educators feel heard, valued, and supported. 

Discover how you can keep teachers from losing faith—or, even worse, leaving their professions—by addressing burnout at the source with four practical strategies. 

Fizzling Out Burnout

“Burnout” is so ubiquitously reported in educational contexts that the term has become synonymous with teaching. The Learning Counsel explains, “Burnout is a natural outcome for those who experience high-stress levels for an extended period.” People experience burnout on a continuum, moving through three phases over time: exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of accomplishment. Workplace pressures become so intense that educators first feel emotionally and physically exhausted. When stressors continue and new and historical changes pile on, overwhelmed and exhausted teachers become less invested. Soon, they ultimately believe there’s nothing they can accomplish that will make a difference. Then they may leave. 

Even the most dedicated person can experience burnout—leaders, too. However, it’s not one person’s fault; burnout is a direct symptom of something much larger. 

Addressing the root cause of burnout requires acknowledging that burnout is an organizational issue, not a “teacher” issue, reported ASCD (previously the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development). Offering solutions to change an individual’s attitude or use coping skills misses the point and might push teachers right out the door. After all, factors such as unmanageable workloads, unreasonable expectations, and time pressures can’t be fixed by taking deep breaths. Instead, embracing burnout as an organizational issue shifts approaches and creates opportunities for small but worthwhile change. Experts recommend implementing improvements that best align with the work and avoiding trivial perks like Donut Day. 

Get started with these four essential strategies. 

Four Immediate Ways To Score Teacher Support

1. Respect their craft

Teachers don’t need empty praise or permission to wear jeans on Friday. They want leadership that understands and validates their pedagogical craft and is invested in their personal and professional well-being.

In an Education Week survey, practitioners ranked meaningful feedback from leadership—written or verbal—as a top priority. “It’s important for [teachers] to feel like, ‘Someone saw what I did, understood it, and thinks that it’s productive,’” said Susan Moore Johnson, a professor of education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. 

Create feedback loops

Start with consistent check-ins. Not every leader has all the answers, and that’s OK. The best instructional leaders lead with a learner’s mindset. Creating a way to collaborate on improvement and accept feedback turns challenges into growth opportunities and builds resilience and adaptability for both teachers and leaders. Technology can be an excellent tool for valid input without creating performance pressure. For instance, with the right solution, administrators can use smart, real-time class or student data to recognize a teacher’s great work, monitor goal progress, or ask “How can I help?” or “What can I do better?”

Mentor and guide

Mentorship retains new teachers by as much as 92%. Look for opportunities where coaching can be “impartial and guided from the side.” Mentorship is a great way to provide objective feedback and fresh perspectives that can inspire teachers.

Foster collaboration

Make time weekly by offloading non-instructional responsibilities such as bus or cleaning duty. It’ll give teachers time for bouncing ideas around, discussing grade-level challenges, or planning new approaches. 

2. Rethink school culture

Less than half of a teacher’s time is spent teaching. Leaders can make teachers feel appreciated by building a supportive environment where instructional time is protected and leadership has their back.

As ASCD notes, “While there is nothing inherently wrong with potlucks, T-shirts, and desk trinkets,” educators can feel devalued if these things are used as a crutch without making changes that help them do their jobs better.

So, yes, get the copier fixed (again).

Offset the burden of supporting new or early-career teachers with instructional leaders who can formally observe, evaluate, and coach. 

Acknowledge that teachers do not get paid for extracurricular activities and reduce how often they are asked to “fill in as a ticket-taker at a school sports event” or chaperone school dances. 

Then, remember only 7% of educators said they preferred a gift for recognition. Your appreciation and respect are most valued.

3. Empower growth by adding to a teacher's capacity, not their plate

Teachers need high-quality professional development to make them more effective educators. While schools and districts typically provide ample—and sometimes unpopular—professional development opportunities, these one-size-fits-all training programs tend to miss the mark. Professional learning should be: 

• Personalized and directly relevant to the skills and grade levels taught 

• Flexible, adaptable, and accomplished in bite-size opportunities so it easily fits into jam-packed schedules 

• A bridge between evidence-based instruction and proven classroom experience so teachers can apply what they’ve learned daily 

When you invest in the proper learning and curricular solutions, teachers feel more confident, capable, and renewed.

4. Lead with priority

There’s no shortage of competing priorities, so stepping back and taking inventory of global change can prevent the most overlooked reason for burnout—chronic change fatigue. Tackling one organizational change at a time and heavily weighing what can wait reduces chronic stress and upheaval for teachers and you. ASCD recommends actively asking the hard questions:

“Is it worth implementing that new curriculum right now, or should you back off and focus on teacher morale? Is it worth monitoring teachers’ lesson planning, or should you loosen up so they regain a sense of autonomy? Maybe next year, your only goal for building climate and culture is to address staff who make the workplace toxic for each other, even though you were really hoping to finally dig into PLC work.“ 

Then, listen closely. Workplace experts Maslach and Leiter say leaders should listen more and avoid the temptation of acting “unilaterally.” A respondent to the Education Week survey agreed, stating that “school leaders listening to teachers’ suggestions instead of solely handing down top-down decisions that ‘disregard our expertise’ would be the greatest form of acknowledgment.” 

When Teachers Feel Valued, Everyone Wins

Tackling burnout doesn’t have to be monumental or hugely time-consuming. Rather, small but significant actions can demonstrate that leadership values a teacher’s worth and experience. Give educators the power to improve their craft, cultivate a culture that protects instructional time, facilitate long-term learning opportunities, and reduce fatigue by prioritizing change. Sure, these efforts reduce turnover and improve student outcomes, but most importantly, they underscore your shared devotion. 

“I know it's a cliché, but it's for the kids. [There’s] never a day goes by that I question whether what I'm doing has an impact on my community. When I work with kids every day, I know that what I'm doing is important, is useful, is necessary,” Frank Rivera, a middle and high school English/language arts teacher at the Austin, Texas-based Chaparral Star Academy, told Education Week.