Being a teacher is both a privilege and a challenge. We have the opportunity to shape the lives of young minds, but the demands of the job can also be relentless. If you’re feeling burned out, you’re not alone. In this post, I’ll share some strategies that have helped me regain my energy and resilience in the face of teacher burnout.

Table of Contents
- Burnout/Fatigue: It’s Not Just You
- Managing Burnout and Building Resiliency
- The Burnout Fix
- Understand the Difference Between Professional Teaching Tasks vs. Hobby Teaching Tasks
- Create Margin: Make Space to Breathe and Reflect
- Lean in to Ruthless Subtraction and the Art of Letting Go
- Don’t Discount the Mental Load of Home and Life Maintenance
- Allow Yourself to Have Fun
- Say Kind Things to Yourself
Burnout/Fatigue: It’s Not Just You
As educators, we often face a unique set of challenges that can contribute to feelings of burnout and exhaustion. It’s important to understand that these struggles are not just your own – many teachers are grappling with similar issues.
Research shows that teacher burnout has reached alarming levels, with a 2022 survey by the National Education Association finding that 55% of educators plan to leave the profession earlier than they had intended. Additionally, a 2021 study by the Rand Corporation revealed that nearly 1 in 4 teachers reported feeling burned out. These staggering statistics underscore the urgent need for schools and communities to address the root causes of teacher burnout and provide effective support systems.
The pandemic has further exacerbated the problem, with a 2022 Gallup poll indicating that 44% of teachers reported feeling burned out, a significant increase from the 28% who felt that way in 2020.
If you’ve been experiencing burnout and overwhelm, some of the key factors that may be impacting your energy and stress levels include:
1. Toxic Work or Social Environments: Sometimes the problem isn’t you – the world has been in a strange and difficult place for the past few years, and the stress of that can take a toll.
2. Unsustainable Workloads: If you feel like you have too many competing demands on your time and attention, it may be time to set some firm boundaries to protect your work-life balance. Much of the responsibility for this lies with administration and policy makers, but you can take control of setting boundaries for your life.
3. Thinking and Attention Patterns: Becoming more intentional about how you direct your focus and reframe negative thought loops can make a significant difference in your overall energy and resilience levels.
4. Underlying Medical Conditions: You may be dealing with long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as “long COVID,” or have sensitivities to certain foods or chemicals that are draining your resources. Don’t ignore the massive impact that health can make in your ability to handle stress.
Managing Burnout and Building Resiliency
The Burnout Fix
I recently read a book, The Burnout Fix, by Dr. Jacinta Jimenez, that provides a fantastic evidence-based framework for preventing and managing burnout. It’s the closest I’ve found to how I think about this subject and if you have some time this summer, you may want to pick up a copy and see if you’d like to incorporate some of her resilience practices to your life (there are things we can do now while we wait for the slow wheels of systemic change to turn).
Understand the Difference Between Professional Teaching Tasks vs. Hobby Teaching Tasks
An education podcast I enjoy is Truth for Teachers by Angela Watson. Angela often speaks about the distinction between professional vs hobby tasks. She advises being mindful of not confusing the work you are required to do to maintain professional standards with the optional classroom stuff you do for pleasure. If you lump them together, everything feels urgent and important, leading to overwhelm.
If you often find yourself with an overflowing to-do list at work, this is the area I would suggest looking at first. Tease apart the tasks that are professionally required and prioritize those. Then, look at your remaining tasks, choose the ones that will give you the most pleasure, remove the sense of obligation and urgency around completing them, and be intentional about enjoying them! (If you’re a student in either of the Classroom Bootcamps, you may want to download and review the Time Audit worksheets)
Create Margin: Make Space to Breathe and Reflect
A hard-learned lesson I’d like to share with you is the importance of creating margin in your day.
With all the required (and hobby) tasks we put on our to-do lists, we can find ourselves packing our days very tightly.
This leads to us rushing through our days to get to the next thing and before we know it, the days, weeks, and months have blurred together and we don’t know where the years went.
Once I started forcing myself to leave enough space in the day to live the day, and to re-live the day, I found time slowing down. I could savor the sweet moments and problem-solve the hard ones, and be in my life.
By deliberately creating margin in your day – leaving enough space to experience and reflect on each moment – you can slow down the pace and be more present in your life. This can have a profound impact on your overall well-being and resilience.
Lean in to Ruthless Subtraction and the Art of Letting Go
The first step to creating margin is taking a critical look at our goals and tasks and practicing the art of letting go.
The mantra that works for me when I’m evaluating my priorities is “ruthless subtraction”. I had to put the word “ruthless” in there so I wouldn’t succumb to my hoarding tendencies and try to squeeze things in. No, I had to give myself permission to be ruthless.
You may prefer some softer wording. Gentle Subtraction? When I’m looking for a phrase to help me change a habit, I ask myself, “What does my brain need to hear?” I brainstorm a few things until I hit upon something that resonates. Be willing to let go of the things that are draining your energy and focus.
Don’t Discount the Mental Load of Home and Life Maintenance
As much as some of us would like to, we can’t spend all our time on classroom stuff. Managing life tasks takes significant mental energy and if you have a caregiving role for others at home, even more so. This is another important area to look at when you’re creating margin.
Are there home tasks that you can streamline or even eliminate? Or can you find room in your budget to hire out some of the things that drain you? You may be surprised to discover that the benefit of outsourcing is more than just gaining back a few hours. Handing over responsibility can make a huge difference in your mood and your ability to attend to more important things.
Allow Yourself to Have Fun
Fun and rest and friends… these are the things we most often drop from our schedule when we’re feeling overwhelmed. It can feel so… frivolous… to engage in fun when we feel like we’re drowning. But these are the things that actually most help us build resiliency. So, ruthlessly subtract something else from your schedule so you can build in some fun. Here’s a simple little thing to give you a boost: laughter meditation (this is also a fun group activity in class.)
Say Kind Things to Yourself
I’ll close with this tip. When you’re overwhelmed and experiencing burnout, chances are you’re also giving yourself a hard time about it. Your own mind should be a place of softness and refuge from the harshness outside. So be kind to yourself. Bonus perk: looking kindly at your own “shortcomings” will make being with children a lot easier too.
As you navigate the road ahead, remember to be gentle with yourself. Combating teacher burnout is a deeply personal journey, and what works for one person may not work for another. The key is to be open, curious, and willing to experiment until you find the strategies that resonate most. With self-compassion and a willingness to try new things, you can find a way to bring the spark back into your days.
Seemi holds a Master's degree in education, and an AMS Early Childhood credential. She has twenty years of experience in Montessori as a teacher, school administrator, and school owner. Seemi is the founder of TrilliumMontessori.org.