Tag: teacher burnout

When People Say Teachers Knew What They Signed Up For

You say that when I became a teacher, I knew what I was “signing up for.”

I’m here to tell you that I didn’t. I don’t think most of us did.

When I accepted the job and saw that wonderful, yet modest, pay scale, I didn’t know I didn’t know it existed mostly on paper.  I didn’t know that for the first five years I taught, all pay increases would be frozen. I didn’t know we would receive only a one- or two-percent cost-of-living increase while, at the same time, the cost of our “free” healthcare quietly increased.

I didn’t realize that for five straight years, my actual take-home pay would decrease each year, even with outstanding evaluations and high test scores. By year five, I was earning several thousand dollars less than I had in my first year in the exact same position. I certainly didn’t realize I would never recover the raises that were promised but never delivered.

I didn’t realize the pay scale would be “revised” later in my career, revised in ways that paid new teachers more while experienced teachers earned less.

I didn’t realize the system would change so that no matter how many years I had taught, I would have to be renewed every single year, and could lose my job without explanation, no matter how long I had taught. I certainly didn’t sign up to spend every spring wondering whether I would still have a job the next fall.

I thought I was hired to teach during contracted hours, with time built into each day to plan lessons, prepare materials, make copies, grade papers, and return calls and emails. I didn’t realize that much of that existed only on paper. I didn’t realize that most of it would spill into evenings and weekends, carving out large pieces of my personal life.

Instead of planning and grading during the school day, we sat through mandatory meetings, answered administrative emails, graphed data, and completed endless administrative forms and sumamries.

I didn’t sign up for a job that required so much unpaid labor after hours that I couldn’t hold the second job I needed just to make ends meet.

I didn’t realize I would be so physically and emotionally drained that I would have little energy left for the people and things I loved.

I came prepared to teach content. I came prepared to understand pedagogy and child development. I came prepared to nurture, engage, and inspire.

I didn’t sign up to produce mini theatrical performances for every lesson, productions that often took longer to plan than to teach. I didn’t know I would be expected to compete with Emmy-winning actors, multimedia designers, and video game developers just to hold my students’ attention.

I also didn’t know how many things would be completely outside my control.

I didn’t know I wouldn’t be allowed to send an unruly student to the office.

I didn’t know that when a student spit on another student, or defiantly refused to stop, that I would be blamed for that child’s actions.  Somehow, it became my failure as a teacher.

I didn’t know that when a student failed to complete work, I would be required to call, email, text, write notes home, and even send letters; and when none of those were acknowledged, I would still be held responsible for the lack of response.

I didn’t know that if a parent failed to attend conferences, I would have to document every attempt at communication as proof that I had done my job, because the default assumption was that I hadn’t.

I didn’t know that a parent could appear two days before the end of the school year claiming they had never been contacted, demand make-up work and extra credit, and that I would be required to not only to provide it, but then grade that last-minute, incomplete work as though it were a heroic effort deserving praise and a passing grade.

I didn’t know that I would have no say in the curriculum or how it must be delivered.

I didn’t know that schools could advertise small class sizes that didn’t match reality. Class size was calculated by dividing the total number of teachers, including specialists who didn’t have their own classrooms, by the total number of students.

On paper, our second-grade classes had 18 students. In reality, there were 24 children in each room.

A high school math class might be listed as having 28 students — but if you walked in, you might count 42 desks filled.

I didn’t know I would have no meaningful input in how many students with significant behavioral challenges were placed in my classroom, or that I might receive no warning at all, even when their behaviors were already well known by the people making those decisions.

I didn’t know that violent outbursts could become normalized. I didn’t know that a student who overturned tables or threw chairs might return to my room the same day, sometimes with a bag of chips and a Capri Sun in hand.

I didn’t know I would have no real control over whether students with disabilities actually received the services and accommodations they were promised, and that I would not be permitted to speak openly about those gaps, even when parents asked directly.

I didn’t know I would be held accountable for test scores tied to curriculum I didn’t choose, pacing guides I couldn’t adjust, and students who arrived multiple grade levels behind.

I didn’t know I wouldn’t be allowed to slow down for struggling students even when I knew they needed it.

I didn’t know that students who were years behind would be moved forward regardless, and that when they became frustrated, disengaged, or disruptive, I would be the one who was blamed.

Teachers have very little authority over the systems that shape their classrooms, and yet their work is micromanaged at every turn.

We’re told to “keep control of the classroom,” while the very tools that used to help us do that have slowly and systematically been taken away.

We are told to hold students accountable while our hands are tied.

We’re judged by test scores, even when the tests don’t line up with the curriculum we’re mandated to teach.

No, I didn’t know all of this when I “signed up.”

And neither did most of us.

So, the next time you’re tempted to say that teachers shouldn’t complain because they “knew what they signed up for,” understand this: we didn’t sign up for most of what the job has become.

Why More Money Will Not Fix Teaching – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

What Teachers Wish They Could Tell You – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

The Quiet Heart of Teacher Burnout – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Teaching Without Trust: How Scripted Lessons Undermine Learning – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Teaching vs. Other Professions

Why Teachers Are Denied Professional Respect

A professional teacher standing in front of a high school class, teaching.

Professional Trust in Practice

I have never gone to a doctor’s appointment and watched them be treated the way teachers are treated. If a patient is rude or disruptive, the doctor is not told to ‘build a relationship.’ They are not blamed for the behavior. They are not asked what they could have done differently. No one evaluates their tone, facial expressions, or whether they smiled warmly enough while enforcing boundaries. No one questions whether the doctor had clear rules and expectations posted on the wall of the exam room. And no one would expect that. Doctors are trusted professionals. Their expertise is assumed. Their time is protected. Their authority is respected.

When Professional Boundaries Are Assumed

The contrast with teaching is striking. No one asks a doctor to supply their own alcohol swabs, gloves, cotton balls, or medical equipment because it is “not in the budget.” These materials are recognized as essential for providing safe and effective care. Likewise, no one expects a doctor to keep snacks on hand in case a patient’s behavior is driven by hunger, or to personally fund and maintain a calm, dedicated space to manage an enraged or disruptive patient.

Teachers, meanwhile, routinely purchase basic necessities out of pocket: paper, pencils, books, classroom materials, even food for students. This expectation has become so normalized that refusing to do so is often framed as a lack of compassion rather than a reasonable professional boundary.

Expectations Around Time and Availability

No one insists that a doctor meet with patients in the evening, long after the practice has closed, because some people are ‘too busy’ to come during business hours. Missed appointments carry consequences, and endless reschedules would never be permitted. Responsibility is clear.

Teachers are expected to be endlessly available before school, after school, in the evenings, and on weekends, often without compensation. When parents do not attend conferences, return emails, or follow through at home, the burden still falls on the teacher. Somehow, it becomes their failure to reach out enough. Many teachers are required to tutor or reteach students who failed to put in any effort during class time, after school, before school, or during the teacher’s lunch time. These duties are typically added on to the teacher’s workload, and are often not optional.

Professional Space and Interruptions

No one forces their way into a doctor’s exam room while another patient is being seen to ask one quick question, demand explanations about unrelated issues, or challenge decisions in real time. That behavior would result in immediate removal from the office. Medical offices are set up to protect doctors from distractions or intrusions on their time.

Yet teachers experience constant interruptions. Parents appear unannounced. Students arrive late and disrupt instruction. Teachers are summoned during class for early dismissals or office requests. Administrators pull teachers mid-lesson to address behavior issues or parent concerns. What would be considered inappropriate in other professions is treated as normal in the classroom.

Responsibility Versus Blame

If a patient ignores a doctor’s instructions, fails to take medication, disregards dietary restrictions, or skips follow-up care, the doctor is not held accountable for the outcome. Responsibility rests where it belongs.

But when parents fail to enforce routines, expectations, or consequences at home, teachers are often told they should have done more. Accountability shifts downward, regardless of how little control the teacher actually has.

Boundaries and Consequences

And if a patient is consistently rude, disruptive, or abusive, they are dismissed from the practice. They have to find other options. Doctors are not required to continue serving them indefinitely. Boundaries exist, and they are enforced. Teachers never have that option.

Disruptive behavior is reframed as a classroom management issue. Teachers are told to build better relationships, try new strategies, and reflect more deeply, while remaining legally and professionally responsible for students they cannot remove, regardless of conduct.

The Training Stage Versus Professional Practice

To be clear, every profession has a training phase where close oversight is appropriate. Doctors are closely observed, monitored, and instructed while they are learning. Their decisions are reviewed. Their work is supervised. Mistakes are corrected in real time.

That is exactly how student teaching works. Student teachers are observed, coached, and mentored by experienced supervising teachers. They practice under guidance. They are still learning the profession.

Then something important happens. Doctors earn their license. At that point, constant observation ends. Micromanagement stops. They are trusted to do the job they were educated and trained to do. Their expertise is no longer perpetually questioned.

That transition never seems to happen in teaching. Even after teachers earn full licensure, after years of education, certification exams, student teaching, mentoring, and classroom experience, the scrutiny does not ease. Observations continue. Checklists remain. Micromanagement persists. Teachers are evaluated as if they are perpetually in training.

They are told how to phrase objectives, how to arrange desks, how to greet students, how to speak, how to stand, how to smile, and what to post on their walls. Their professionalism is constantly audited, as though competence must be re-proven year after year, and frankly, sometimes, week after week.

Why Teaching Is Treated Differently

In most professions, trust is the reward for experience and competency. In teaching, that is rarely the case. Why does this happen?

Part of it is perception. Schools are public-facing institutions under constant political and parental scrutiny. Administrators are often required to manage how decisions look to others as much as how effectively teaching and learning actually happen. As a result, administrators are frequently focused on avoiding complaints and controversy as much as supporting effective instruction.

Part of it is misplaced responsibility. When outcomes are poor, accountability is often directed at individual teachers rather than at broader factors such as policy decisions, funding limitations, class size, or systemic constraints that shape what happens in classrooms.

And part of it is cultural. Teaching is still widely viewed not simply as a profession, but as a calling. Because of that, teachers are often expected to give more of themselves, their time, and their resources out of personal devotion, rather than being supported through trust, clear boundaries, and professional respect afforded to other professions.

This pattern is not unique to teaching. Other professions long described as ‘being a calling,’ such as nursing, social work, clergy, and early childhood care, have faced similar expectations of self-sacrifice and limitless availability. In many of those fields, the consequences have been visible: burnout, workforce shortages, and pressure to lower standards in order to fill roles and maintain services.

Teaching remains one of the few professions where the language of it ‘being a calling’ is still routinely used to justify eroded boundaries, inadequate support, and the gradual weakening of professional standards, ultimately harming the profession as a whole.

The result is a profession where expertise never earns autonomy, boundaries are viewed as inconveniences, and disrespect is reframed as a personal failure rather than a behavioral one.

When Working With Children Becomes the Excuse

A common defense of how teachers are treated is that children are different; that managing behavior, emotions, and compliance makes teaching uniquely difficult and therefore uniquely subject to scrutiny. Teaching is often defended as uniquely different because it serves children. But that assumption does not hold up when we look at how other child-serving professions are actually treated.

Pediatric Dentistry and Professional Authority

Consider a pediatric dentist. Pediatric dentists routinely work with children who are scared, anxious, resistant, or openly uncooperative. They deal with crying, refusal, fear-driven behavior, and strong parental emotions in close quarters, often with safety risks far higher than those in a classroom.

Yet when a child refuses to open their mouth, the dentist is not blamed. The dentist is not told to try harder to build a relationship. They are not evaluated on whether their tone was warm enough. They are not asked to reflect on what they could have done differently.

If a child develops cavities because brushing does not happen consistently, the dentist is not held responsible. No one suggests the dentist needs additional training on how to teach daily hygiene habits. Responsibility is understood to lie with the routines outside the dental office. If a child is old enough, that responsibility rests with the child. If the child is too young to manage the task independently, it rests with the adults responsible for supervising and supporting it.

If a child becomes disruptive or unsafe, the appointment stops. Expectations are clear. Parents prepare the child, follow instructions at home, and respect professional boundaries. The dentist’s authority is not up for debate. Their expertise is trusted. Their time is protected.

The Double Standard Inside the Same Building

You can also consider a speech-language pathologist. Speech-language pathologists work directly with children, often those with learning differences, communication challenges, or behavioral difficulties. They build rapport, use evidence-based strategies, and track progress carefully.

But they are not endlessly accessible. Sessions have defined start and end times. Services are scheduled, not on demand outside of the pathologist’s working hours. When families fail to follow through, that noncompliance is documented. In some cases, services are reduced or discontinued.

Most importantly, speech-language pathologists are not blamed when progress stalls due to lack of support outside their sessions. Their professional judgment is respected.

What makes this comparison especially revealing is that many speech-language pathologists work in the very same buildings as teachers. Yet teachers are rarely afforded the same professional boundaries or autonomy.

Teachers are expected to manage every variable at once. They are held responsible not only for instruction, but also for behavior, emotional regulation, family follow-through, and outcomes well beyond their control. Disrespect is reframed as a classroom management failure. Lack of progress becomes a personal shortcoming.

Unlike dentists or speech-language pathologists, teachers are rarely allowed to pause, redirect, or refuse service when conditions become unreasonable. The issue is not that children are sometimes difficult. The issue is that teaching is one of the only child-serving professions where difficulty is used as justification for denying professional trust.

When Professional Trust Is Withheld

Doctors, dentists, speech-language pathologists, and other highly trained professionals are observed closely while they learn. Once licensed, they are trusted to make decisions within their expertise. Their professional judgment sets the boundaries of their work, and accountability is shared appropriately among all parties involved. But for some reason, teaching continues to be the exception.

Teachers are licensed, experienced, and highly trained, yet are subjected to ongoing scrutiny that would be unthinkable in other professions. Teachers are held responsible for outcomes shaped by factors far beyond their control, while their professional judgment is subject to constant interruption, evaluation, and revision by others. Their decisions are routinely questioned, their boundaries overridden, and their responsibilities expanded far beyond a reasonable scope.

If we want better outcomes for students, the answer is not more micromanagement of teachers. It is recognizing that professional trust is not optional. It is essential.

If you are interested in the issues that are important in reviving our education system, you might want to consider Why More Money Will Not Fix Teaching – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life.

You also might want to read The Quiet Heart of Teacher Burnout – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life, which discusses how teachers are often complicit in some aspects of teacher burnout, simply by being too ‘agreeable.’

You might also enjoy a discussion on how ‘scripted instruction’ is minimizing students’ learning experiences and reducing the quality of education they receive. To learn more, go to Teaching Without Trust: How Scripted Lessons Undermine Learning – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life.

Why More Money Will Not Fix Teaching

Image of an exhausted, overwhelmed teacher sitting in a classroom after hours, with stacks of papers and grading that needs her attention, but she's just too tired. The text says, "Teachers are not leaving because they hate teaching. They are leaving because the day-to-day reality has become unsustainable."

The call to “just pay teachers more” is often offered as a simple solution to a complex problem. Teachers do deserve higher pay. That is not in question. What is missing from this conversation is an honest look at the daily conditions that are driving educators out of the profession. Salary alone does not address those realities.

Teacher burnout is not simply about pay or workload. It is about being wired to give in a system that is wired to take. Teachers are not burning out because they lack commitment. They are burning out because they care deeply in a culture that treats constant overextension as the baseline expectation.

A typical teaching day requires standing and moving for hours at a time, often six or more, while maintaining constant attention and control. Many teachers have little or no uninterrupted planning time built into their day. Even when preparation periods exist on paper, they are frequently consumed by meetings, coverage duties, or administrative tasks. Teaching is not a job that allows for mental rest during the workday. There is no pause button.

At any given moment, a teacher is managing instruction, behavior, time, and safety simultaneously. An announcement interrupts the lesson. A student packs up loudly for an early dismissal and asks what the homework is. Teaching stops to answer the question. A special education teacher enters to work with a small group of students and begins explaining directions in a voice loud enough to pull attention away from the main lesson. The classroom teacher pauses again when asked to repeat what was taught during that interruption. Nearby students lose focus and begin distracting or taunting one another. The teacher intervenes, redirects, and attempts to resume instruction, knowing that momentum has already been lost. These are not daily occurrences, but hourly occurrences that leave the teacher stressed and frustrated, but are also things over which the teacher has no control.

This level of constant stimulation is relentless. It requires sustained concentration, emotional regulation, and split-second decision-making for hours at a time. There is no quiet. There is no single task. There is no opportunity to focus on one thing from start to finish. By the end of the day, mental exhaustion is not a side effect of teaching; it is a predictable outcome.

Layered onto this cognitive load is the steady erosion of authority. Gone are the days when a teacher could send a disruptive student to the office and continue teaching. In many schools, that option no longer exists. Teachers are required to call the main office, explain the situation, and wait while their instruction is disrupted for the entire class. Even when a student is removed for behavior that is destructive or unsafe, the removal is often brief. The student may return shortly afterward, sometimes with a snack, instructed to offer an apology that everyone understands is insincere, and placed right back into the same environment where the behavior began. Frequently, the behavior resumes or escalates because students come to realize there are no real consequences.

When teachers enforce behavior policies that administrators themselves have established, those policies often remain in place only until a vocal parent objects. Once a persistent or demanding parent becomes involved, administrators may quietly reverse direction. Teachers are then instructed to handle the situation differently in the future, without any public clarification or visible support. The result is that the teacher appears unreasonable or incompetent, with diminished authority and no clear way to manage future concerns with that family. When parents openly share that they succeeded in having a teacher’s decision overturned, it further undermines the teacher’s credibility with other families as well.  It also signals to others that policies are negotiable and that teacher authority can be bypassed.

At the same time, teachers are experiencing a similar loss of authority over instruction. Educators study child development, pedagogy, assessment, and learning theory. They understand how instruction must be adapted to meet students where they are. Yet in practice, teachers are frequently told to ignore that expertise.

Many are required to teach using methods they know are not developmentally appropriate. They raise concerns and explain why certain approaches will not work. Those concerns are dismissed in favor of programs marketed as research-based or proven, even when those claims rely on narrow evidence or have been challenged by broader research. Once districts or administrators commit to a program, questioning it becomes unacceptable. Teachers are expected to implement it enthusiastically, even when early results confirm exactly what they warned would happen.

When the approach fails, responsibility rarely falls on the program itself. Teachers are told they did not implement it correctly, that they need more training, or that they must reflect on what they could have done differently. The outcome they predicted becomes their burden to fix.

This creates a constant state of upheaval. Instructional methods shift regularly, often driven by trends, vendors, or leadership changes rather than classroom reality. Teachers are expected to adapt instantly, without complaint, and without acknowledgment of their professional judgment. Highly educated professionals are hired for their expertise and then repeatedly instructed to work against it.

No amount of money compensates for this combination of physical fatigue, cognitive overload, and professional disrespect. Higher pay does not reduce sensory overload. It does not eliminate constant interruptions. It does not restore authority that has been systematically undermined. It does not remove the strain of being held accountable for outcomes while being denied meaningful control over the conditions that produce them.

Teachers are not leaving because they hate teaching. They are leaving because the day-to-day reality has become unsustainable. Responsibility continues to increase while trust, autonomy, and support continue to shrink.

Paying teachers more matters, but it cannot be the end of the conversation. Real change requires restoring authority in classrooms, respecting professional judgment, and creating conditions that allow teachers to do the work they were trained to do. Until those changes occur, higher salaries may slow the exodus, but they will not stop it.

Teaching has problems that money alone will not fix. And yet, instead of addressing those problems by improving working conditions, restoring authority, providing meaningful support, or even increasing pay, many districts have chosen a different solution entirely. They are lowering the bar to enter the profession.

Across the country, requirements for teachers and substitutes are being reduced in response to staffing shortages. Temporary and emergency licenses are increasingly common. Many individuals with no formal training in education are allowed to lead classrooms while being told they can learn how to teach later. In some cases, they are given a year or two to take a handful of education courses while continuing to teach full-time. Subject mastery is often assessed through a multiple-choice exam on material they are already responsible for teaching, regardless of whether they have ever studied it in depth themselves.

The standards for substitute teachers have dropped even further. In many districts, the only requirements are that a person be at least twenty-one years old, hold a high school diploma, and have no felony convictions. That is the entire bar. As a result, substitutes are routinely placed in classrooms teaching advanced subjects they have never taken, let alone mastered. This is not a criticism of those individuals, many of whom are doing their best in impossible situations. It is a critique of a system that treats teaching as something anyone can step into without preparation.

The message this sends to trained, experienced educators is devastating. Teachers are told they are professionals, yet their expertise is ignored. They are held to high standards of accountability, while untrained replacements are brought in under dramatically lower expectations. The work remains complex, demanding, and high-stakes, but the profession itself is increasingly treated as interchangeable labor.

This approach does not fix burnout. It accelerates it. When districts respond to teacher attrition by devaluing the profession rather than improving it, they confirm what many educators already feel. The problem is not a lack of qualified people willing and able to teach. The problem is a system that refuses to make teaching a sustainable profession for those who are qualified, educated, and committed to doing it well.

Author’s Note: Yes, teachers deserve better pay. That matters. This post is about the reality that salary alone does not address the loss of authority, constant disruption, and lack of professional trust that many teachers experience daily.

Just to be clear, this isn’t about blaming individual teachers, students, or parents. It isn’t about blaming administrators. It’s about the day-to-day conditions that make teaching increasingly unsustainable. Many educators love the work itself. It’s the systems around the work that are breaking people down.

And if you have never taught, consider this an invitation to listen. These are not hypotheticals or worst-case scenarios. They are everyday realities in many classrooms.

If you find yourself thinking about “the way things were” when you were young, I encourage you to read The Good Old Days — But for Whom?  When Schools Changed: The Forgotten Truth About Inclusion and Exclusion fore special education % – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life . It offers important context for why today’s classrooms look so different.

We cannot go back to “the way things were” any more than we can abandon cars and return to horse-drawn transportation, or stop buying clothing and go back to purchasing bolts of fabric, needles, and thread, or even weaving our own cloth. The idea may sound appealing at first, until you remember what it actually required, who was left out, and what progress would be undone in the process.

The Quiet Heart of Teacher Burnout

The Hidden Cost of Being Too Agreeable

Image of an exhausted, overwhelmed teacher who is feeling burned out.

As a whole, teachers tend to be too agreeable by nature. It is often their strongest asset, but also their greatest weakness. Most teachers I’ve known, myself included, rank high in what psychologists call agreeableness. Caring, empathy, cooperation, and a strong sense of responsibility are hallmarks of this trait. These are the same qualities that make teachers exceptional at what they do. They build trust with students, bring warmth into their classrooms, and create learning environments where children feel seen and valued.

But those same virtues can easily turn into traps. Agreeable, empathetic people often struggle to set boundaries. We have a hard time saying no, especially when someone else needs help. I can’t count how many times I stayed late to organize materials, took home extra work, or volunteered for one more committee because no one else raised a hand. I told myself I was being a team player, but really, I was depleting my own reserves.

At first, that kind of constant giving looks like dedication. Administrators praise it. Colleagues admire it. Parents appreciate it. Students benefit from it. But over time, that steady stream of self-sacrifice turns into exhaustion. The body and spirit start to protest. For teachers, burnout is rarely just about the number of papers to grade or lessons to plan. It’s about being wired to ‘give’ in a system that is wired to ‘take’.

Agreeable, empathetic teachers have a tendency to overextend. Administrators, intentionally or not, have a tendency to lean on those same teachers until “going above and beyond” becomes the new normal. Once that happens, being overburdened stops being a choice and becomes an expectation. That’s the quiet heart of teacher burnout.

The workload alone is monumental. The sheer number of meetings, lesson plans, and individualized accommodations can feel endless. There’s the preparation of engaging lessons, the paperwork that must be completed while simultaneously managing a room of twenty-five children, and the expectation to maintain discipline in a system that often limits a teacher’s authority to do so. And yet, for the teacher who feels responsible for everyone and everything, even this heavy load somehow expands. Extra tasks get piled on because agreeable people rarely push back. Eventually, the weight becomes unsustainable.

When the expectation to do the impossible collides with a teacher’s inner drive to give their best, the result is painful. Teachers begin to burn out, not because they stop caring, but because they care too much for too long without protection. They start to pull back, telling themselves they will do less, care less, or only meet the bare minimum. The tragedy is that most of them are not built that way. Their hearts are wired to give, even when giving has begun to cost too much. Even when they succeed at ‘giving less,’ it feels like a silent failure. 

Teachers don’t need to care less. They don’t need to become hardened or indifferent. What they need is protection from being overused. Schools must begin to value boundaries as much as compassion, and leaders must understand that protecting a teacher’s energy is not indulgence; it is preservation.

At the end of the day, the solution is not to make teachers tougher, but to make teaching more humane. We cannot keep expecting teachers to give until they have nothing left, and then make that the basic expectation. The system itself must change.

Education will thrive when compassion is met with respect, when effort is balanced with support, and when giving until you have nothing left to give stops being the expectation!  The best teachers are not those who give until there is nothing left, but those who are given the space, time, and understanding to keep their light burning. Protecting that light is how we protect the very soul of education itself.  We can’t keep calling exhaustion “dedication.” It’s time to protect the people who make education possible.

Here are some other teaching articles you might enjoy.

When Passion Isn’t Enough: The Unraveling of Teaching – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Teaching Without Trust: How Scripted Lessons Undermine Learning – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

If you’ve decided that it is time to get out of teaching, you might want to check out my book, Classroom to Corporate on Amazon.

Classroom to Corporate: How to Translate Your Teaching Experience into a Powerful Corporate Resume: Mariet, Jan: 9798280322257: Amazon.com: Books

Let’s start a conversation about how to reduce teacher burnout. What are your thoughts on the subject? Leave a response in the comments section.