Professional Thought- Teacher Burnout

 Teacher Burnout 

Teacher and Staff Retreat

One of the challenges for teachers in today’s educational environment is teacher burnout. According to Turner and Garvis (2023), teacher burnout is caused by a prolonged response to intense emotional and interpersonal job stressors. Many teachers are experiencing high work pressure and excessive workloads including communicating with parents, planning for lessons, meetings, corrections, professional developments and extra-curricular activities that leads to impaired health and exhaustion resulting in severe consequences such as reduced job satisfaction, reduced teaching quality and higher intention to leave the profession. In today’s learning environment, teachers wear many hats and take on a number of roles. Teachers don’t only teach but they also contribute in shaping a child’s personality and guide their attitude towards learning. Most of the days I go from Ms. Malika to Nurse Malika to Mediator Malika to sometimes even Comedian Malika. Teaching is a profession which is a combination of many other professions.

 

Setting boundaries and maintaining a healthy work- life balance whilst making some time for rest and relaxation can help improve teachers’ mental health and thus combat teacher burnout. In addition, according to Sonnemann and Joiner (2022), one of the ways to help teachers reduce certain tasks is by finding ways other school staff can take on non-teaching-work. A plan should be implemented to find better ways to use the wider school workforce, including support and specialist staff to help teachers focus on effective lesson planning and teaching. 

With the many roles teachers take on, it is highly effective to have professional dispositions and propositions we can look into. These propositions and dispositions give teachers an outline that center around conduct, commitment to lifelong learning, knowledge of subject areas, managing student learning, collaboration  and advocacy for students and the profession (NBPTS, n.d) (Walden University,2016). These propositions and dispositions are a great way to shape effective teachers who can instill belief in their students. How many students today would believe in the power of belief? Belief in themselves? Belief to create a better world for themselves? Belief to power through challenges?  It is important for teachers to have that belief for themselves too. The belief that they are doing their best, not be too hard on themselves and that they should take care of their mental and physical health.