Ms. Cummings has been teaching for 15 years at Jefferson Elementary school in a mid-sized city in the southeastern part of the United States. Over the years, she has developed her skills, and she is now one of the most talented teachers at Jefferson. She has a particular knack for building supportive relationships with her fifth graders, often the toughest grade of students in the school. She is a valuable asset to the school and to her colleagues; the students and their parents appreciate her work. However, she is becoming discouraged. “I know how to teach. I’ve been doing this for over a decade. I don’t need a scripted lesson plan and a pacing chart. I feel like these new mandates treat me like an amateur who needs them to teach a lesson like I use a cookbook to make a meal.” As I
listened to her, I noticed her face fall into deep sadness. “I love teaching, but I hate this way of teaching,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m not going to make it; I’m burning out.”
Each day over 6 million U.S. teachers like Ms. Cummings manage learning environments, build community, cultivate relationships, manage behavior, and promote academic and social–emotional learning with the most diverse student population in human history. Most choose the profession with the noble intention of making a positive difference in children’s lives, and most are highly skilled professionals with years of experience. Yet, teachers are precious, under-recognized human capital. During this time of rapid social and technological change, we will see how teachers are becoming ever more valuable.
Most of us enter the teaching profession motivated to do our best to support our students’ growth and development, and given the appropriate preparation and opportunity, teachers can do this very well. After all, on average we spend over a thousand hours a year with our students. We get to know who they are, how they learn, and what they need to thrive. Given these thousands of hours per year of classroom experience, teachers have the potential to make the most significant impact in transforming our schools to better prepare our students for the twenty-first century. However, teacher stress and burnout are a growing problem worldwide, and even the most dedicated educators are leaving the profession in droves.
Burnout occurs when a teacher experiences overwhelming stressors and lacks the means to manage these stressors. When the demands of the situation overwhelm the available resources, teachers become emotionally exhausted and give up. The burnout crisis has led to a teacher shortage. New teachers burnout at unprecedented levels: nearly 50% leave within their first five years, and first-year teacher attrition rates have increased by one-third in recent decades (Ingersoll, 2012). Teacher preparation programs are experiencing declining enrollments and graduation rates in almost every U.S. state (Partelow, 2019). Particularly worrisome is that this decline is marked by a demographic shift in new teachers. Fewer people of color and men see teaching as a viable option, resulting in a higher proportion of white women in the teaching workforce during a time when our student demographics are the most diverse ever and research has shown that a diverse workforce of teachers benefits children of color (Miller, 2018). Younger generations have many more lucrative career options of higher social status. This generation is not saddled with the same gender-based career choices that earlier generations of women faced and that attracted them to teaching in the first place.
How do we prevent burnout and rebuild a thriving education workforce? To address this question, we need to consider the current demands and resources and how we, as teachers, can leverage them to improve our schools and working conditions. In this book we will examine how we can take incremental steps to increase personal and systemic resources for teachers while also transforming their work in a way that relieves outmoded and unrealistic demands and improves student outcomes, which are tied to twenty-first-century learner needs.