Teacher Burnout: What Are the Warning Signs?

Research that helps us pinpoint the causes of burnout gives us guidance for how to avoid and combat it. In his landmark book, Beyond Burnout (Routledge), Cary Cherniss used intensive case study research to identify factors most likely to lead to teacher burnout:

Reconnect with Purpose

Another factor that I have found important is to help teachers reconnect with the reasons why they went into education and identify, preserve, and expand those parts of their work day that are consonant with those reasons. Unless educators are clear about their purposes, they are more likely to fall into using techniques that they don't believe in because there does not seem to be any alternative. The combination of purpose and technique helps teachers to avoid and return from burnout.

Look Out for the Warning Signs

But how do you know for sure if you are slipping into it, or already there? Christina Maslach has done some very helpful research; it's been captured in a "popularist" way where you can take a self-test to see, roughly, where you might stand. Knowing there is a problem is often the first step in addressing some of the issues noted earlier (and toward beginning to find solutions).

Here are some of the most important indicators of burnout. Ask yourself whether you experience them Not at all, Rarely, Sometimes, Often, or Very often:

The self-test and these questions may be intuitively useful, but this has not been validated through controlled studies and therefore should not be used as a formal diagnostic technique. Please, therefore, interpret the results with common sense. The Maslach Burnout Inventory is a tool that may be used for a more validated assessment.

The Culture and Climate of the School Matter

Teacher burnout is most often an organizational problem and it is insidious because it can remove dedicated teachers from the field of education, sometimes even before they physically leave their jobs. Its solution is found most often in creating a positive, supportive school culture and climate, where teachers are treated as professionals and given the opportunity to collaborate, problem solve, and get needed, reasonable supports in timely ways.

It is not a matter of teachers becoming superhuman and overcoming all horrible conditions and indignities trying to succeed in doing what is virtually impossible, especially in a sustained way. The students need their teachers to stay engaged and fight for them. When the conditions of teaching are bad, the conditions of learning tend to be worse, and children suffer in lasting ways. That's why the collateral damage of burned-out teachers is burned-up children.