How New Teachers Can Set Healthy Emotional Boundaries With Students

Shayla Ewing never had a cavity in her life when, in 2020, she began experiencing intense dental pain. An appointment with her dentist revealed that her teeth were intact, but the English and drama teacher had been clenching her jaw so tightly that serious health symptoms were likely to develop unless she took steps to reduce the work-induced stress and anxiety at the root of the problem.

At the time, Ewing was “supporting student after student and teacher after teacher” through the early months of the pandemic. She had trouble sleeping, struggled to “muster the same passion I once had for my classroom work,” and lived with “an always present feeling of anxiety and constant fatigue,” she wrote at the time in an essay for Education Week. 

Today, several years later and after “seeking counseling to get my life back in order,” Ewing is a newly minted principal preparing for the new school year at Pekin Community High School in Illinois. She recognizes her symptoms from 2020 as the “cost of caring” a little too much, the inevitable price of “giving of myself to my students, and empathizing with their lives and their worlds,” she says. “You can’t just give yourself for free, and that’s what was happening to me. I had to figure out what went wrong with me.”

Training for Resilience

New teachers aren’t usually trained to respond to students’ needs without taking on too much emotional burden themselves, says Patricia Jennings, a professor of education at the University of Virginia. “Teachers hear these stories of adversity and trauma from students, and it’s heart wrenching,” says Jennings. “Without the skills and the training to deal with this, that psychological or empathetic distress adds to the existing emotional toil of teaching.”

Empathizing with students is both laudable and unavoidable, but “it has risks when it becomes distressing,” write Jennings and co-author Helen H. Min in a 2023 research review. Cultivating compassion, through a personal practice or a professional learning program such as CARES, where the emphasis is on developing emotional awareness, resilience, and personal boundaries, prepares teachers to “address students’ needs and protects teachers from the negative effects of empathy-based stress,” the researchers conclude. 

When we asked veteran teachers for advice to help new teachers set healthy emotional boundaries with students—strategies that allow novice educators to be kind and proactive, but prevent them from becoming overly invested in students’ burdens—we heard from hundreds of teachers on our social channels. Here are the best teacher-tested tips they shared with us.

Find Your Support Team

As a new teacher, get to know the support resources available to students in your building as well as how to connect kids to these people and services. “Often, people who are new to a caring profession like teaching become isolated. You put on yourself the idea that this kid needs you and only you can provide them the support they need,” says Ewing. “That’s a dangerous place to be. You’re not meant to carry that load, and you’re not trained to do it.” 

As issues with students come up, let other adults in the building know, suggests high school music teacher John Stevenson. “Make fast friends with the rest of your support team—administrators, counselors, team leaders—and keep them in the loop from the first time a student confides in you about an issue,” Stevenson writes on Facebook. “Document everything and send your notes to someone else on your team as soon as possible.” 

Resist the urge to try fixing everything yourself, says veteran educator Laura Bradley. “The reality is that it does take a village,” Bradley notes. “I guess my boundary is to wrap a circle of my support team around me so that I am not taking it all on by myself.”

Set Up Student Care Routines Early

Long before students lose their cool and need a reset, it’s helpful to make them aware of the care options, resources,  and processes already in place. When educator Chelsea Ayn Nelson notices a student in her classroom becoming dysregulated, she’ll have a “quick, empathetic talk” with the child and ask, “Do you know what you need now?” 

Options might include going to the quiet corner, a quick “walk for water,” a chat with a counselor, a cold towel on the head or neck, or even a housekeeping task like starting to “organize manipulatives,” Nelson says. “Do any of these sound good?,” she’ll ask before letting the student know that she needs to return to teaching, drawing a kind but clear boundary. “I’ve got to handle the class now, but I’ll check in. Let me know if something changes or gets worse. Then I teach.” 

Don’t “Give Your All”

“It’s hard to not be ‘all in’ with what a student is feeling or experiencing, or to not feel some responsibility for their happiness,” Ewing says. “It’s a vulnerable place, and it’s really hard to step out of that.” But showing up for a student “doesn’t mean you have to lose yourself in the process, or sacrifice your own wellbeing,” says Cathleen B. “If you’re drained and overwhelmed, you're not helping yourself or your students.”

Sometimes drawing a protective barrier can be a small action: “I close my door at lunch to recharge,” Colin Caldwell writes. “And from time to time, I need a mental health day off from work. It’s not a perfect system, and even for me, a teacher who generally enjoys helping students, it can get overwhelming. You are a teacher, not a social worker.” 

At Ewing’s school, teachers set up “walk buddies,” colleagues who head outdoors together during planning periods for a quick 10-minute reset walk—allowing teachers to move their bodies and collect themselves for a few moments in the school day. 

Meanwhile, Vanessa M. looks at the misses in her classroom—moments when she might have handled situations with her students differently—and accepts them as “feedback,” then checks in with herself to see if “I’m calibrating correctly, if I’m in the right headspace to meet my students’ needs.” If things seem headed in the wrong direction, she might suggest a short break—for students and herself, “a moment to color or read for five minutes.” 

Be an Anthropologist 

When students misbehave, try to act “like an anthropologist,” says sixth grade teacher Kaari Berg Rodriguez. Pause and adopt an exploratory, curious mindset instead of immediately reacting—admittedly tough in the heat of the moment—so you can consider students’ behavior and “what skills they are missing” before determining next steps, says Berg Rodriguez. 

Most importantly, “do not take it personally,” says early-grade teacher Karen Hertlein, drawing a line in the sand when confronting circumstances you might otherwise take to heart. “Remember that the behavior of your students is not your fault.” 

Of course, clarity around classroom rules and expectations is the starting point for a well-run classroom, says Jennings, the University of Virginia professor, and can curb meltdowns before they happen. “There’s a lot of research showing that when children are given really clear expectations, and are shown what these look like, and given an opportunity to practice, then they learn how to do it themselves,” Jennings says. “The problem is that there’s often ambiguity and a lack of consistency.” 

Find Your Mentors

Mentors are sometimes assigned to new teachers through a formal district-level program, but Ewing notes that many schools don’t have these programs, so finding informal mentors can be an important step for new teachers trying to develop a healthy approach to teaching. “Maybe there’s someone in your building who you’ve connected with, or maybe it’s someone who teaches the same subject as you,” Ewing suggests. 

When challenging situations arise with  students, having a mentor as a sounding board outside of the classroom can be a valuable resource, offering expert feedback in situations new teachers may not feel prepared to tackle on their own. “They’re going to understand that you’re still learning the skill of how to support students, and also still learning how to support yourself at the same time,” Ewing says.

Reframe Relationships

Though most new teachers know that relationships are an important part of learning and engagement, clear guidance about what appropriate connections with students look like is often missing from their training. “Relationships are an education buzzword, right?” says Ewing. “People talk a lot about forming relationships as if it’s this solution: ‘Oh, you have classroom management problems? Well, do you know your kids? Did you form relationships with them?’” 

Clarifying the line between appropriate connection and the murky zone that lies beyond is tricky—especially at the beginning of a teaching career. For students, a teacher’s warm, caring attention to their struggles can seem like a reprieve from difficulties at home or in school. But you are not “friends,” cautions Jennings, and sometimes it’s enough to “know them, and a little bit about their lives and families.” Though a new teacher’s instinct may be to connect deeply with students, Jennings says that even a baseline connection can go a long way in the classroom. ”One of the most powerful motivators for human beings generally is to be seen for who you are, and to be valued as an individual,” Jennings says.

For teachers, Ewing suggests leading with the idea that “I am an instructional leader in my room. I’m here for the student to learn the content—and I want to know their personalities, their likes,” she says. “But when it comes to telling me about their trauma, harmful things that are currently happening to them, or happened in the past, then I need to partner with someone else to help me carry that. That’s the line I draw.” When students share things beyond the realm of what Ewing can support, she might say: “Oh my gosh, that’s so important. Thank you for sharing that with me, that’s very courageous. Let’s get some help together.”