For too many educators, the idea of a morally centered school may seem like a fantasy--or be so novel a concept that it is hard to grasp. In this article, the authors describe such schools, which truly serve students' best interests by following a set of shared professional values, and how educators and their unions can help create them. The four…

The COVID-19 pandemic sounded alarms about the precarity of the teacher workforce as teachers reported high levels of burnout, stress, job dissatisfaction, and intent to leave teaching. Research using statewide administrative data has shown teacher turnover climbed in 2021 and 2022 in several states, raising concerns that the worst could be yet to…

Novice teachers, specifically those in their first five years, are leaving the teaching profession at an escalating rate. Demands that go beyond teaching and assessing curriculum in the classroom are piling up and becoming unattainable. Not only are teachers experiencing heavy workloads that require them to combine work with their personal lives,…

The COVID-19 infection drastically altered the 2019-2020 school year, shortening and preventing its completion. As a result, we do not know if the school will return as normal in the fall or not. This uncertainty causes stress for parents, students, and teachers. We need to recognize these stresses and develop a strategy to deal with them.

There is a critical need to address educator health and well-being, yet only an average of 31% of schools offer workplace health and wellness promotion programs. As part of the Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace -- a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Center of Excellence for Total Worker Health®…

Teachers are attuned to the social-emotional well-being of our students and trained to monitor for signs such as trauma, anxiety, bullying, or micro-aggressions. Yet we are still just learning how to discuss a huge, lurking threat to our work: our own mental health. In urban settings like mine, many schools churn through a quarter or more of their…

Using the techniques presented here, teachers can apply findings from neuroscience research to the classroom to support social-emotional learning.

The fact that overloaded plates and stress are common in mid-career is well known. Likewise, we know that the unequal distribution of faculty workload is one of the most important, yet least talked about, inequities that shape the experiences of faculty members within colleges and universities. In particular, women and racially minoritized…

Today's teachers experience high levels of stress and fatigue that can negatively affect their well-being. Teacher burnout is not a new educational phenomenon, but it has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we discuss the prevalence of teacher stress and its impact on teacher well-being and student achievement. We call for…

Most educators encounter any number of stresses during a typical day in the classroom. They may face pressure from administrators to meet unrealistic expectations, experience frustration when students act out or shut down, or feel stretched beyond limit by extensive meetings and other noninstructional demands on their time. These daily stresses…

In this article, the author discusses what acclaimed teacher educator Magdalene Lampert called a "practical dilemma" (1985, p. 181) about managing the classroom. As a Montessori teacher, the author taught with the belief that children need to be independent and empowered. The idea of commanding them to sit, or telling them what to do and…

Teaching in K-12 schools is stressful, as educators know and research documents. Although all teachers experience stress, minoritized teachers of color often experience unique stressors. Common examples include being asked to translate for parents who do not speak English or function as the disciplinarian for students experiencing behavioral…

In this article, we open with a discussion of stress and its potential impact on the teaching profession. We then follow with an empirical rationale for and steps in the implementation of potentially promising mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) interventions for teachers, particularly teachers of students with emotional and behavioral…

Research on educational activities generally focuses on the importance of positive emotions in the interaction between teachers and children. This article will focus on the challenging emotions that can arise when kindergarten staff interact with the children. The empirical material has been collected from a qualitative study of conflicts between…

Special education teachers have one of the most challenging and stressful jobs in public education, which often leads to increased burnout. High levels of burnout have, in turn, been related to lower levels of fidelity of implementation in delivery of evidence-based behavior interventions. The purpose of this position paper is to (a) propose…