Combating teacher burnout: Streamlined systems, technology and the gift of time

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Teaching is one of the most rewarding professions, but it’s no secret that it’s also one of the most challenging. Educators manage classroom behavior, create lesson plans, differentiate instruction, provide emotional support to students, give formative feedback, grade assessments, communicate with parents, cover other teachers’ classes, monitor hallways, collaborate with colleagues and attend professional meetings. They often rush to eat their lunch and rarely have breaks throughout the day. It’s no wonder that teacher burnout exists. 

Dr. Jill Handley, an assistant superintendent and former school principal, says that having highly effective teachers in place relates directly to student achievement. “It’s important to attract [highly effective teachers], but also to retain them.”

However, burnout isn’t just on educators to deal with on their own. School administrators play a critical role in creating an environment that supports educators and reduces unnecessary stress.

During the webinar “What Can I Take Off Your Plate? Combating Teacher Burnout,” Dr. Handley and veteran teacher and counselor Dr. Laura Donnelly explored how school administrators can reduce teacher burnout. This blog post will break down their best strategies.

Why are teachers burning out?

Dr. Handley and Dr. Donnelly researched the causes of teacher burnout for their book What Can I Take off Your Plate? Some of the main issues include:

• Feeling unappreciated
• Lack of support for discipline
• Ineffective communication
• Lack of feedback from administrators
• Lack of resources
• Low pay
• Negative school political environment
• Poor preparation
• Too much emphasis on teaching

Some school leaders try to impart traditional advice to teachers like “tomorrow is a new day,” “relax and light a candle,” “just let it go.” These types of statements ask teachers to fix the problem themselves, though, and don’t address the root causes. 

When working with schools, Dr. Handley said she and Dr. Donnelly have found that administrators fall into two categories:

• Leaders who believe they don’t have influence over helping triage teacher burnout
• Leaders who believe they do have influence regarding teacher burnout

If you believe you have influence, you can actually create an environment where teachers feel supported, appreciated and empowered to succeed. As administrators themselves, Dr. Handley and Dr. Donnelly believe that administrators can take a ”structural and sustainable approach to helping mitigate teacher burnout.”

Administrators can develop systems to provide support and clarity

Dr. Donnelly emphasizes that while systems may not sound like exciting work, they are essential to relieving teacher burnout and one of the ways administrators can actually help. 

When they discuss systems, they’re not referring to compliance, filling out paperwork or creating checkboxes just for the sake of saying something has been checked off. 

In this case, “systems are the interconnected operations that create intentional, predictable and sustainable conditions for providing support and clarity toward the overall collective commitments of the organization.” 

When building systems, there are short-term urgent needs related to staff and students, but there are also long-term needs. The goal is to plan long term and create systems that support teachers in a variety of situations.

They highlight that when schools lack structures, urgent issues dominate, leaving staff exhausted. With systems in place, schools can reduce the constant “putting out fires” mindset.

Give teachers the gift of time

Dr. Handley shares a quote, “Everybody has the same amount of time during the day. You can either spend your time or invest your time.”

She continues, “We really want to encourage everyone that if you are strategic and invest those minutes in a really productive way and then create systems and structures that allow your teachers to invest their minutes, everyone is going to feel more valued, and they’re going to love their job a lot more.”

A teacher’s plate

Dr. Handley explains that a teacher’s plate could include, “student trauma, there’s blended learning, there’s standards based grading, there’s meaningful feedback, personalized learning, assessment, equity, acceleration, transition readiness, and I could go on and on. Right? It really goes from a plate almost to a platter. And then oftentimes behavior could consume that whole plate.”

She continues, “If there aren’t effective systems in place for supporting teachers with student behavior, that could be the thing that breaks the plate. So really we’re looking for ways to be strategic so that teachers aren’t feeling like they’re having to do everything alone or recreate the wheel. Teaching is often looked at as a siloed profession, and that’s because oftentimes there aren’t systems in place to where everyone sees the importance and the benefit from a collaborative structure that exists in a school.”

The importance of meeting intentionally

Dr. Handley says school administrators should ask themselves what meetings look like in their organization. During staff meetings, there are probably a variety of personalities, attention levels and behavior around the room. If you’re not getting the engagement and focus you want from staff members, they likely feel that their time is not being valued. 

So often school leaders believe that they need to disseminate information during a meeting, but Dr. Handley advises not to do that, and instead send an email. She also urges leaders not to have meetings just for the sake of district protocol. Teachers have such minimal time before and after school to take care of things. When these types of meetings happen, staff members start to dread them, which contributes to teacher burnout. 

Purposeful agendas

Another way to create structured systems in the school is to have purposeful agendas. 

Dr. Handley says, “So what a great agenda does is it provides clarity of purpose for the meeting, it really promotes the intentionality of the content, and it provides a framework for follow-up. Putting those notes and next steps are critical.” 

She continues, “Another good habit is just to provide things at least forty-eight hours in advance so that people have time and know what to process. So if they need to bring something, you’re not asking them, ‘oh, by the way, bring your most recent student data.’”

Be mindful of the time of year

Dr. Handley and Dr. Donnelly also urge administrators to be mindful of the time of year when they’re asking teachers to do something. August to September, teachers are at a high energy level. When October rolls around, teachers are already feeling burned out and need more support. 

Collaborative buy-in

Dr. Handley and Dr. Donnelly believe school leaders should be “boots-on-the-ground practitioners” rather than sitting in their office making decisions on paper. One of the ways to do that is by gathering authentic feedback and buy-in from different leaders throughout the school and the full staff.

Dr. Handley explains, “Our goal is to always have buy-in to make sure that the work that we’re doing is adhering to the overall vision and mission.”

Year-at-a-glance planning

Another way to create streamlined systems is to be proactive and intentional with planning. Dr. Handley explains that planning a year in advance for events like testing and having everything prepped and ready creates less stress. 

Individualized professional development

Another way administrators can give teachers the gift of time is with individualized professional development (IPD). This is a whole day that teachers get every six weeks to invest in themselves personally and professionally. This could be professional coaching with an administrator, peer observations and even personal check-ins. For instance, teachers don’t always get the emotional support from school leaders, even though they are carrying so much personally. School leaders can set aside time to check in with teachers and ensure they have safe places of support.

Every teacher also has individual professional needs. During the IPD day, a teacher may want to focus on learning more about classroom management. Another may want to watch videos or listen to podcasts about the science of reading.

Model work-life balance and help teachers set healthy boundaries

Dr. Donnelly notes how important it is for school leaders to model healthy work-life balance and set boundaries for their own time. By doing this, it allows teachers to do the same. For example, she tells teachers they can text her before six o’clock in the evening, but after that time, they should email her, unless it is an emergency. She can then check email when she’s back at work. 

She also notes, “As leaders, if you’re showing up and you are stressed and overwhelmed, the building fills it and the staff responds accordingly, and so do the students.”

Use technology to save time and improve communication

Technology, when used thoughtfully, can be a lifesaver for teachers and administrators. Dr. Handley and Dr. Donnelly recommend several tools for meetings, communication and wellness.

For meeting efficiency:

• AI tools like Google Gemini, Sembly, Read AI, Zoom Workplace and Fireflies can transcribe and summarize meeting notes in real-time.
• This allows staff members to stay fully engaged during meetings.
• Anyone who missed the meeting can go back and look at the notes.
• Administrators can use the notes to stay on top of what they need to follow up on.

For communication:

• Don’t overcommunicate. For example, a passionate school principal sent a weekly newsletter with 4-5 pages of information, but teachers were already overwhelmed and couldn’t get through all of the information.
• Don’t undercommunicate either. Make sure teachers have the information they need in order to be successful.
• Vary how you release information to teachers. For example, after a long day of instruction, teachers may not be able to properly process a long email. Some teachers may prefer audible information or videos.
• AI tools like Pictory and Lumen5 allow you to upload documents and turn them into videos. The app takes the most important messaging in the documents and turns them into engaging video messages instead of text-heavy newsletters.
• Tools like Google Gemini or Copilot can also help you compose concise emails to staff members. 

For emotional well-being:

• Apps like Calm and Headspace offer meditation and breathing exercises that help educators and school leaders manage stress. 
• Dr. Donnelly and Dr. Handley also recommend IBreathe for quick relaxation techniques during particularly hectic days. 
• Another helpful app is Habit, which sends you reminders and tracks your progress over time.