In my last blog, I discussed strategies for addressing students’ well-being, even if you are not a therapist (link). You may also wonder, “Is my well-being important for my students?” Yes, it is..

We often hear that K-12 educators are burned out, but is that true?

Yes..according to a Gallup Poll (link), K12 Educators topped the list of professionals who were always or often burned out. Below is the list of the most stressful jobs in order of the percentage of time they felt burned out.  

Field	% Always/Often
K-12 education	44
College or university	35
Professional services	33
Government or public policy	33
Retail	32
Healthcare	31

According to this poll, educators felt more burnout than any other profession – including police, firefighters, health care workers, and government employees. While these data are concerning, how do they impact student outcomes?

It turns out, there is quite a connection.

Educator Quality of Life and Student Outcomes

There appear to be several connections between educators’ well-being and student outcomes. For example:

• Teacher’s life satisfaction has been linked to students’ subjective physical and mental health (Maricuțoiu et al., 2022)
• Teachers’ negative affect also correlated with students’
  • Lower math and reading achievement (Prewett & Whitney, 2021)
  • Poor vocabulary development
  • Lower levels of school adjustment
  • Higher levels of externalizing problems (Koenen et al., 2017)

If educator well-being is essential to student success, how can we improve it?

What Can Help Educators’ Well-Being

There are at least three factors that can help your well-being: School Climate, Daily Practices, and Self-Care.

School Climate

School climate involves where you work. According to the National Center on School Climate, positive school climate includes addressing safety, providing effective teaching and learning, developing interpersonal relationships, and supportive leadership. For example,

• Educators in more positive school climate settings tend to have better job satisfaction, self-efficacy, positive student-teacher relationships, organizational and instructional support, and morale than their counterparts (Fox et al., 2023).

Multi-tiered approaches, such as positive behavior support  (PBS), can help create a better school climate for you and your students. Within these frameworks, leaders, educators, students, and families work together to identify needs and provide schoolwide supports.

The time you spend creating these environments helps your students and supports you and your colleagues. For instance,

• Teachers reported higher levels of well-being in settings that implemented schoolwide PBS (link) (Ross et al., 2012).

Being in a supportive school climate may also encourage effective daily practices.

Daily Practices

Daily Practices involve how you go about your work. Some practices help both students and teachers. For example, some research indicates that teachers who use five specific positive praise statements for every one corrective had:

• Decreased emotional exhaustion
• Higher efficacy (Reinke et al., 2013)

Making sure to use specific praise (e.g., “thank you for opening your book”) and at a higher level than negative feedback (e.g., “sit down, why are you out of your seat again”) may help improve your well-being at school.

Even if you have a supportive climate and increase positive praise, additional alternable variables may improve your outlook and well-being. These would include engaging in self-care.

Self-Care Strategies

Jennifer Lesh (2020) wrote a wonderful article about specific ways educators can engage in self-care (link) called “Don’t Forget About Yourself.” In the article, she outlined 10 strategies for self-care, which included:

• Journaling about successes and areas for improvement
• Planning for exercise in your schedule
• Maintaining a proper diet – avoid fast food as much as you can
• Maintaining family time without distractions (e.g., social media)
• Developing a connection at work with someone you trust who understands your stressors
• Enjoying time with your pets
• Develop a stress management plan by identifying symptoms and response strategies (link)
• Improve your skills through professional learning
• Celebrate yours, your students, and your colleagues’ accomplishments (remember, specific praise!)

Considering your life domains is also a great way to determine areas where you could improve your well-being.

Self-Assess and Create a Plan

There are different models of life domains. Steven Covey developed one of my favorite frameworks about personal wellness (link). I provided a four-quadrant table below adapted from his framework. The four wellness areas involve physical, personal, intellectual, and social domains. Take a moment to review the categories and examples below.

Physical: Exercise Diet Rest	Personal: Hobbies Finances Well-Being Spiritual life
Intellectual: Learn a New Skill Develop a Current Skill Self-Improvement	Social: Family Friends Community

Now that you know about the four quadrants, review the matrix below and identify one area of strength and one opportunity for improvement in each life domain. See the Self-Care Strategies section above for additional ideas on how to improve your well-being.

Physical: (e.g., Exercise, Diet, Rest) Strength: (e.g., I sleep 7 hours per night) Opportunity: (e.g., I want to exercise regularly)	Personal: (e.g., Hobbies, Finances, Well-Being) Strength: (e.g., I like to run)       Opportunity: (e.g., I need a personal budget)
Intellectual: (e.g., Learn a New Skill, Develop a Current Skill, Self-Improvement) Strength: (e.g., I like to read)       Opportunity: (e.g., I would like to read more about work-life balance)	Social: (e.g., Family, Friends, Community) Strength: (e.g., I have a few close friends)      Opportunity: (e.g., I want to set specific times to regularly connect with a friend)

Next, write one actionable step to address one opportunity area. Writing down your goal is vital to ensure you carry it out (link). Make sure your step is SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, reasonable, time-bound):

• Non-example: I will call an old friend next week.
• Examples: I will call Mike, Sarah, or Shane on my commute home from work next Monday. I will list three people I can contact for advice by Friday this week and put them on my calendar.
• Your actionable step:

If you are willing, text or email your next step to someone you trust who can help with accountability. Sharing your actionable step with someone else also can increase your chances of carrying it out (link).

There are also additional resources related to educator self-care that I like.

Here are some additional resources to help educators improve and maintain their well-being.

• The Institute of Educational Sciences (IES) created a resource to help school teams improve the climate to support teacher well-being (link). I like this resource because it focuses on the individual and the larger setting.
• ASCD also has a blog on improving educator well-being (link). It also addresses individual and setting supports.
• IRIS Connect also has a beneficial blog written for administrators who want to improve their staff’s well-being (link).
• EdResearch for Recovery also created a useful report on creating supportive environments for educators (link). I appreciated that they included do’s and don’ts for these environments.
• WestEd developed another wonderful resource for creating a positive school climate and supporting individual educators. The title says a lot…Creating a Culture of Care: A Guide for Education Leaders to Develop Systems and Structures That Support Educator Well-Being. This document includes interpersonal and personal agency strategies for staff (link).  

Educator well-being is important for students and staff. Taking time to address the climate, improve practices, and enhance wellness could help improve outcomes for adults and students. I hope some of these resources are helpful to you. I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. Please feel free to leave a comment below!