According to Dr. Elka Jacobs-Pinson, 52% of K-12 teachers reported burnout, and 63% of female teachers reported burnout. According to the National Education Association, teacher burnout is “a condition in which an educator has exhausted the personal and professional resources necessary to do the job.” Burnout caused by teachers can affect every part of a person’s life not just their career. It can affect weight gain or loss, anxiety, depression, fatigue, sleep disorders, and even irregular hair loss.
According to the Pew Research Center, 77% of teachers in the U.S. are female. So is it a coincidence that a largely female-dominated career has the highest burnout rate?
One reason why I think this is the case is because more women are naturally people pleasers. Society places the responsibility of the emotions of the people around them on women. Women are caretakers. I know through personal experience that sometimes saying no in situations can get you labeled as selfish or hard to work with. Teachers have hundreds of responsibilities every day besides just educating their students. So as someone who struggles with the thought of ever letting people down, I know that I am going to have to set professional boundaries in my career. The emotional toll alone is tiring. Students come to school every day carrying all their life experiences and hardships. Sometimes school is the only place students eat or feel comfortable to be themselves. By creating a safe and healthy environment in the classroom teacher in turn take on their stress as well. It can be a very gratifying but also a very sad and disheartening career when teachers see students struggling with things that not even some adults can handle. All this weighs on educators.
“Teachers just by knowing about their student’s trauma can experience something called secondary
Lisa Sanetti | TEDxUConn
traumatic stress.”
Teachers are paid, on average, 23.5% less than other educated workers who choose other professions. But wait. You may be thinking to yourselves, “If 77% of teachers are female, surely they get paid the same as the men in their field.” If you had that thought I am so sorry to break it to you. According to Education Week, female teachers make roughly $2,200 less than their male counterparts. I will note that that dollar amount does include extra-duty pay, such as coaching. But don’t get confused, the gender wage gap is still $714 in base salary pay. And wait, there’s more. The Department For Professional Employees reported that in 2023, approximately 69% of all school administrators were women. Yet the average salary for a female administrator is $79,985 and for a male administrator, it is $107,706.
So to wrap this up. Most of the teachers in our country are female, yet they still get paid less than their male coworkers. Got it.
Another huge amplifier of teacher burnout is safety concerns. The number of school shootings in the U.S. was 323 in 2024, according to a national K-12 School Shooting Database. Which was 26 less than in 2023. How can teachers not feel an immense amount of extra stress with those statistics? Teachers put their students’ lives before their own in some situations. Meaning that not only is your job extremely stressful, but also deadly.
“Caring for yourself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Audre Lorde
Teachers are maybe our most valuable profession. You can’t have doctors and mathematicians without teachers. As a country, we need to start valuing them more and treating them as important as they are. Teachers spend countless amounts of their own money on building their classroom library, decorating, and providing things for their students. They work well beyond their contract hours and bring so much emotional baggage home with them. I would be lying if I said I am not afraid of burnout. Being a college student while seeing what seems like a mass exodus of teachers leaving the profession is daunting. It is disconcerting to see teachers on social media share horror stories of them not feeling safe and appreciated in the workplace, or even the country. Teaching has always been my passion and all I have ever wanted to do. So what happens when I grow to despise the passion I have always been sure of? I’ve worked so hard to get to this point. I am good at what I do and I love it so much. But with the looming worries that come with the new administration and the safety concerns, teaching isn’t just about teaching anymore. I hope that real tangible change comes soon so that the job I love can become a safe and inspiring place again.