During the past several years, including before the pandemic, researchers were finding and practitioners were sharing how the well-being of educators was suffering (AFT 2017). This trend is significant because educator well-being is essential for educators to teach and support students effectively (Lever, Mathis, and Mayworm 2017). Educators play a critical role in building a healthy school climate, but educators also must meet their own mental, social, emotional, and physical health needs (Harding et al. 2019).
Educator well-being should be just as much of a priority for schools and districts as well-being is for students (Regional Educational Laboratory Pacific n.d.). However, many educators have increasingly reported that they are experiencing stress, burnout, fears about violence, and feelings of demoralization—all while staffing shortages among colleagues and leadership have intensified (Doan, Steiner, and Woo 2024; National Education Association 2022). This complex issue does not have a simple solution.
The Research to Practice Advisory Group and Roundtables
It was no wonder then that when the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments (NCSSLE) and the U.S. Department of Education convened a new Research to Practice (R2P) Advisory Group in 2021 composed of preeminent national experts, they identified educator well-being1 as a priority issue. This topic is especially salient because schools are under researched as workplaces. Although some schools and districts have innovative programs focused on educator well-being, often, no research backs up what is effective. Therefore, to explore this educator well-being topic, the R2P Advisory Group supported NCSSLE in facilitating roundtables of nearly 20 researchers and practitioners with expertise in educator well-being from across the country to share insights based on their work and offer recommendations for improving educator well-being.
Purpose of the R2P Advisory Group
- Allow researchers and practitioners to share the latest on what they know about key topics to inform research and practice.
- Consider how best to partner to have the greatest impact now and in the future.
1 In this blog, we use the term “educators” to be more inclusive of the adults who work with students; however, most research on well-being focuses on classroom teachers.
R2P Roundtable Insights on Educator Well-Being
The crux of what the R2P roundtable participants shared will resonate with many: Educators need the same level of services and supports that they provide to promote well-being among their students. Some of the overarching themes shared by the R2P roundtables were as follows:
"We understand the idea of creating the conditions for learning for kids, but what are the conditions for teaching?"
- Many educators report that their workplace climate is poor. Efforts to improve the school community will not work without addressing workplace climate.
- As with students, educators want to feel a sense of belonging, competence, and autonomy. To build a positive school climate for educators, schools and districts can use the same strategies they implement for students: tiers of intervention, wraparound services, and systemic change that addresses individual educators, their relationships, and school climate as a whole.
- Educators do not want token gestures, such as one-off mindfulness or yoga classes. Instead, they want leaders to develop structures to support their conditions of well-being.
- Educators are stretched thin trying to implement multiple programs and do not want to add “one more thing.” Educators instead want leadership to fix the broken systems.
The R2P roundtable participants want educators to thrive in the same way that they help students thrive. And as we know, the capacity to thrive is a combination of individual competencies and external resources, conditions, and contacts.
R2P Roundtable Recommendations for Improving Educator Well-Being
"Organizational interventions are much more common in the corporate world — things like job redesign and reducing workload — unless they are the result of collective bargaining. These are rarely happening at schools and there is no research to demonstrate the effectiveness of any of these on improving educator well-being or performance. We need both innovative changes and careful research to focus on organizational change processes and how they affect everyone, not just the teachers, but all the staff who work in schools."
Improving educator well-being must start with leadership: principals (who often create the climate of the school) and superintendents (who can make changes at the district level). School and district leadership must spearhead systems change based on trust to improve educator well-being.
The R2P roundtable participants recommended the following broad strategies, operationalized to fit one’s school/district, to improve educator well-being:
Use a holistic approach to reach all educators, on all levels.
- Take a whole-system approach and measure impacts on educator well-being at multiple levels.
- Do not focus only on teachers; include everyone who works with students, including administrators, student support personnel such as counselors and social workers, bus drivers, paraprofessionals, cafeteria workers, and janitors—all of whom matter in creating a positive, caring, and welcoming climate.
Create opportunities for dialogue between and among educators and administrators.
- Start this process early—as soon as educators are hired.
- Listen to understand what educators are feeling and seeing in their job every day and what support they need.
- Build community at the core and develop trust.
- Establish time for educators to talk about the reality of their jobs, including their concerns and stressors, to understand how to better support them.
- Allow educators to have decision-making power on school climate issues.
- Provide opportunities for principals to share with their peers how they support educator well-being; form a network of principals for informal coaching.
- Create a district leadership position with the sole responsibility of supporting educator well-being by creating and delivering programming and targeted supports.
Empower emotional awareness and cultural competence.
- Train leadership in trauma and healing to inform well-being practices.
- Find ways for leadership to demonstrate that educator well-being is a priority.
- Create restorative environments to address staff well-being in a systematic way.
- Include educators in systemic social-emotional learning practices and programs.
- Have leaders implement emotional mindfulness interventions, practice emotional awareness, and model cultural responsiveness practices.
Focus on efficiency with low-maintenance, high-yield practices.
- Aim for quick wins during long-term systems change.
- Allow educators to experience positive outcomes (near-term benefits) that improve their well-being and outlook.
- Couple quick wins with long-term transformational change.
- Listen to staff and help them feel seen; this quick win does not require full, systemic transformation to improve their well-being.
Create intentional spaces for educators to take a break.
- Design classrooms as therapeutic environments.
- Create intentional spaces, such as wellness rooms, and have leaders encourage educators to use these spaces.
Focus on well-being early, before educators ever walk into the classroom.
- Support individual capacities in preservice and induction stages.
- Do not wait until educators are so overwhelmed that they will see well-being improvement efforts as “just another thing I have to do.”
Other Voices from the Field
Has your school or district implemented practices or programs to support educators’ well-being? What has worked well and what has not been so effective? What are your suggestions for addressing educator well-being? Contact us at NCSSLE@air.org to let us know!
