Self-care will not save educators, but collective care might

When I began my first teaching position in 1997, I had a full hour for lunch. Some teachers ate in the staffroom, some of my colleagues walked home for a break, and others used the time to exercise. Personally, I would use that time to do some planning and check in with colleagues or students. 

Over the following decades, a few minutes of time was shaved off the lunch break every year to increase instructional time for students. When I ended my last K-12 teaching position in 2019, I had twenty minutes for lunch and often no preparation time at all. I jammed some food down my throat, checked a couple emails or hammered out a student improvement plan, then hurried off to teach my next class. I was exhausted and grumpy by the end of the day, even though I was in good physical shape and have excellent emotional regulation skills. 

I was, in the words of Linda Duxbury, a boiled frog. She describes the boiled frog syndrome at work as the negative impact of the slow and steady increase of workload, without changes to the working conditions to provide employees the time and space to recover from the new pressures. The anecdote is that when placed in cold water that is slowly increased, a frog will adapt and slowly boil to death whereas the same frog, thrown into the hot water will quickly jump out to preserve itself. Over my nineteen-year teaching career, the water temperature had been slowly increasing, and when I began studying compassion fatigue and burnout, I realized that I was in a profession filled with boiled frogs. 

I’ve been studying burnout and compassion fatigue in educational workers since 2020 in partnership with the ASEBP and the Alberta Teachers Association. The data from my research suggests that high rates of workplace distress are prevalent across the education field. Research in other caregiving professions, such as nursing and counselling, have found that to improve the outcomes for individuals experiencing workplace distress, interventions should cross different domains, including self-, system-, expert-, and organizational- directed strategies. One of the findings of this research project has been the over-reliance of educational workers on self-directed interventions to improve their well-being. 

Navigating healthcare options can create greater stress and worry, so exploring the wide variety of supports and resources before a person’s well-being is threatened is critical. Self-directed strategies, such as going to the gym or doing a grounding exercise, are helpful to manage everyday stress, however, in the absence of system-, expert-, and organizationally-directed strategies, the individual can quickly lose motivation, break good habits, and become overwhelmed or cynical. Depending only on self-directed strategies is not sufficient for recovery from compassion fatigue or burnout. 

Research Shows an Over-Reliance on Personal Strategies 

In the most recent provincial survey of Alberta educators in May 2023, survey respondents overwhelmingly selected personal support (such as friends and family) networks and self-directed strategies (such as going to the gym, praying, or walking) as their go-to when experiencing workplace distress. Figures 1&2 below reflect the responses of the Alberta respondents in May 2023. Similar response patterns have also been found in our June 2024 survey of educational workers from the Northwest Territories and through district-level surveys completed between September 2023-April 2024. 

Figure 1. “Which of the supports or resources do you use to feel better” (participants could select all that apply, May 2023) 

Figure 2. “What strategies or activities do you use to feel better (physically, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, mentally, or socially” (analyzed responses according to type, May 2023) 

A new element of interest, Environmental Interventions, emerged as the second most utilized intervention by the respondents of the May 2023 survey. Unlike earlier surveys, the participants in the most recent survey highlighted the importance of getting outside and being in nature as a key element of easing their stress and rejuvenating themselves. 

The qualitative data, gathered through open-ended questions such as “Is there anything else you want to tell the research team about your experiences with compassion fatigue, emotional labour, or burnout” suggests that respondents understood that their individual efforts were insufficient to truly recover from workplace distress. While educational workers are trying to care for themselves, they point out that system and school interventions would have a greater impact on their overall sense of well-being. 

As an educator, I am constantly told to care for myself, however, the work that is expected is always pressing. I am a teacher only half of the time. The other half is tending to the details that admin requires be done such as emails and log entries and meetings and forms and assignments, etc. The workload is too great and then when students require emotional support (which is also becoming larger), I find myself unable to give any more than I have given. I am becoming empty. (survey response, 2023)  

Further, all educational staff were feeling the impact of systemic and school-based pressures related to population growth outpacing available resources. As student enrollments have increased, the physical space for employees has become squeezed, reducing staff feelings of belonging and value within their school buildings. 

As an EA, there is no designated space for me or my belongings. No locker for coat, purse and keys or bike helmet. No desk to leave personal things like cloth to clean glasses, or working tools like pencils, scissors, band-aid. For the first time in 11 years, I got a chair (secretary chairs with back rest and wheels) for me, as usually I end up sitting on a wiggly stool that the students compete to use. (survey response, 2023) 

The survey respondents called out for acknowledgement of their important work and adequate resourcing to ensure that children and youth could flourish in schools.   

I wish I could do more of the part of the job that brings me joy. Helping children learn. Less of the accountability and reporting stuff. And I would like to be trusted as a professional with respect. (survey response, 2023) 

Working in the education system is draining on all staff. Mental Health and well-being need to be a priority as compassion fatigue is a huge issue that leads to sick leaves and teachers leaving the profession as they are unable to find a balance between work and home. I see it everyday in my school! (survey response, 2023) 

A troubling trend we saw in our data collected between 2020-2024 was an increase of worry over violence in schools and the impact of this problem on an already strained system and on the other children in their classrooms. Respondents described the impact of verbal and physical violence by students and community members on teachers, principals, and educational assistants. 

The closest I have come to burn out is when I have violent and dangerous students in my classroom. It causes me great stress to see the fear in the other children’s eyes. I feel like we are teaching them that they must accept abuse and violence if a student has diverse needs. (survey response, 2023) 

The ultimate outcome of ignoring employee wellbeing is a perpetuation of the current employee shortages. As stated by a survey respondent: Unfortunately, I try to talk students out of becoming teachers in this province. 

People are tired. The best teachers are tired. I understand all of the new and innovative pushes in education, but now, more than ever, it is important for the people higher up who are making decisions to LISTEN to school staff before we run into a severe teacher shortage across the province. People cannot sustain the level of expectations and responsibilities at work and then go home and be caring and compassionate in their own families. (survey response, 2023) 

 From Individual to Collective Compassion 

Individual, self-directed strategies are not enough to maintain optimal occupational well-being. To create caring and compassionate spaces for children and youth, adults in schools need community and system support so that instead of a profession of boiled frogs, educators can thrive and stay in the field of education. 

Knowing that educational workers already have self-directed strategies in place, the focus of the research team’s work since 2023 has been on working with school district leaders, wellness champions, school-based administrators, teachers, and staff to create the conditions that empower people to implement their self-care strategies during the workday. 

Our research team has developed HEARTcare planning materials, including a workbook, website, and app, to assist educational workers and school district leaders to identify, explore, and implement the different interventions that are available. HEARTcare uses the CamelCase convention to describe the five inter-related interventions of scHool, systEm, individuAl, pRofessional, and educaTional worker.  

Over the past year, pilot groups have used the framework to guide their work on wellbeing, and they have shared some of the initiatives they have tried.  

System interventions that have been developed as districts use the HEARTcare model include: 

• Highlighting policies intended to support setting work-home boundaries, such as no-emails on evenings and weekends  

• Integrating well-being activities as professional learning sessions, not as a ‘nice to have on a different day because we’re here to sit and listen today’ 

• Communicating information about employee benefits and de-stigmatizing employee access to assistance 

• Encouraging the use of personal business leave for appointments with medical professionals such as family doctors and therapists during the regular school year rather than waiting until the summer break. 

• Hiring adequate staff to ensure that over-worked site-based personnel are not constantly expected to cover classes or the tasks of absent employees 

• Protecting and promoting preparation and lesson planning time for teachers 

• Designing clear protocols and consequences for threatening and violent behavior between students and teachers 

• Providing professional learning opportunities related to creating trauma-sensitive schools and classrooms  

School-based interventions that have been taken up by HEARTcare pilot sites include: 

• Soup club/dinner club to increase collegial support 

• Integrating well-being acts (such as going outside for a walk) into regular routines and staff meetings 

• Completing a book study specifically on building workplace wellbeing (Teacher, Take Care is a popular starting book) 

• Devoting part of staff meetings to building collegiality and belonging between all staff members 

• Embracing compassionate leadership by all staff through embedded professional learning 

• Collaborating on protocols for implementing trauma-sensitive practices 

• Creating a sense of belonging by greeting each other each morning and saying goodbye each afternoon. 

Educational worker interventions, or those strategies and policies directed related to teaching and learning practices are the least used presently but may have the greatest potential for impact. Comprehensive School Health, widely used since the early 2000s, offers a framework for integrating teaching and learning practices that encourage well-being for students in all aspects of their daily work. The well-known slogan, healthy students make better learners, can be shifted to healthy adults create the caring and compassionate classroom conditions for healthy students to be better learners.  

Further, integrating outdoor and land-based learning practices and strategies may have the reciprocal effect of improving the well-being of the teacher themselves. For the past year, myself and a teacher consultant, Nadeen Halls, have been piloting a professional learning session called the HEARTcare Walk and Learn. The teachers who have taken this session have been very enthusiastic and appreciative that not only did they begin to create a plan for their well-being, but they also spent their professional learning time being physically active in the outdoors. 

As a researcher, I have spent the last four years reading the pleas for help from educational workers – from support staff to teachers to principals to superintendents, educational workers are suffering. However, through these stories of pain and stress, compassion and care for children and youth continue to drive people in this field of work. My enduring hope is with thoughtful systemic and organizational shifts to policy and practice, collectively, we can cool the educational water temperature from boiling hot to nurturing warm.  

Photo: Getty Images Signature

IF YOU HAVE A STORY TO SHARE ABOUT HOW YOUR SCHOOL OR SCHOOL DISTRICT IS FOSTERING WELLBEING, PLEASE CONTACT KATHLEEN AT  KLANE@EDCAN.CA.

Meet the Expert(s)

Dr. Astrid Kendrick

Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Calgary

Astrid Kendrick has been a K-12 classroom teacher for nineteen years for the Calgary Board of Education and is an instructor at the the University of Calgary.

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