¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ

The demands of teaching can be overwhelming. Teachers spend their days instructing, with limited time for planning, grading, meetings and parent conferences. If you want to understand stress, ask a teacher.

Understanding those and other stresses of teaching can be easy. Dealing with it might be harder, but experts say teachers, administrators and parents can all help.

Any job can be stressful, said Dr. Chris McCarthy, a psychologist in the department of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he leads the Coping and Stress in Education Lab. Service professions such as teaching require being “on” for others all day.

Teachers also face large classes, limited resources, financial strain and political and cultural pressures.

Stress is associated with health problems such as high blood pressure and heart rhythm issues. Not everybody responds the same. "Teachers all have different abilities and skill sets and personalities and home lives," he said, and reactions can vary.

But when a teacher is under stress, the effects can spill into the classroom and hurt student achievement. Dr. Lauren Davis, an associate professor and department head of education at Montana State University in Bozeman, said students can see that stress, and some will start feeling unsafe or push limits to provoke a reaction. "A teacher who is tired and has no bandwidth left gets angry with students, and then it becomes this power struggle."

A 2024 national RAND found that teachers report job-related stress about twice as often as other adults, and women more than men.

Davis and McCarthy offered this advice on addressing stress.

For teachers

Self-care can be difficult for teachers who barely have time to eat lunch. McCarthy recommends basics such as exercise and healthy eating, while Davis’s research shows that yoga and breathing techniques can help teachers stay calm and even influence students’ behavior. McCarthy sometimes begins classes with three-minute mindfulness activities, which could be adapted for younger students.

He and Davis both draw on the concepts of trauma-informed care, which seeks to recognize stressors in a student’s life. Learning to see students’ behaviors as products of their own backgrounds, and not necessarily personal, can help a teacher respond in a caring and supportive way, McCarthy said.

Setting healthy boundaries is essential. ”Teachers are often up late grading, or they get up early to grade,” Davis said. They might practice ”revenge procrastination,” where they feel the only period of time available for themselves is at night. ”So they’re going to put off going to bed as long as they can because they just want to watch their TV show – and I don’t blame them because I did that myself.”

Proper sleep has been associated with lower stress levels. It's also considered essential to heart health.

Davis also would regularly stay late and work weekends. But working seven days a week, 12 hours a day is a recipe for burnout, she said.

She recommends that teachers make sure they leave on time, decline to answer emails on the weekend or not respond to parents after certain hours. Whatever those boundaries are, stick to them, Davis said, ”because otherwise you’re just going to be Swiss cheese at the end of the day.”

For school leaders

Principals often are stuck in the middle, between superintendent demands and teacher needs. But they can help, McCarthy and Davis said, by balancing workloads. For example, by not always giving new teachers the least-wanted assignments or by making sure teachers aren’t overworking themselves.

Restrictive systems strain teachers, McCarthy said. Most teachers go through rigorous training, so it can be counterproductive when they find themselves in schools where they have no autonomy or are micromanaged.

Ensuring that young teachers learn trauma-informed care principles early in their training is important, McCarthy said. Stress-related problems can take root early. ”Student-teachers enter with a lot of idealism and enthusiasm,” he said. ”And it’s like a real gut punch sometimes when they get into schools.”

Not every change has to be systemic.

”Teachers deserve their own space to just have a quiet moment to reset themselves,” Davis said. Some schools have turned unused rooms into spaces where teachers can relax. ”It’s like a teacher timeout room, where it’s very quiet, there’s soft music, soft lighting. Maybe there’s a recliner. Maybe there’s a massage chair.”

”I think people just need space to just have a minute to breathe and cry if they need to,” she said. ”And then they can move on with their day.”

For parents

Teacher appreciation is most meaningful when it’s personal. Based on one of his students did on a small group of teachers in a suburban Texas district, ”teachers really appreciate when they get individual and specific feedback“ from students, parents or community members. Generic Teacher Appreciation Day activities didn’t do much, he said.

Davis recalled a year when parents provided teachers with a nice lunch – except teachers weren’t relieved from their regular duties to enjoy it. Another time, at the school where she was an administrator, parents came in to watch classrooms, giving teachers a real break.

Teachers also can be deeply appreciative of affordable but practical gifts, Davis said. As part of her research, for example, teachers were given yoga equipment, including a blanket and a mat. ”Some of these teachers welled up with tears, and they were like, ‘I get to keep this?’ “ she recalled. ”It was like Christmas for them.”