Recognizing and Addressing Educator Burnout
Since COVID, the term burnout has crept into everyday language with people reporting burnout in every aspect of their lives. In actual terms, burnout is a condition caused by chronic interpersonal stressors from our job and is characterized by three dimensions:
Overwhelming exhaustion,
Feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job, and
A sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment (Maslach & Leiter, 2017).
Educators are widely-understood to have higher than average levels of burnout, second only to the healthcare sector. Nonetheless, school districts are always shocked with the high levels of reported burnout in their Guarding Minds at Work survey report.