The Elephant in the Classroom

Teachers are attuned to the social-emotional well-being of our students and trained to monitor for signs such as trauma, anxiety, bullying, or micro-aggressions. Yet we are still just learning how to discuss a huge, lurking threat to our work: our own mental health.

In urban settings like mine, many schools churn through a quarter or more of their teachers annually, and roughly half of teachers leave within five years (Ingersoll et al., 2018). And chronic stress for teachers is steadily rising. In an American Federation of Teachers (2017) study, more than 60 percent of teachers described their work as always or often stressful—a 15 percent increase from a similar survey just three years prior.