- Estimates indicate that up to 50 percent of all new teachers leave the teaching profession within 5 years. For some this is merely a personal preference, but for many it is directly related to teacher burnout. Young teachers enter the educational field with a desire to make a difference in the lives of children, but soon discover the enormous burden of meeting state and federal mandates is nearly impossible to achieve with the limited resources available to the teacher and students.
- American schools are expected to experience a severe teacher shortage by the year 2010, when the majority of today's veteran teachers will reach retirement age. These teachers have stuck to the their commitment to teaching despite the ever increasing demands and expectations of teachers. Without younger teachers who are willing and able to combat teacher burnout the nation will face a tumultuous period of teacher turnover and children will suffer from the combination of inexperienced teachers and teachers who are actively seeking a change in career as a result of the rapid burnout rate.
- Teacher burnout results from a wide variety of reasons. The work of a teacher rarely stops at the end of the day. The expectation to take home work and to spend evenings and weekends correcting and assessing student work, preparing lessons, and gathering resources for the classroom takes its toll. The lack of resources and financial support provided to schools often results in a lack of classroom material, inadequate textbooks and generally inferior working conditions. State and federal mandates for student achievement and rigorous state testing require an increasingly wider breadth and depth of knowledge across subject areas. Administrators, often experiencing burnout themselves, struggle to meet the changing needs of teachers and are limited by resources and finances.
- The general public often is not aware of the enormous pressure a teacher experiences and is quick to criticize job performance based of a notion of what it thinks teachers should do. There is a perception that teachers enjoy an easy life with multiple vacations and a short work day. In many areas, teachers are perceived as over paid. A lack of respect permeates the community as it fails to respond to the need of teachers. Many erroneously assume that teacher burnout is caused by a lack of discipline in the classroom and fail to recognize that the majority of teachers who suffer from burnout would list students as the last item on a list of contributing factors.
- Efforts towards prevention of teacher burnout need to focus on providing the financial resources to schools and provide adequate support for new teachers. Providing assistance in large classrooms and access to a wide range of intervention techniques, and the resources to implement them, will create shared responsibility for student achievement and alleviate the pressure and isolation teachers experience. Increased public awareness of the difficulties teachers face, solid parental involvement programs, and a decrease in extraneous duties like bus and recess duties will free teachers to focus their time and energy on their primary goal: teaching. Providing time for teacher collaboration and planning within the structure of the school day will allow teachers to work together to plan and implement the best possible program for children.
