However, the caring relationships needed to
teach in and of itself can become a source of
stress and anxiety.
Israel, who left teaching at the end of his
4th year, shared, “I wasn’t prepared for the
emotional exhaustion I felt. Every day I went
home tired from teaching and overwhelmed
by the work I needed to do to prepare for the
next day. I wanted to give students my best
but didn’t always feel like I had more to give.
I realized I couldn’t keep teaching when I
found myself tired and impatient with my
own children.”
Financial and emotional invest-
ments
When we hire a teacher, we commit to
making a significant investment in that in-
dividual. Teacher turnover is expensive and
negatively impacts working conditions for
all teachers and administrators (Brown &
Wynn, 2007; Sutcher, Darling-Hammond,
& Carver-Thomas, 2016).
One example is the impact to teacher
teams and efforts to de-privatize instruc-
tional practices through collaboration. “We
have had a new team every year for the last
four years. I am the only veteran - 25 years.
Everyone else has taught less than three. We
can’t assess how well we are doing if we have
to start again with a new team every year,”
shared Steven.
This impact is also felt by administra-
tors. One high school principal confided,
“I just keep hiring. It’s like starting back
at ’Go’ and never moving forward. I keep
praying our veterans hang in there. Some
talk about retiring because they are tired.
That will just kill any academic growth I’m
trying to achieve”.
The missing element
Developing and fostering teachers’ social
and emotional awareness and competencies
is fundamental to retaining them in the pro-
fession. As we focus on school climate and
the social and emotional needs of students,
we must also implement systems of sup-
port to counter teacher stress and emotional
burnout. Just as students have benefited
from social and emotional learning initia-
tives, so, too, can teachers.
We know from research that teachers
with high social and emotional competence
“Building relationships is
a core dimension of social
emotional competencies,
and leaders play a critical
role in developing systems of
support for teachers.”
are more efficacious. They successfully navi-
gate social and emotional challenges and
experience higher levels of satisfaction and
well-being (Goddard, Hoy, & Woolfolk
Hoy, 2004). While teachers may come to
the profession with content and pedagogical
knowledge, they are not trained in the so-
cial and emotional competencies essential to
their work as educators.
Teachers, especially those new to the
profession, are learners. Educational lead-
ers must attend to teachers’ needs as adult
learners and as members of a community of
practice. Helping teachers to become “con-
fident, supported, and committed to profes-
sional growth can make work less stressful
and more enjoyable”. (Collie, Shapka, Perry,
& Martin, 2015, p. 23).
Relationships and clear communi-
cation
Leaders talk with teachers about the
importance of building relationships with
students, but is it a priority to build rela-
tionships with teachers? Knowing they will
experience both the joys and the stressors of
working with children, what do leaders do
to ensure they have the necessary supports to
balance these two realities?
Building relationships is a core dimension
of social emotional competencies, and lead-
ers play a critical role in developing systems
of support for teachers. It begins by being
transparent. A conversation with Dante, a
teacher in his 7th year, illustrates this: "The
first time I met my principal he told me there
would be exhilarating and exhausting days.
He explained how important it is to ’put on
my own oxygen mask first’. He made it OK
for me to stop, breathe, and think about
what I was feeling because if I didn’t take
care of that, I couldn’t really take care of my
students."
How this principal made the teacher feel
about himself also communicated the degree
of care he had for teachers and the nature of
the work they do. Teachers entering the pro-
fession come to us with a desire to succeed.
They also have a fear of failure and are often
too scared to ask for help or to advocate for
themselves.
The principal plays such an important role
in shaping new teachers’ professional capac-
ity and sense of efficacy (Brown & Wynn,
2007). Elizabeth illustrates this when ex-
plaining her reason for leaving teaching: "If
there had been a feeling that the principal
truly wanted to support me, I would have
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