What Is the Biggest Cause of Teacher Burnout? A Former Elementary Teacher Explains
It’s 2:17 on a Tuesday in mid-May, and I’m leaning against my 4th grade desk, pressing a crumpled paper towel into a puddle of grape juice that just soaked through my three-day-old lesson plans for state test prep. The classroom phone is buzzing. It’s the front office reminding me I forgot to turn in my bus duty roster for next week—due 10 minutes ago. A parent is waiting by the door to ask why their child didn’t get a special birthday treat sticker, because I sent the last ones home with the kid who brought cupcakes for the class the previous Friday. I smile, I answer the question, I apologize for the mix-up, I promise to send a sticker home the next day. By the time I lock my classroom door at 4:45, I sit in my car in the parking lot and cry for 12 minutes. That was the day I decided to hand in my resignation three weeks later.
When people hear I left teaching after seven years, they always guess the big reasons: difficult kids, low pay, out-of-control admin. Those are all hard, sure. But none of those were what pushed me out. The biggest contributor to my burnout wasn’t one big, dramatic thing. It was a thousand tiny, unplanned tasks that had nothing to do with teaching, all piling up until I had almost no time left for the part of the job I actually loved.
I still remember the week before that grape juice incident. I spent three hours after school on Monday putting together a bulletin board for the district’s annual school spirit walk—something the principal required every classroom to update, even though no one from the district ever actually walked through to look at it. On Tuesday, I stayed two hours for a mandatory training on a new reading intervention program that the district scrapped three months later when they switched to a different vendor. On Wednesday, I answered 17 parent emails after dinner: one asking me to remind their kid to bring their trumpet home for practice, two asking for updates on a homework assignment that wasn’t due for another week, one asking for a meeting to sort out a playground argument between two 9-year-olds that had already been resolved at recess that day. By Thursday, I was so behind on grading writing portfolios that I took them with me to my niece’s soccer game and graded them on the bleachers, missing the entire first half. That’s when I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten to spend a full prep period just writing lesson plans, instead of filling out forms or answering requests.
I’m a parent of a 2nd grader now, so I get it. It’s easy to shoot a quick email off to the teacher at 9 PM when you remember you forgot to tell them something. I’ve done it myself, before I really stopped to think about what that email means on their end. One 2-line email seems small. Multiply that by 28 kids in a class, and that’s 28 extra requests a day, all taking time away from lesson planning, grading, or just checking in with a kid who’s having a bad day.
The practical stuff, the things that make a difference, aren’t just big policy changes (though those are needed too). They’re small, concrete choices anyone can make. For example, if you need to remind your kid to bring something home, write a note and stick it in their backpack the night before instead of asking the teacher to pass the message along. If your kid has a small conflict with a friend at recess, give the teacher and recess staff a day to work it out before you request an after-school meeting. If it’s not an emergency (like a last-minute change in pickup that day), don’t expect a reply to your email before the next school day. Most teachers are contractually only required to work 7 or 8 hours a day, just like you—answering emails on their own time is unpaid extra work.
For school leaders, the small changes add up too. Stop requiring teachers to update bulletin boards for district events that no one attends. Cut one unnecessary mandatory after-school training a month, and let teachers use that time to plan lessons or grade. Put a clear policy in the parent handbook that says teachers won’t respond to non-emergency emails outside of contract hours, and back that up when parents complain. You don’t have to overhaul the entire education system to cut down on burnout; you just have to cut out the useless work that takes time away from teaching.
I tutor kids in reading part time now, so I still get to do the part of teaching I love. Last week, I sat with a 3rd grader who just finished his first chapter book, and he grinned so wide his dimples showed when he told me he couldn’t wait to read the next one. That’s the feeling I got into teaching for. But when I talk to my former teacher friends still in the classroom, most say they get less than an hour a day of uninterrupted time to actually work one-on-one with kids like that. Everything else is filled with forms, requests, and requirements that don’t help anyone learn.
Last month, I ran into my old principal at the grocery store. She asked if I’d ever consider coming back to the classroom. I told her maybe, if I got to just teach. We both laughed, but it wasn’t really a joke. Most teachers don’t leave because they don’t love kids. They leave because they stop having enough time to do the work that matters. There’s no quick fix for the problem, but every small choice to cut back on extra, unnecessary work adds up—for teachers, and for the kids they teach.
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