Teacher Self-Care: 5 Strategies to Recoup and Avoid Burnout
Teacher self-care means protecting your own time, energy, and relationships with the same seriousness you protect a student's IEP meeting. It isn't a spa day. RAND's 2026 survey found 55% of K-12 teachers report frequent job-related stress against 34% of comparable working adults, so the depletion is real and it compounds.
Picture a classroom full of students with bright eyes and happy faces, dancing and singing a song about obtuse, acute, right, and straight angles. Their arms stretch out to match the triangle they're singing about as they dance around and around. As an observer of that classroom, I can tell you there is nothing that brings me more joy in education. I found my own eyes lighting up, and I began to smile as well.
Getting to that moment is the hard part. Educators have always been tasked with making sure our students and staff are safe, and safety is first and foremost on our minds. What has changed is how much of our attention that takes before we can teach anything.
After the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, I remember as an elementary principal adding new safety procedures and protocols to keep students and staff safe. I walked the hallways after students entered the building every morning, checking each and every single outside door to make sure it was locked. We added a locked door buzzer system for visitors, required name badges for all employees, established a sign-in procedure for all visitors, and required all staff receive Armed Intruder Training, to name just a few items we implemented after that horrid school shooting.
None of those procedures went away. They became the floor, and new layers went on top of them. Behavior support. Mental-health referrals. Documentation. Devices and connectivity for students learning from home. Every one of them is legitimate, and every one of them runs before the lesson starts. That is what people mean when they say the job has grown without the day getting longer.
The data backs up what most teachers already feel. RAND's 2026 State of the American Teacher Survey found that 55% of K-12 public school teachers reported frequent job-related stress, down from 62% in 2025 but still well above the 34% reported by comparable working adults. RAND also reports that teachers were more likely than those adults to report burnout, difficulty coping with job stress, and symptoms of depression.
I want to be honest about what self-care can and can't do. It does not fix class sizes, planning time, or pay. Anyone who tells you a gratitude journal solves a staffing shortage is selling something. What it can do is support your wellbeing while you navigate the job and push for better conditions, which is not a small thing. Running yourself into the ground helps nobody, least of all the students in front of you. Here are five strategies that have worked for the teachers I've worked alongside.
Burnout or Just a Long Week?
Most teachers are tired by Friday. That is the job, and it isn't a warning sign on its own. One thing worth paying attention to is whether adequate rest improves how you feel.
The column on the right lists possible warning signs, not a diagnostic checklist. Every one of these can have causes that have nothing to do with your job, from sleep disorders to thyroid problems to ordinary seasonal illness, and no combination of them adds up to a diagnosis you can make on your own.
| What to watch | Ordinary end-of-week tiredness | Possible warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| Recovery | A weekend or a break restores you | Rest doesn't restore you, and Monday feels the same as Friday did |
| Feeling toward students | You're still glad to see them | You dread specific classes, or feel flat toward students you used to enjoy |
| Sleep | Tired at night, sleep comes | Trouble falling asleep, or waking at 3 a.m. running through the day |
| Outlook | Occasional venting in the staff room | A settled belief that nothing you do makes a difference |
| Physical signs | Sore feet, tired voice | Frequent headaches, stomach trouble, or catching every bug going around |
If the right-hand column describes several weeks of your life rather than one bad stretch, that's worth raising with a healthcare professional or your district's employee assistance program. Persistent or concerning symptoms deserve a proper look from someone qualified to give one. The strategies below may help, and they are not a substitute for actual support.
Show Compassion Without Sliding Into Toxic Positivity
As educators, when our plates are full, it can be difficult to deal with people when they are upset, angry, or rude, even if it is our parents, community members, or students. We hold back words we want to say that are running through our heads. That restraint helps us take the higher road in many of these stressful situations. We can reframe these situations and the misdirected stress that comes with them by continually reminding ourselves: even though they are upset and they are taking their frustration out on me, it is not personal.
The more we can continue to show compassion to people who are frustrated, the more we avoid feeding into that unintentional frustration and anger. We can keep modeling how people should be treated with respect, always listening first before reacting, and then acting with kindness and compassion.
Putting yourself into someone else's shoes can be physically and emotionally draining. To transcend the negativity, we have to address it before we reframe it. Reframing straight to the positive without dealing with the underlying issue has a name in the psychology literature: toxic positivity. Verywell Mind describes it as the expectation that people keep a cheerful outlook no matter how bad a situation actually is, a "good vibes only" stance that pushes difficult emotions aside rather than working through them. Optimism is useful. Mandatory optimism is not.
Showing compassion doesn't mean reframing situations with toxic positivity. It means being kind and acting with empathy. When we show compassion, we better understand the realities that someone else may be going through, and then we can support them.
Protect Your Own Time the Way You Protect a Scheduled Meeting
Society may argue that educators only work nine months out of the year, but this couldn't be farther from the truth. A great deal of the work happens outside contracted classroom hours: planning, grading, communicating with families, and the administrative load that keeps growing. RAND's 2026 survey named time spent working outside contract hours among teachers' top sources of job-related stress. Taking time for yourself gets put on the back burner because, as educators, we tend to prioritize everyone else before ourselves.
We have to find time to take care of ourselves. That may look like scheduling time to exercise, much like we make an appointment for IEP meetings. It may mean grocery shopping so there's better food to eat, rather than continuing to eat out or relying on fast food. If faith or spiritual practice matters to you, protect time for that as well. Some days, something as small as allowing time to make a couple of phone calls and get bills paid seems impossible.
Take the time anyway. If we let these necessary tasks slide, they gradually build up, and we find it harder to make the time to give support to others. In my experience, the scheduling part matters more than the activity. A workout that lives on your calendar is more likely to happen than one you plan to fit in somewhere.
Why Giving to Yourself Lets You Give More to Others
Taking the second strategy a step further, there's a concept from the High Trust Philosophy. Dennis McLaughlin states, "The more we give ourselves, the more we can give to others." That sounds selfish at first. If you believe in servant leadership, it's actually the mechanism that makes servant leadership sustainable.
Use the scenario of giving yourself a small trip. The trip provides time away from the mundane tasks of life at home and work. While you're away, you recharge, enjoy yourself, and reflect on the opportunities you've been given. That gives you energy, and the energy transfers back into supporting others. The process is a continual cycle.
The opposite of that cycle is putting yourself last, working more and more each day until you're bitter with others and with yourself. That is exactly where we don't want to be in our lives, and it's where a surprising number of good teachers end up.
Giving yourself what looks like an indulgence, an extra hour exercising, a proper date with your partner, one more hour of water skiing on the lake, can create a stronger passion for what you do and what you love. For me, it has made it easier to keep giving.
Stay Connected to Friends, Family, and Community
Moving to a new location was difficult for me when it came to making new friends, traveling to see family, and getting out into the community. We use technology to connect more than in any other year in history, and the human connection of face-to-face interaction is still what I crave most.
Now more than ever, we need to connect with friends and family and get out in our communities. That may mean continuing to use social media and technology to communicate, or it may mean actually laying your eyes on someone and hearing their voice. During the pandemic, I visited my parents through a screen door, all of us wearing masks. Driving four hours just to celebrate my dad's ninetieth birthday was worth it. After two months of not seeing my parents face to face, that was exactly what I needed.
We are social beings, and shutting ourselves off from friends, family, and community has lasting consequences for all our relationships, and especially for our own social and emotional health. We need to keep finding ways to connect with the people around us. For teachers, that means people outside the building too. A social circle made entirely of colleagues means every conversation eventually returns to work.
Support Others, and Let Them Support You
Having people who support us can make a real difference. Many of us get support from our circle of colleagues, friends, and loved ones. That support looks different for every person and changes depending on where we are in our lives. We continually find new people to add to the circle, and we may even build new circles as we try to meet our need for human connection.
In much the same way, we can and should support others. Serving others can give us a much-needed sense of humbleness and kindness. When we give our time, our money, and anything else to those who need it, we're modeling what we would want when we need support ourselves. Whether you're an introvert or an extrovert, social connection and mutual support are important parts of wellbeing.
In education, we find ourselves supporting students, families, and organizations in our communities. When our cup is full, we go back to getting support for ourselves, and then we can give again. This constant cycle of giving and receiving support helps us create long-lasting relationships. Many educators give without ever expecting anything in return.
Finding ways to support people virtually has been challenging, and it's doable. Thinking about how we can give support through our words and actions takes time. The more we give, the more we can give ourselves.
I encourage you to put one or more of these strategies in place. What strategy will you start with, and why did you choose that one? I would love to hear from you. Let's fill each other's cups.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does teacher self-care actually mean?
It means deliberately protecting the time, rest, relationships, and health that let you keep doing the job. In practice, that looks like scheduled exercise, food you didn't buy in a drive-through, sleep, and contact with people outside your school building. It is closer to maintenance than to indulgence.
Isn't self-care just a way of avoiding the real problem with teacher workload?
That criticism is fair, and it doesn't make self-care optional. Class sizes, planning time, and pay are structural problems that individual habits cannot fix. What individual habits can do is support your wellbeing while you navigate or advocate for changes to those conditions. Both things are true at once.
How do I know whether I'm burned out or just tired?
Burnout isn't something you can diagnose yourself from a checklist. One sign worth paying attention to is whether adequate rest improves how you feel: ordinary tiredness usually lifts after a weekend or a break, and a flat or cynical feeling toward work you used to care about tends not to. If that pattern lasts several weeks, talk to a healthcare professional or your district's employee assistance program rather than waiting for summer.
How do I find time for self-care during the school year?
Put it on the calendar as an appointment, the same way you would an IEP meeting or a parent conference. Unscheduled intentions lose to grading every time. Start with one thing rather than a full routine, because one habit that survives October beats five that collapse in September.
Where can teachers get support beyond their own school?
Many districts offer an employee assistance program, and plenty of teachers don't know theirs exists. What it covers varies, so it's worth asking HR what your plan actually includes and how it handles privacy. Your state affiliate of the National Education Association or the American Federation of Teachers is another route, since both run member wellbeing resources. For physical symptoms, start with a primary care doctor.
- The stress is documented, not imagined - RAND's 2026 State of the American Teacher Survey found 55% of K-12 teachers reporting frequent job-related stress against 34% of comparable working adults.
- Pay attention when rest stops helping - ordinary tiredness usually lifts after a weekend, and several weeks where it doesn't is a reason to talk to a healthcare professional rather than to diagnose yourself.
- Scheduled beats intended - treating exercise, meals, and downtime as calendar appointments can make a habit far more likely to survive the school year.
- Self-care and systemic change aren't rivals - habits won't fix class sizes or planning time, and looking after your wellbeing supports you while you push for both.
- Connection has to reach outside the building - a support circle made only of colleagues turns every conversation back into work.
For some teachers, the thing draining them isn't the profession; it's a role that stopped fitting years ago. Moving into counseling, reading specialism, special education, or school administration changes the actual shape of the workday rather than just the coping strategy. The sponsored programs on this page include online and part-time options built for teachers who are still carrying a full class load.
As a 5th grade teacher, in 2010 Jon won the Presidential Award for Elementary Math and Science Teaching (PAEMST). As a principal, his school won the 2012 Blue Ribbon Award. In 2018, he won the National Distinguished Principal Award (NDP). In 2019 he won the National No Kid Hungry Breakfast Hero Award.
Jon is the author of three guides published on teacher.org: An Educator's Guide to Combat Bullying & Bully Prevention; Teacher Evaluation: A Transition Guide to Exemplary Performance; and You are the Wild Card: Infusing Fun Back into Curriculum. He has authored a children's picture book that was released January 2019 titled Benjamin’s Visit to Principal Reads Office…again! (available at www.archwaypublishing.com)
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