Class dismissed: Too much stress is driving teachers to rethink their profession

The pandemic has pushed many teachers to their breaking points as they attempt to navigate the new reality of being an educator during the crisis.

Hybrid learning, the politicization of mask and vaccine mandates, angry parents, disinterested children and low wages are causing more teachers to become disillusioned with their profession of choice.

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Only 38% percent of teachers say they have a “somewhat or very positive” view of the state of their profession, according to a survey by educational technology company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. That’s a decline from 49% in 2020. Just 37% educators think the pandemic will increase respect for teachers, another significant decrease from 63% in 2020.

“The teacher is the most critical factor in a student’s school success, so it concerns me when I see the positive view of the profession decline,” says Francie Alexander, chief research officer at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and a former teacher. “We all know that the last two years of school have been unlike any others, and so far in this new school year, we have already experienced fits and starts.”

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But the positive view of the profession isn’t the only thing on the decline. Teachers are saying their mental health has reached new lows thanks to the pandemic.

Eighty percent of K-12 teachers surveyed by Vida Health, a virtual therapy and healthcare provider, said that 2020 was the most stressful year of their careers, compared to 71% of non-teachers. When asked what word they’d used to describe their mental state over the past year, 55% of respondents said “stressed.” Yet only 38% of teachers have successfully sought out professional mental health support in the last 18 months, while another 14% said they tried and failed to get support.

“K-12 teachers typically can't just pop out in the middle of their workday to go see a therapist,” Chris Mosunic, chief clinical officer at Vida Health, said in a release. “So virtual therapy can be particularly helpful to them. In fact, during the pandemic, we saw that teachers enrolled in virtual mental health and therapy programs at a higher rate than other professions.”

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Schools, like all employers, have a responsibility to ensure their employees are living and working at their emotional best. The statistics suggest it may be time for schools to provide benefits to their teachers that will better support their mental health.

“By providing teachers with more convenient channels for accessing mental and physical healthcare, schools can fully support the well-being of their staff which will, in turn, create a more productive classroom,” says Nicole Henry, the director of health benefits at Self-Insured Schools of California, the largest public school pool in the U.S. “It’s a win for everyone.”

Some of the factors teachers say are impacting their mental health, according to the Vida survey, include health and safety concerns (44%), juggling their own child's remote learning with virtual teaching (36%), the stress of virtual teaching (32%), a lack of work-life balance (32%) and reduced school budgets (28%).

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Schools may not have the budget available to them to provide employer-sponsored mental health benefits the way companies like PwC or United Healthcare do, but they can still offer educational resources to teachers on where to find quality and affordable mental health care. Schools can also take a page from the playbooks of larger corporations and establish support groups or EAPs that focus on supporting teachers' overall well-being.

“Teaching isn’t an easy job,” Alexander says. “It’s been compared to other professions like medicine — what if a doctor was treating thirty patients at once? Teachers are looking out for the unique academic, physical, and social-emotional needs of all their students, and that’s especially challenging and stressful right now.”