Supporting Teacher and Staff Well-Being in K-12 Schools: A Key to Success

In recent years, the importance of supporting the well-being of faculty and staff has become more evident than ever. With increasing pressures on educators, burnout is a growing concern. Prioritizing the wellness of teachers and staff can lead to a more effective, positive educational environment for both educators and students.

Stats & Impact on Teacher Wellness

Research indicates that approximately 50% of teachers report feeling stressed or burnt out. The emotional, physical, and mental toll of the profession can lead to high turnover rates, negatively impacting student outcomes.

In fact, studies show that teacher burnout leads to lower job satisfaction and ultimately a reduction in teacher effectiveness. Supporting teachers’ mental and emotional health is not just a matter of employee satisfaction – it directly impacts the quality of education students receive.

4 Warning Signs that Teachers and Staff are Struggling

As a school leader, it’s important to recognize the signs that teachers and staff are not doing well. These can include:

• Increased Absenteeism: Teachers or staff members frequently missing work could be a sign of stress, burnout, or mental health struggles.
• Decline in Performance: A decrease in classroom management skills, engagement with students, or overall performance could indicate a teacher is feeling overwhelmed.
• Irritability or Withdrawal: Emotional distancing or becoming short-tempered with students or colleagues may be a sign of stress or exhaustion.
• Physical Symptoms: Frequent Illness or complaints of headaches, sleep issues, or fatigue can indicate that staff members are not managing stress well.

Supporting Teacher Well-being

For teachers and staff members to be most effective in supporting students, it’s important for them to be able to manage their own stress and anxiety. In 10 Strategies to Help Students Manage Stress and Anxiety, a guide created in collaboration with Natalie Asayag, licensed social worker and Vector Solutions course author, Asayag suggests the following strategies for self-care and stress management:

• Avoid absorbing students’ stress and anxiety. Stress and anxiety can be contagious, so keep in mind that you, the teacher, likely won’t be able to completely mitigate a student’s stress. The hope is to teach the student strategies so they can manage it better themselves.
• Seek mental health support from your school or district if you need it.
• Engage in self-care activities. Moving the body through walking or dancing, doing breathing exercises, or participating in activities you enjoy will help alleviate stress and anxiety.
• Create a “reservoir of joy” that you can tap into when feeling stressed. This could be doing activities or hobbies you love, or activities that promote positive social interactions and connection. Laughter is also a powerful tool to support well-being.
• Have transitional time between your workday and the next thing you are doing. For instance, take extra time in the car after a stressful day to think about and work through that stress so you aren’t carrying it home.

Administrators can help by making sure schools and districts have strong staff well-being programs in place – and making sure to create time in the schedule for teachers to take advantage of this support.

Establishing Policies that Support Mental Health Awareness

As a leader, you know that mental health is a broad term, and many conditions fall under it. There is no one size fits all approach to supporting staff with mental health issues.

We recommend considering these eight opportunities to improve policies and practices that better support mental health awareness:

• Creating and communicating a mental health plan at work – Leadership should communicate to staff the importance of mental health and that being open about their challenges will bring them support, not discrimination.
• Communicating your message using technology – Consider creating an intranet webpage with easily accessible mental health information.
• Ensuring open conversations – It will be important for the school’s leadership to set an example by finding ways to normalize conversations around mental health and well-being, both during recruitment and day-to-day operations.
• Ensuring good working conditions – You and your team need to discuss and look for several ways they can foster and promote a healthy work-life balance for employees.
• Promoting effective people management – The way leaders behave and the relationship they have with staff shape how employees respond when they’re experiencing poor mental health. It’s vital that leadership knows how to engage with faculty in a positive and supportive way.
• Training and supporting supervisors – Proactively developing person-specific action plans that identify signs of mental health problems, triggers, and whom to contact in a crisis are essential for success.
• Offering appropriate workplace adjustments – Employers are responsible for creating and maintaining a physically and psychologically safe working environment. At the same time, much can be gained by taking action to help individuals with pre-existing mental health issues unrelated to their jobs.
• Routinely monitoring workers’ mental wellness – It’s important to help employees recognize mental health issues – and to provide a clear path to get help when they need it. For example, staff could be given self-report screeners for mental health issues.

New Online Professional Development Course: Supporting Employee Well-being for Supervisors

Many of us face mental wellness challenges at some point in our lives. Whether it’s a bad mood, a particularly sad day, worries about things at home, or more significant and ongoing challenges such as depression, anxiety, or secondary trauma, these challenges can sometimes affect our performance at work.

This, in turn, can have an impact on everyone else in the workplace. Education staff, for example, also face challenges such as funding concerns, staffing shortages, and managing student behavior in the classroom.

To support the efforts of K-12 schools in addressing staff well-being, Vector Solutions has developed a new course titled “Supporting Employee Well-being for Supervisors.” Available in Vector’s Safety & Compliance staff training library, this course examines historical and social factors contributing to mental health challenges, the impact of mental health issues on school district employees, and how to establish policies and adjustments supporting employee well-being.

Vector’s courses are engaging and authored by subject-matter experts. They include pre- and post-course assessments and reporting to help administrators monitor and measure learning. The courses are available in multiple languages.