Schools, Not Teachers, Must Reduce Stress and Burnout—Here’s How Educators’ health and well-being should be prioritized in school culture; school leaders can help create the conditions for that.

School counselors are “shouldering the tremendous responsibility of helping young people heal from the momentous events of the past year and ongoing traumas,” write Justina Schlund and Amanda Fitzgerald for ASCD’s In Service blog, and school leaders, they say, should prioritize counselors’ wellbeing.

But there’s no doubt that the stress of this disrupted school year is impacting all educators, and even under more normal circumstances, teachers are besieged by stressful, taxing conditions like overcrowded classrooms, long hours, crushing workloads that they often tote home, and the expectation that they meet the emotional and physical needs of all of their students.

While many of the larger problems that lead to widespread teacher burnout are not within the power of school leaders to change—class size, for example—others are. If the well-being of teachers is compromised by issues inherent to the school system, then dispensing vague or impractical guidance that places the onus to fix it on teachers is unfair, and won’t work. Instead of “make space to restore your balance” or “find time to exercise more,” schools need to acknowledge their role in the problem and put in place the structures, practices, and time for self-care, reflection, and general well-being among educators, school staff, and the leaders themselves.

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