Teachers need more than mental health days to cope with burnout and stress

Illinois lawmakers are proposing a bill that would allow teachers to use sick days for mental health reasons. Senate Bill 3914, which would also provide educators up to five mental health days off per year, passed the Senate unanimously and was discussed at a House committee hearing recently.

The bill comes at a time when a significant number of educators have chosen to retire early, resign or change careers due to the mounting strain their jobs are putting on their mental health. The question is: Will it be enough to entice teachers to stay?

Today’s teachers are working longer hours, navigating the systemic inequities that permeate education, shifting in and out of remote learning, living with a daily fear of catching COVID-19, and dealing with the impact of racial unrest in America and the violent conflicts overseas.

They must also support students who are struggling with their mental health more than at any time in recent history. This stress negatively impacts the well-being of teachers and further strains the educator-student relationship. Teachers cannot create and maintain these crucial relationships with students when their tank is running on empty.

I’ve seen this firsthand as a former teacher, and now in my work with our Teach for America corps members who work as new teachers for two years in our partnering schools. At our winter leadership summit, professional development training for the new teachers in our program, many teachers asked us to pause the day’s programming to address their concerns about stressors like these.

We listened as they candidly spoke about the challenges they face and requested we as an organization do more to support them with the resources and activities they need to sustain their work. Without question, teachers care deeply about their students and desire to continue onward, but we heard loud and clear that without intervention, the sustainability of teaching is in question.

Educator mental health has lingered in the background for years until the pandemic thrust this issue center stage. What happened during our winter leadership summit is not just a unique set of isolated voices but a collective crescendo of lived experiences, weariness and the need to feel seen by all educators who have been on the frontlines over the past two years.

In the weeks after the summit, we examined where we could more explicitly integrate self-care, wellness and healing in our programmatic spaces. Additionally, we began searching for partners and resources uniquely positioned to support our coaching team and our corps members.

Even as we are poised to integrate healing conversations, Trauma 101 training and other support into our program, we know this is still not enough. We are trying to triage the symptoms of burnout, exhaustion and compassion fatigue that our educators are feeling.

We need the collective community to recognize that the destiny of our students and all educators, not just TFA educators, are tied together. There can be no true learning in our school communities without targeted mental health and social and emotional learning support for both students and the adults teaching them.

We applaud the major steps lawmakers in Illinois are taking to offer mental health days for our educators. The truth is, mental health days off won’t be enough to provide our teachers with the support needed to thrive in the classroom.

We are turning on the “bat signal,” if you will, to pull together other organizations, non-profits, elected officials and school communities to figure out sustainable solutions to fully addressing educator mental health. We need each other to forge a pathway toward healing and wholeness for the sake of our profession and our students.

Marci Dones is managing director of leadership and learning, Teach For America — Greater Chicago-Northwest Indiana.

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