A teacher who once loved the profession submits her resignation mid-year, unable to continue. Another stays but operates on fumes—going through motions without the energy or enthusiasm that once characterized her practice. Another considers leaving daily but can't afford the salary cut other careers would bring. Teacher burnout and turnover have reached concerning levels across Canada, threatening education quality through both the teachers who leave and those who stay while depleted.
Understanding Teacher Burnout
Burnout is more than ordinary fatigue. It involves emotional exhaustion—feeling drained with nothing left to give. It involves depersonalization—detachment from students and work that once mattered. It involves reduced personal accomplishment—feeling that efforts don't matter and work lacks meaning. These three dimensions combine into a syndrome that affects both teacher wellbeing and educational quality.
Teacher burnout rates have increased substantially, particularly since the pandemic. Surveys consistently show significant proportions of Canadian teachers reporting burnout symptoms. The numbers vary by study and definition, but the pattern is clear: more teachers are burning out than in previous decades, and the problem has accelerated recently.
The costs of burnout extend beyond individual suffering. Burned-out teachers provide lower quality instruction. They have less patience for challenging students. They're less likely to innovate or go beyond minimum expectations. Students notice when teachers are depleted, and their educational experience suffers. The impact of burnout compounds as it spreads through school staffs.
Drivers of Teacher Burnout
Workload intensity has increased substantially. Teachers report more expectations than previous generations faced—more curriculum, more assessment, more documentation, more differentiation, more communication, more initiatives. The job has expanded without corresponding time expansion. Something always goes undone, and that incompleteness creates stress.
Classroom complexity has grown. Inclusive education places students with diverse needs in regular classrooms without always providing adequate support. Mental health challenges among students have increased. Behavioral challenges require teacher response. Managing increasingly complex classrooms while meeting increasingly demanding expectations exceeds what normal working hours allow.
Administrative burden consumes time that might otherwise support wellbeing. Documentation requirements, reporting obligations, and bureaucratic tasks take time from instruction and preparation. Teachers may spend evenings and weekends on paperwork rather than rest and recovery. The non-teaching demands of teaching have grown.
Lack of autonomy contributes to burnout. Teachers who feel controlled rather than trusted, who must follow prescribed approaches rather than exercise professional judgment, who face accountability without authority experience stress that autonomy would buffer. The deprofessionalization of teaching—treating teachers as implementers rather than professionals—undermines the meaning that might sustain commitment.
Teacher Turnover Patterns
Teacher turnover has both obvious and hidden costs. When teachers leave, schools lose expertise, relationships, and institutional knowledge. New teachers must be recruited, hired, and supported—all resource-intensive processes. Students experience disruption when teachers leave mid-year or when they face new teachers repeatedly.
Early-career turnover is particularly concerning. Significant proportions of new teachers leave within their first five years. The investment in their preparation doesn't produce the career-long return that longer tenure would provide. Schools in challenging contexts often see the highest early-career turnover, creating staffing instability where stability is most needed.
Turnover varies by context. Schools serving lower-income communities, schools with challenging working conditions, and schools in less desirable locations often have higher turnover than well-resourced schools in sought-after areas. This turnover pattern means students facing the most challenges often have the least experienced and most frequently changing teachers.
Retirement-related turnover adds another dimension. As large cohorts of teachers retire, their institutional knowledge and mentorship capacity leave with them. Replacing experienced teachers with newcomers changes school cultures and capabilities. The demographic wave of retirement creates systemic transition challenges.
What Burnout Looks Like in Practice
Teachers experiencing burnout may not recognize it immediately. Gradual depletion feels like normal fatigue until exhaustion becomes overwhelming. Coping mechanisms that once worked stop working. The resilience that sustained through previous challenges fails. Recognition often comes after burnout has already taken hold.
Signs of burnout include: dreading work that once brought satisfaction; cynicism about students, colleagues, or the profession; difficulty concentrating or completing tasks; physical symptoms like headaches, insomnia, or illness; emotional numbing or excessive emotional reactions; withdrawal from colleagues and school community. These signs may appear gradually or suddenly.
Schools can recognize burnout patterns through observation: increased sick leave, reduced voluntary involvement, disengagement from collaborative activities, declining quality of instruction or relationships. But recognition requires attention, and burned-out colleagues often remain invisible until crisis forces acknowledgment.
Addressing Burnout and Turnover
Individual-level interventions help some teachers manage symptoms. Wellness programs, mental health supports, stress management training, and self-care promotion all have value. But individual interventions alone cannot address systemic problems. Telling overwhelmed teachers to practice self-care without reducing their overwhelming demands may be inadequate or even insulting.
Workload management requires systemic attention. Reducing initiatives that pile onto teacher responsibilities. Providing preparation time proportionate to expectations. Ensuring class sizes allow individualized attention. Staffing schools adequately for student needs. These systemic changes address burnout causes rather than only treating symptoms.
Building supportive school cultures helps prevent burnout. Collaborative environments where teachers support each other. Administrative practices that communicate trust and appreciation. Reasonable expectations that acknowledge human limits. Work environments that enable rather than merely demand. Culture change requires leadership commitment and sustained attention.
Retention requires attention to why teachers leave. Exit interviews that honestly explore departing teachers' reasons. Conditions that make staying more attractive than leaving. Support for struggling teachers before they reach departure. The teachers most likely to leave often have options that make retention an active choice.
Systemic Responsibilities
Addressing burnout and turnover is not only individual or school-level responsibility. Provincial policies shape working conditions through funding levels, class size regulations, curriculum expectations, and accountability requirements. Collective agreements establish workload provisions that may or may not protect teachers. System-level decisions create conditions in which burnout either flourishes or is prevented.
The cost calculation should include burnout's costs. What does turnover actually cost in recruitment, training, and lost expertise? What does burned-out teaching cost in reduced educational quality? What does teacher mental health crisis cost in sick leave and disability claims? These costs are real even when not appearing on educational budget lines.
Questions for Consideration
What working conditions contribute most to teacher burnout in your community? What would it take to make teaching a sustainable career rather than a depleting one? Whose responsibility is addressing teacher burnout—individual teachers, schools, systems, or some combination? When you observe teacher burnout, what are you seeing and what does it mean for students?