Burnout does not happen in a vacuum. Collective care can provide a more holistic approach to identifying burnout and, ultimately, better supporting students, educators and administrators. “Collective care refers to seeing members’ well-being — particularly their emotional health — as a shared responsibility of the group rather than the lone task of an individual” (Mehreen & Gray-Donald, 2018).
Defining burnout
Refusing the validity of feelings like exhaustion, self-doubt and sadness can isolate us from the communities that understand what we are navigating. As educators, it is common to be afraid of burdening others with our overwhelm, but when sharing, we might find our peers have shared experiences. This allows space for vulnerability, empathy and relationship building.
How workloads are structured, when deadlines are set and what expectations there are for representing school values are usually outside of an educator’s control. Alleviating the stressors from institutional demands requires intentional and focused interventions. How might we intentionally invite more flexibility into our routines? For example, can educators and administrators engage in thoughtful, shared decision making about meeting schedules and internal deadlines?
Larger systemic factors also contribute to burnout. For example, Home Owners’ Loan Corporation maps from 1935–1940 still “relate to current patterns of school and district funding, school racial diversity, and school performance” as the legacy of redlining and housing segregation are present in “modern-day educational outcomes” plagued by “persistent and widening gaps” (Lukes & Cleveland, 2021).
Further, the “rising incidence of childhood trauma and mental health problems” compounds these existing “racially disparate burdens,” including “greater exposure to violence or abuse in the home, loss of family members to COVID-19, parents losing jobs, and evictions” in the years following the pandemic (Losen et al., 2021). To situate the stressors and burnout faced in education today as a purely individual problem necessitating individual solutions ignores the larger contextual pieces at play.
A personal testimony on the weight of individualism
“In my final semester of teaching, I spent a lot of my energy keeping a brave face on. It was 2021 and I thought that my school needed the very best version of me in order to survive the pandemic. Then, one day, a basket was delivered to my classroom containing snacks, a soda, and a list of the ‘top 10 signs of teacher burnout.’
“My anxious mind looked at the basket in horror, thinking that I had been found out. That someone gave me this gift because my exhaustion was obvious. Was I doing a horrible job of hiding it? I was so worried about my burnout being a secret that I could not appreciate the kind intention behind the gift, even though a soda still wouldn’t fix the much larger problems my students, colleagues and I were facing.” –Anonymous educator
Many who serve their communities in caretaking roles often neglect to give that same level of attention and care to their own needs. While the specific details of this educator’s testimony are not universal, the shame and guilt that they experienced with burnout are common. Anonymous, like many educators, felt a personal sense of responsibility for “how well” they carried or concealed the individual impacts of their burnout. Our work environments often do not prioritize collective care and connection.
Move toward collective care.
Oftentimes, educators experience their roles as solitary. Career and technical educators, in particular, frequently report feeling siloed. And this can be exacerbated even more for educators who take on the additional responsibility of advocating for marginalized students. These experiences can lead to feelings of isolation or being othered, which can exhaust energy and impact self-worth.
Collective care asks us to share the responsibility of caring for one another. Tricia Hersey (2023), the founder of The Nap Ministry, shared concrete tools and resources. “We need one another in order to make it,” Hersey wrote. “Be curious about the ways you can connect, care and collaborate with others while on your rest journey.”
Four steps educators can take
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- Prioritize identifying others who can join and encourage you on your journey toward connection, care and collaboration.
- Build meaningful relationships with these individuals, in and out.side of the learning environment.
- Experiment with different modalities that support mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health.
- Create a system of loving accountability that encourages long-term, sustainable collective care practices.
“Community care is central to this rest movement. You will not be able to disrupt and deprogram from the teachings of grind culture alone,” Hersey continued. “You will not move toward liberation from an exhausted state. It’s not possible. Collective rest is possible. You are not alone.”
In closing
It is important to note that building community can and should take time. Opportunities to pause, reflect and build meaningful relationships are essential. When reflecting on your community of support, your circle may start (and/or remain) small. This is not uncommon, nor a deficit to the process.
Remember that rest and communal care is a practice. This knowledge allows us to release the weight of perfectionism and challenge the ideology that more is better. Integrating a rest and collective care practice is unique to each person and each institution. It will look different depending on interest, capacity and access.
We invite you to reflect on your own journey in education. We are hopeful that viewing burnout through individual, institutional and systemic lenses will help you to release any expectations of carrying your stress, grief or frustration alone. Our goal has always been to leave you feeling encouraged to build an intentional community of support. We sincerely appreciate all of the incredible work educators do to support students and their wider communities. Your wisdom, dedication and commitment to caring for our next generation of changemakers is invaluable. May you find rest, joy and connection.
Kayla Santana-Linares is the professional development manager for the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity and previously served her central Texas community as a middle school teacher.
Ashley Conrad, M.S., is a thoughtful facilitator, community organizer, and researcher committed to a lifetime of working alongside our most vulnerable populations to create a more just world through collective action and policy change.
