The following blog post presents important information from the online magazine Healthline and written by Jase Peeples on June 30, 2022.
Poor well-being among educators can have ripple effects for teachers and students alike.
“We know from other research that people who are experiencing a lot of stress in their jobs can have problems with their physical health and problems with their mental well-being,” Steiner said. “Those things could then cause them potentially to be absent from school or to be less engaged in their jobs.”
For students, educators who aren’t present (both physically and mentally) often translate to less detailed and meaningful feedback, less challenging assignments, and overall less engaged teaching.
“Those sorts of actions can also affect student learning,” Steiner said.
Turnover is also a concern.
The APA Task Force report found that nearly half of the teachers surveyed expressed a desire or plan to quit or transfer to another school.
Similarly, the RAND report found that educators who were not coping well with job-related stress were more likely to indicate that they intended to leave their job. “Of course, saying you’re going to leave your job and actually leaving your job are two very different things,” Steiner said. “But if people do leave their jobs, turnover is not great for schools, it’s not great for school climate, it’s not great for student learning.”