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What Self-Care Actually Means to Teachers

 

What Self-Care Actually Means to Teachers

This is the second post in a series sharing findings from my doctoral dissertation on teacher self-care and retention.


In my last post, I introduced the research behind my dissertation: nine teachers, one central question: Does self-care actually affect whether teachers stay in the classroom? Today I want to dig into one of the clearest findings from that research: teachers and the education world at large often mean two very different things when they say "self-care."

The Wellness Industry Got There First

Walk into any school in August and you'll likely see a poster about self-care in the staff lounge, something about drinking water, taking deep breaths, or scheduling "me time." It's well-intentioned. It's also, according to the teachers I interviewed, almost beside the point.


When wellness culture talks about self-care, it usually means individual habits: exercise, journaling, unplugging on weekends. Useful things, certainly. But when I asked teachers what self-care meant to them in the context of their jobs, the answers rarely stayed in that lane for long.

What Teachers Actually Described

Across my interviews, a different picture of self-care emerged, one that had less to do with personal habits and more to do with working conditions. Teachers talked about things like:


  • Being trusted as professionals, rather than micromanaged down to the minute.

  • Having a workload that was actually possible to complete within a normal workday.

  • Feeling like administrators had their back when a difficult parent interaction or classroom incident happened.

  • Having colleagues and leadership who checked in, not just during a crisis, but as a matter of course.


None of these are things a teacher can achieve alone through a better morning routine. They're structural. They depend on decisions made by school and district leadership; schedules, staffing ratios, communication norms, and culture.

Why the Distinction Matters

This gap matters because it shapes where schools put their energy. If a district believes self-care is primarily a personal responsibility, it's easy to respond to burnout with a wellness newsletter or a yoga session during in-service days. Those gestures aren't harmful, but they also aren't what my interviews suggest actually keeps teachers in the profession.


If, instead, self-care is understood the way the teachers in my study described it, as something schools help create through workload, trust, and support, then the response looks different. It means examining schedules, protecting planning time, and building in real structures for teachers to feel backed up when things get hard.

A Quick Illustration

One teacher I spoke with put it simply: she didn't need her school to remind her to take care of herself. She needed her school to stop creating conditions where self-care wasn't possible in the first place. That distinction came up, in different words, again and again across my interviews.

Coming Up Next

In the next post, I'll share what teachers said about the specific role administrators and school leaders played, for better or worse, in whether they felt supported enough to stay. If you're a school leader, this next one is worth paying close attention to.

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