The Teachers are Not Alright: A Call for Research and Policy on Teacher Stress and Well-Being

ABSTRACT

Since 2015, several high-profile surveys have painted a grim portrait of teacher stress and job satisfaction. Although some educators have attributed those trends to educational accountability and reform, little evidence exists connecting education policies to teacher working conditions or – more distally – to the mental and physical health of educators. In this commentary article, we accentuate the deep connections between education policy, working conditions, teacher stress and satisfaction, and school climate and student experiences. We present promising results from a recent study published in the field of occupational health demonstrating that state-level education policies and reforms are associated with inadequate sleep among teachers. Ultimately, we advocate for three things: (a) expanded research on the interdependencies that exist between policies, working conditions, and teacher health; (b) policies that better engage educators in their design and implementation; and (c) new narratives around teaching – ones that highlight the joys of being in the classroom rather than the challenges.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ In 2015, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society issued a joint statement that less than six hours of sleep is “inappropriate to support optimal health in adults” (Watson et al., 2015, p. 1169). The BRFSS only includes sleep duration data rounded to the hour, meaning that by setting our threshold at six hours, we may be inadvertently capturing some teachers who reported sleeping between 6.0 and 6.49 hours.