Real Talk About Educator Burnout

What happens when teachers are encouraged to ask for support, but worry that doing so will count against them? In this episode of Real Talk About Educator Burnout, physical education teacher Derek Bradbury shares his experiences across 12 years in education. From losing planning periods to taking on unexpected duties, Derek describes how the demands surrounding teaching can leave educators stretched thin before they even begin a lesson.

We talk about student behavior, the emotional impact of responding to a crisis, and what happens when staff are expected to keep going without meaningful follow-up support. Derek also reflects on choosing part-time work for his family and exploring other ways to contribute to education. Throughout the conversation, we return to the importance of trust, clear expectations, and teachers, administrators, parents, and students working together.

In this episode you'll hear...

• How extra duties and lost planning time push schoolwork into teachers’ personal and family time.
• The challenges of meeting different student needs while managing behavior and pressure around standardized testing.
• Why asking for classroom support can feel risky when teachers believe it may affect their evaluations.
• The lasting emotional impact of a student crisis and the need to support the educators involved.
• What clearer communication, adequate staffing, and stronger partnerships could mean for educator wellness and retention.

Let's Connect:

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What happens when you spend your days supporting everyone else and have little left for yourself or your family? School social worker Emily Earnest shares how eight years in an elementary school shaped her love for the work—and how constant crisis response, growing responsibilities, and repeated exposure to student trauma eventually became unsustainable.

In this episode of Real Talk About Educator Burnout, Emily reflects on emotional exhaustion, the relationships that made leaving difficult, and her decision to move to a new school and set different boundaries. We also explore why educator wellness requires more than reminders about self-care, and how adequate staffing, meaningful staff input, and school systems that prioritize emotional safety can better support both adults and students.

In this episode you'll hear...

• How daily crisis response and exposure to student trauma affected Emily’s emotional well-being and life at home.
• Why supportive colleagues mattered—and why those relationships also made changing schools difficult.
• How Emily recognized she needed a change and set boundaries around committees, work at home, and family time.
• Why self-care recommendations fall short when the conditions contributing to educator burnout stay the same.
• How staffing, educator voice, and attention to each school’s needs can support emotional regulation and create space for learning.

Resources Mentioned:

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.

Let's Connect:

Website: https://willowtreewellnesscoaching.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WillowTreeWellnessCo/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willowtreewellnesscoaching

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/willow-tree-wellness-llc/

Join Our Facebook Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beyondburnouteducators

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What happens when you spend your school day supporting everyone else, then get home feeling like you have nothing left for your own family? Hannah, a school social worker with 13 years of experience in the social work field, joins us to talk honestly about the emotional demands of caring for students, supporting teachers, and responding to daily crises.

Hannah shares how she learned to protect her time, recognize the weight of others’ trauma, and set boundaries that helped her be more present at home. We also explore what schools can do to support educator well-being, from providing trauma-informed training and additional staff to moving meetings into the school day. As Hannah considers whether private practice might be her next step, we discuss the working conditions that can make staying in education difficult—and why the difference you make may become visible years later.

In this episode you'll hear...

• How growing caseloads, daily crises, and competing responsibilities contribute to school social worker burnout.
• Why trauma-informed practices include understanding both students’ experiences and the personal stress adults bring into the classroom.
• How boundaries around email, lunch breaks, and bringing work home helped Hannah protect time and energy for her family.
• What supportive school leadership can look like, including listening to staff, adding personnel, and protecting time outside contract hours.
• Why building connections with students matters, even when you don’t get to see the long-term impact of your work.

Let's Connect:

Website: https://willowtreewellnesscoaching.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WillowTreeWellnessCo/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willowtreewellnesscoaching

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/willow-tree-wellness-llc/

Join Our Facebook Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beyondburnouteducators

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Lisa McMorris loved teaching. Over 35 years in early elementary education, she built a career around helping children learn and feel supported. But as the demands of the job grew, she found herself working late, carrying students’ struggles home, and wondering whether she could keep going. In this episode of Real Talk About Educator Burnout, Lisa joins Lori Herman to reflect on what changed and why she chose to retire earlier than planned.

Their conversation makes room for both the joy and the weight of teaching. Lisa describes the difference a caring principal made when she was overwhelmed, while also explaining why individual support could only do so much when responsibilities kept piling up. She shares what she wishes she had known about boundaries earlier in her career and what she hopes school leaders will hear from teachers today.

In this episode you'll hear...

• How Lisa’s passion for teaching shaped her career and made it difficult to step back when she needed to.
• Why growing workloads and assessment demands left less time and energy for the parts of teaching she loved.
• What it can feel like to support students through difficult experiences while carrying that concern beyond the school day.
• How a principal’s regular check-ins helped Lisa feel seen, even when larger demands remained.
• Lisa’s advice to school leaders: listen to teachers before making decisions that change their work, and take something off their plates when adding more.

Let's Connect:

Website: https://willowtreewellnesscoaching.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WillowTreeWellnessCo/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willowtreewellnesscoaching

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/willow-tree-wellness-llc/

Join Our Facebook Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beyondburnouteducators

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What does it look like when the people caring for students are running out of capacity themselves? In the first episode of Real Talk About Educator Burnout, Mary Abbott and Lori Herman share the experiences that led them to start Willow Tree Wellness and this podcast. Both have spent years supporting students and colleagues in schools, and both reached a point where they wondered how much longer they could keep going.

Mary and Lori talk candidly about the pressure to stay late, take on more, and treat burnout as a personal problem to solve with better self-care. They explain why educator well-being also depends on school systems: manageable demands, support during classroom crises, and time to recover afterward. This conversation introduces their Educator Capacity System and the question they hope more schools will ask: How are our educators doing?

In this episode you'll hear...

• Why Mary and Lori began looking for a better way to support educators.
• How expectations to always do more can make it hard to set boundaries.
• Why self-care alone cannot fix unsustainable working conditions.
• What repeated classroom crises can mean for educators and students.
• How the Educator Capacity System looks at both the demands educators face and the support available to them.

Let's Connect:

Website: https://willowtreewellnesscoaching.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WillowTreeWellnessCo/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willowtreewellnesscoaching

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/willow-tree-wellness-llc/

Join Our Facebook Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beyondburnouteducators

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What if the way we measure success in our schools is missing something?

Across the country, dedicated educators are asking themselves a question many never imagined they would have to ask: "How much longer can I keep doing this?" More than half of educators are experiencing burnout, but behind every statistic is a person, a story, and a voice that deserves to be heard.

Welcome to Real Talk about Educator Burnout, presented by Willow Tree Wellness. We're Mary Abbott, Megan Jones, and Lori Herman, school social workers and education leaders with more than seventy-five years of combined experience working in schools. And we've seen firsthand both the extraordinary commitment of educators and the toll this work can take. That's why we created this podcast.

Through honest conversations from teachers, school social workers, counselors, paraprofessionals, administrators, and other education professionals, along with insights from experts in the field, we're gonna go beyond the statistics to explore what it's really like to work in schools today, what's driving burnout, why educators are leaving, what helps them stay, and what needs to change.

At Willow Tree Wellness, we believe educator well-being directly impacts student success, and it's time our education system recognizes that connection. Imagine if every school district not only asked, "How are students doing?" but also, "How are our educators doing?" Because educator well-being and student success are not competing priorities. They're inseparable. We're not just working to reduce educator burnout. We're working to redefine what successful schools look like. We need to stop asking, "How can our educators become more resilient?" and start asking, "What's happening in our schools that's causing so many educators to burn out?" Because educator burnout isn't simply an individual problem.

It's time we start examining and changing the systems and conditions contributing to it. Welcome to Real Talk about Educator Burnout. Let's get into it.

Let's Connect:

Website: https:/willowtreewellnesscoaching.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WillowTreeWellnessCo/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willowtreewellnesscoaching

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/willow-tree-wellness-llc/

Join Our Facebook Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beyondburnouteducators

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