What Can I Take Off Your Plate?

Book excerpt: Teacher burnout demands systemic solutions, not "self-care." Learn what leaders can do to actively reduce frustration and provide real, sustaining support for all staff. With teachers across the board assuming additional responsibilities, stress and job dissatisfaction are more prevalent than ever. Widespread staff shortages, which further increase workloads, and budget directives that require everyone to do more with less continue to demotivate and erode morale. It’s no wonder so many teachers choose to leave the profession—or that many who remain feel overworked and unappreciated. The proper response from principals and other school leaders is not to encourage so-called self-care but rather to take a systemic approach that focuses on the factors they can control: time, effort, and resources. To increase teacher retention and alleviate the compounded effects of teacher burnout, leaders need to ask less of their staff and offer them more. In What Can I Take Off Your Plate?, veteran educators Jill Handley and Lara Donnelly detail both the immediate steps you can take to triage your staff's emotional exhaustion and the big-picture structural changes you can make to reduce frustration, increase motivation, and support the whole teacher. You'll learn useful ways to * Reduce initiative fatigue. * Give the gift of time. * Support from within the classroom. * Foster and support a healthy work-life balance. * Demonstrate appreciation. * Infuse fun in the workplace. This book is for school leaders who are ready to treat burnout like the complicated challenge it is—and meet it with both focused action and the lasting, sustainable solutions it demands.