After I was named National Teacher of the Year in 2017, I went through an intensive media training session inside of a sleek office building in Washington, D.C., to prepare for my first big event: a live interview on CBS This Morning. My trainers, a group of poised, professional women who seemed effortlessly self-assured in front of a camera, ran me through several scenarios: how to talk to a reporter, how to navigate "gotcha" questions, and how to handle questions on live TV. They pointed an imposing video camera at my face and told me to relax.
"What made you want to become a teacher?" one of the trainers asked, smiling.
That one was easy. But then the questions got harder: "What is the biggest problem in schools today?" "What do you think about standardized testing?" And, finally, "What do you want the president to know about your students?"
Donald Trump had been inaugurated a couple of months earlier, and my students back home in Boston were worried about deportation, transgender rights, and other issues. I wanted the president to know that his campaign-trail rhetoric about immigrants, women, and people of color was deeply harmful to them. I wanted him to know that my students were brilliant and creative and funny. I wanted him to know that they were capable of changing the world for the better.
But with an upcoming visit to the Oval Office looming in my mind, none of that came out. Instead, my mind scrambled, a mess of thoughts without words. I stammered and froze. The fear that had been roiling inside of me all morning boiled up in my throat. I can't do this. They made a mistake. Everyone is going to be so disappointed in me. I'm a failure. Through tears and gasping breath, I tried to explain to the concerned faces around the table. "Sometimes I get really overwhelmed," I said. "I have anxiety."
Looking back, I realize this was a situation that would have intimidated many people—but for me it was especially difficult. While being named Teacher of the Year was a true gift, the experience also triggered my anxiety in very real ways. I had gone from spending my days with kids in the classroom to strategizing about my "platform" as National Teacher of the Year. My anxiety, which has been with me since childhood, heightened my brain's response. I existed in a constant state of "fight or flight," adrenaline coursing through my body.
Living with Anxiety
My anxiety works like this: Something goes wrong—maybe I phrase an idea in an awkward way, or I miss a deadline, or the person in the car behind me wants to pass. Then my thoughts begin to unravel: Why do I always do this? That person hates me. Then they spiral out of control: I'm never going to be good at this. I need to be more disciplined. What if I get fired? Do I need to update my life insurance? How do I update my life insurance? Why can't I just be a competent adult?
I didn't realize that my anxiety was a problem until after I had been teaching for a couple of years. I'd never noticed it because I thought everyone's brain worked like mine, that this was just the way people felt or the way teaching was supposed to feel like. When, in my early 20s, I finally decided to talk to a doctor about it, she said it sounded like generalized anxiety disorder. "I can give you some medication to help take the edge off, but you should see a therapist, as well," she said.
Over time, therapists helped me unravel the threads of anxiety that had been woven through my entire life. This has helped me manage my condition, but I'm not going to get rid of it. There is no magic cure. This is my normal, and I've learned to cope with it and also see the positive sides of it.
Yet I fear there are many educators out there who don't feel safe admitting they need help because their schools don't offer enough support for mental illness.
Signs of Stress
Over the past several years, as part of being named National Teacher of the Year, I've had the opportunity to talk to teachers from all over the country—and they have a lot of reasons to feel anxious. Teachers care deeply about students' growth and well-being, so even when we're "off," we're on, constantly thinking about how to unscramble confusion about that new skill we're working on, or how to get that one student the reading support she needs, or how to give space to students to process a news cycle spilling over with stories of racism, cruelty, and injustice.
We face an ever-expanding schedule of high-stakes standardized tests and district priorities that seem to shift without warning. In many districts, teachers are working to manage larger classes as resources and time for meaningful professional learning shrink. In addition to these stressors, teachers of color experience isolation, microaggressions by colleagues and administrators, and expectations that they will shoulder a disproportionate amount of responsibility for behavioral interventions or translation.
Add a global pandemic to the mix—complete with policymakers arguing that teacher and student deaths are unfortunate but inevitable—and you have a lot of educators who feel utterly overwhelmed and exhausted.
Don't get me wrong. To be an educator is joyful—but it is also hard. And it's hurting our mental health.
When I mentioned to a colleague that I was writing this article, he told me that he, too, often experiences symptoms of anxiety.
"But," he added, "everyone struggles. I don't feel like I'm special."
This shrugging off of mental health challenges normalizes an unhealthy narrative that says to be a teacher is to be unwell. It reinforces coming in to work sick or ignoring self-care because there just isn't enough time for everything.
Addressing the Stigma
A few years ago, before I was named Teacher of the Year, my school conducted a staff training that focused on identity. The facilitator wanted us to see our commonalities. We gathered in a large room and wrote aspects of our identities on slips of paper. I took one paper and wrote Woman. On another, White. And, hesitating, on the third, Anxiety. The facilitator asked us to step forward, one by one, and read out one of our identities. As my colleagues read the words they had written down, we walked to join them if we shared those identities. I crossed the room to join the white people, then the women. When it was my turn to share, I took a deep breath and said, "I am a person with anxiety."
At once, as if they had been waiting, a wave of my colleagues came toward me. People who appeared confident, people who appeared capable and put together. Veterans and new staff. Once everyone had crossed the room, about one-third of our entire school staff stood next to me. We looked at each other shyly but gratefully, a secret society now out in the open. I was amazed to see just how many of my colleagues, some of whom I had worked with for years, were also living with anxiety.
One reason we hadn't found each other before that day is because mental illness still has a stigma attached to it, and people do not always feel safe admitting their struggles with it. Some populations, including new teachers and teachers of color, are especially vulnerable to this stigma. I was able to disclose my own struggle with anxiety not only because I had been teaching at my school for a long time, but also because of my whiteness. These privileges afforded me protection. I feared that my colleagues might judge me, but I didn't fear professional repercussions from being open about my mental illness.
According to a 2017 survey conducted by the American Federation of Teachers, 58 percent of educators reported that their mental health was "not good" for at least a week of the previous month. They were twice as likely as the general population to categorize their work as "always" or "often" stressful.
I'm fortunate that leaders at my school understand that staff and students cannot thrive if we are unwell. Unfortunately, many educators are at schools where they wouldn't feel safe stepping forward and discussing their mental illness. But fostering a culture of transparency and support around mental health should be a priority for school leaders. These mental health struggles don't just hurt teachers; they have negative impacts on students, too. Teachers who are unwell are more likely to leave their jobs mid-year, and that instability can harm students' emotional well-being and lower their academic achievement. And ignoring these struggles reinforces the stigma that surrounds mental illness, making it harder for kids to reach out for the help they may need.
With that in mind, school leaders who want to support mental health should consider these questions in relation to their own schools:
Access to mental health services
- Is a free, anonymous Employee Assistance Program part of your school's benefits package? The program may offer therapy sessions, financial planning assistance, or legal counsel. Post the assistance program's website and phone number prominently and talk to staff about the available services, emphasizing that it is free to them and that no one at the school will know if they reach out for help, since it is an external agency.
- Does your school make sure not to treat wellness as a one-off event? While annual massage-chair rentals or free breakfasts are nice perks, they can't replace an ongoing commitment to addressing the root causes of stress (such as overwork), and teachers can tell the difference.
- Do you partner with local healthcare providers or community health centers to help students' families access mental health services? Don't wait until your community is struck by a traumatic event to offer to connect students with counselors.
Sydney Chaffee, 2017 National Teacher of the Year, teaches students at her school in Boston. As a person with anxiety, she believes more schools should offer support for teachers with mental health struggles.
Destigmatizing mental illness among students and staff
- Have you built a robust mentoring program for new teachers that includes check-ins around mental health and self-care? The learning curve for new teachers is steep: they have to figure out how to be effective teachers in front of a live audience every single day. The work is exhausting and high-stakes, and new teachers are more likely to leave the profession than those who have been teaching for more than five years. Building in intentional support for new teachers around not just professional practice, but also self-care, can combat new teacher burnout.
- Do you periodically and anonymously survey your staff to check in on mental health? Do you then follow up on what you learn? If a policy you designed has inadvertently had a negative impact on your staff, apologize, ask for more information, and make changes.
- Do you have resources for staff experiencing secondary traumatic stress? School staff may experience secondary traumatic stress as an occupational hazard of working with and caring for children who have endured trauma. Educate yourself about this type of trauma and address it as an ongoing thread in professional development throughout the year.
- In homerooms or advisory groups, is checking in on students' mental health a regular part of the agenda? (Ask yourself, "How often do we talk about students' grades or test scores? How often do we talk about their mental health?") Tap your school social worker or counselor to train staff in how to respond to student concerns or disclosures about mental illness.
Sydney Chaffee, working one-on-one with a student. Photos by Mark Teiwes / Lesley University.
Listening, supporting, and valuing staff
- Do you solicit staff and student input when making policy decisions that will impact them? Being more collaborative in your decision making may take more time in the short-term, but it will save you time in the long run by building greater buy-in from stakeholders who are most affected on a daily basis by policy decisions.
- Do the members of your school community know that you value their health? Tell people to stay home when sick and take necessary time off for regular medical appointments, bereavement, and family leave. Ensure that your school's policies support long-term sustainability and work-life balance, rather than encouraging martyrdom and burnout.
- Do you value, encourage, and support teachers and staff of color? Don't expect them to take on additional work (such as translating, leading equity efforts, or mentoring students) without being paid for that labor. Check for hidden biases in your pay scale that result in staff of color being paid less than white staff. Set the expectation that engaging fully in professional development aimed at addressing racism and bias is a nonnegotiable for all staff and take staff of color seriously when they raise concerns about inequity at your school.
Being Open and Honest
Over time, I have come to accept my anxiety as an important part of who I am. It doesn't make me unstable or "crazy." On the contrary, at its best, my anxiety makes me detail-oriented, thoughtful, and attuned to other people's emotions. Thanks to therapy, I'm better able to identify triggers that are likely to send me spiraling into my own fears and interrupt unhelpful thinking patterns when they get too loud.
Being open about this part of my identity has made me a better teacher and mentor. Knowing myself well enables me to identify when anxiety is blocking my path and ask for the right kind of help to move forward. Modeling honesty gives me opportunities to talk openly with colleagues and students about the importance of self-care. Finally, recognizing how my privilege protects me has encouraged me to speak out against stigma and push for systems that support mental health in schools.
Not long after that painful media training session, I followed a production assistant through a maze of dark hallways inside Studio 57 in New York City, making my way to the CBS This Morning set for my interview. I knew that all around the country, people were tuning in to find out who had been named the next National Teacher of the Year. My hands shook as I was rushed onto the set during a commercial break, heard the countdown, and saw my own name on the monitors behind the hosts. I don't remember the questions they asked me, and I've never worked up the nerve to watch the video of myself. What I do know is that I didn't freeze. Talking about my anxiety—and knowing that there were a lot of people behind the scenes who had my back—made it possible for me to face my fear and push through. On that day, and for the rest of the year, despite my anxiety, I told the world about myself, my students, and my fellow teachers.
Reflect & Discuss
➛ What supports are in place at your school to help teacher mental health?
➛ Is the entire staff and community aware of how to get help if needed?
➛ What would it take to remove the stigma around mental health challenges in your school or district?
