You probably know the feeling: the term starts with hope and energy, but before long, the pressure piles on. The marking mounts up. Planning gets pushed to the side. And what does the surface of your desk look like, again?
Teachers and stress have become synonymous, with burnout rates soaring and headlines warning of a looming crisis in our schools. But it’s not just a personal problem: it’s a systemic issue, and it’s hugely impacting the future of education.
Teachers and stress: the numbers
And it’s ending teaching careers: the Australian Government’s Teacher Workforce Shortages report predicts a shortfall of over 4,000 secondary teachers by 2025. Even more concerning, up to 50% of early-career teachers are considering leaving the profession within their first five years.
It's very troubling news… but it’s not just a numbers game. Every statistic here is a potential classroom without a consistent teacher, a potential student missing out on support, or another school community under strain and struggling to care for its staff.
These overwhelming links between teachers and stress are a pressing conversation— and it’s one we can’t afford to ignore.
Why those links between teachers and stress should worry us
Teachers and stress are a toxic combination: stress levels like these impact every student in every seat, as well as the educators themselves struggling to stay afloat.
So as well as the health of an entire subset of working professions, we need to be concerned about retention. When teachers are overwhelmed, they leave the profession for sunnier climes—tuition, corporate roles, career breaks—and like most countries at the moment, there aren’t enough fresh graduates coming into the profession to offset the loss.
When recruitment and retention become nearly impossible, schools struggle to fill vacancies, and students lose access to experienced, passionate educators. The education that they receive suffers, and the workload, stress and emotional burden on those remaining staff members grows. More teachers leave next term, more the next.
Australia’s literacy rates are already under pressure, with one in three primary and secondary students not meeting minimum reading standards. If teachers and stress problems that impact their ability to continue with the work stay as common as they are, and we keep losing vital, experienced professionals, the number of learners with low literacy can only grow.
Why are stress levels so high?
💥 Workload overload: Between lesson planning, marking and admin tasks, many teachers feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of hours the job demands.
💥 Student behaviour challenges: Managing classroom disruptions or complex behavioural issues can be draining, and some teachers find it difficult to maintain a positive and engaging learning environment.
💥 Sky-high expectations: Educators work hard to meet the expectations of parents, professional bodies, and school leadership, but many report feeling pressured to achieve more than what’s realistically possible.
💥 Burnout and mental health struggles: Teaching can be emotionally demanding, and research suggests that a significant number of educators experience chronic stress, anxiety, or fatigue.
💥 Staff shortages: With fewer teachers in the talent pool and positions going unfilled into a new term, workloads can become increasingly difficult to manage, leaving many feeling overburdened.
💥 Excessive admin: Some teachers report feeling trapped in a cycle of paperwork and bureaucratic processes, which can take time away from the core focus of teaching.
💥 An increase in neurodiversity diagnoses: More students are being identified as neurodivergent. Without the right support in place for students and teachers, it’s easy to run out of bandwidth when multiple learners need support in a hour-long lesson.
Practical steps for beating burnout
Make time for your own well-being.
You can’t pour from an empty cup. Schedule time for yourself, even if it’s just five minutes of quiet in the staffroom before the bell or your favourite deli take-out for lunch with ‘do not disturb’ on the classroom door.
You might also try breathing exercises or a quick walk before the next class. And don’t forget to set boundaries (no marking at midnight!) and stick to them. Give yourself permission to rest!
Build a school support squad
Reach out to colleagues, share lesson plans, and swap strategies for managing tough days. Start a “wellbeing buddy” system or a Friday coffee club, or schedule time at the end of every school week with your peers before you all head home. Teaching runs on people power, but it can feel so isolating too— make sure you’re keeping your bonds with your community strong.
Streamline your classroom routines
Teachers and stress have become synonymous, but that doesn’t mean we can’t tip the scales in our favour in some ways. So look for methods to simplify and streamline the work you have to do.
Use checklists for daily tasks, set up student-led routines (whose turn is it to water the plants and do the coat check?), and try to build flexibility into your planning. Technology can help, too: think timers for transitions, quizzes as lesson conclusions, and shared online resources to give learners access to supporting materials straight out of the starting blocks.
Advocate for school-wide support
Educator burnout isn’t just a personal issue, it’s a national issue. But it’s not just about those polarities— teachers and stress problems are a school issue, too: they impact the learning community, create gaps in provision, and fundamentally endanger the mental health of whole groups of working professionals.
If you’re feeling stressed, talk to your leadership about realistic workloads and how that stress is impacting your daily life. You might also advocate for protected planning time, or access to mental health resources too. Even if it feels like there’s going to be no point of resolution on the horizon, you may be surprised—lots of schools across the country are seeking ways to support staff as they deal with increased workloads and expectations post-Covid, and collaboration might just be able to kickstart some positive change.
C-Pen Reader 3 can help you take back your bandwidth
Every student should have access to the support they need to thrive, but when there’s only one of you in the classroom, that’s tricky. Supporting multiple students with reading differences like dyslexia can represent a real constraint on your teaching bandwidth. They need support throughout the lesson in order to access the work, but you can’t be in two places at once— lessons are only an hour long, and now there are more learners who need support than ever before.
But what if you had a reading support tool that could help students read independently, boost their confidence, and cut down on your workload… all at once?
Enter C-Pen Reader 3.
Reader 3 is a text-to-speech reading tool that’s revolutionising reading support for students and giving schools back their budgets, allowing them to get more support into more student hands. The implementation journey is as quick and as simple as scan, listen, understand: students move the pen across the page to get started. Lightning-fast audio relays the words back to them, boosting their comprehension and their independence— and as students problem-solve themselves, using Reader 3’s suite of onboard practice, dictionary and scan-to-file tools, it frees up educator bandwidth as well as fosters stronger reading skills.
When schools invest in reading pens like Reader 3, students get the support they need, and teachers can reclaim precious time for planning, teaching, whole-class activities… and maybe even a lunch break.
Teachers and stress: on finding your balance
Teachers and stress problems have become intrinsically linked by the current nature of the profession, the workloads they’re tasked with, the demands of the job, and the challenges they face. But it doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do.
With the right support, it is possible reclaim some balance. And if that means a couple of reading pens in every classroom and cake in your lunch bag, then so be it— it’s all about managing it in a way that works for you.
Is there a teacher in your life who always goes the extra mile?
Teachers are an amazing bunch: they shape our development, myth-bust our assumptions, and the best ones can spark a lifelong love of learning. But it’s not a path that comes with a lot of recognition, either: teachers and stress levels, and so few of them receive the thanks they deserve, or get to see the impact they’ve had on somebody’s life or career five, ten or fifty years later.
That’s why Scanning Pens is reaching out and asking you – our global EdTech community – to tell us about the teachers who’ve had a powerful impact on your life, so that we can celebrate them in our Spotlight a Teacher campaign!
Whether you’re a student with a stellar teacher, a teacher with a truly next-level co-worker, or a parent who can see the effort that your child’s class teacher puts in every day of the week, we want to hear from you.
Just shoot Scanning Pens a message on whichever social media site you use the most, comment on one of our Spotlight a Teacher posts, or just drop us a line via email at socials@empoweringtech.com. We’ll do all the rest!
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