Surviving Teacher Burnout: A Weekly Guide to Build Resilience, Deal with Emotional Exhaustion, and Stay Inspired in the Classroom

by Amy L. Eva

A teacher’s self-care guide for building resilience, boosting emotional strength, and finding hope in the face of daily stress and overwhelming challenges. If you’re an educator who works with children, you often face intense pressure in the classroom. This was true before the pandemic, but now you may be feeling it even more. You aren’t alone. From having to adapt to remote learning on the spot, to balancing the impacts of the pandemic on your personal life, many teachers are experiencing record levels of stress, trauma, and burnout. In addition, as an entire generation of students struggle to meet the academic and social emotional learning (SEL) challenges caused by a extended remote learning, you may be dealing with kids who are anxious, traumatized, and likely a year or two behind developmentally as they return to the classroom. It’s a lot to manage, and you may feel like you are at your breaking point. Written by an educational director at the Greater Good Science Center, Surviving Teacher Burnout is a 52-week self-care guide for teachers that features simple, low-lift strategies for increasing resilience and fostering greater well-being, confidence, and hope. Grounded in research-based positive psychology, the book offers tons of practical activities and journal-style prompts to help you cultivate feelings of gratitude, optimism, mindfulness, forgiveness, empathic joy, self-compassion, purpose, and curiosity—so you can return to your classroom each day with renewed energy and inspiration. You’ll also find doable strategies to share with other educators to help infuse more positive energy in classrooms and schools, and create more supportive systems that promote a sense of meaning, belonging, and connectedness among teachers and students. If you’re like many educators, you may feel you lack the time and energy to engage in self-care practices. This guide offers bite-sized insights and activities that are simple, approachable, and usable, so you can thrive in the classroom, in your community, and in life!

Genres: Education, Self Help, Mental Health, Health, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2022

Reviews

[Reading_ Tamishly]

Thank you, New Harbinger Publications Inc, for the advance reading copy.

This is a guidebook for teachers with weekly guide on how to deal with burnouts.

I was actively looking for a much updated book on the same for a while now and I feel totally satisfied reading this new upcoming guidebook. Needed it much and it's here!

The guidebook has a basic weekly guide for six months. It focuses on identifying emotions and how to deal with difficult ones, and how to savor positive ones. The guidebook basically has good exercises on how to be optimistic and appreciate the natural world. It has a very practical way of letting ourselves deal with our emotions and complicated thoughts; and most of all, on how to be kind with ourselves.

Such a good one. I love the contents so much.

Helpful and quite practical.

[Patty]

The best part of this book was the discussions it sparked with colleagues in our book group for work. We were able to use it as a launching place to discuss burnout and how it affects us. I appreciate the strategies and there are things I took away from reading it.

The content overall was a bit of a miss for me, it seemed to gloss over topics and felt rushed…but at the same time repetitive in those vague statements.

[Paige]

There is so much wisdom contained in this book, and it is founded on a wide range of research. Eva's expertise, experience, and compassion shine through in every section. The layout is fantastic; it is designed for busy educators who can read, contemplate, and apply small sections at a time. I found that reading a small section in the morning set me up for the rest of my day, and the supportive information and clear insights rang true for me throughout each day. Even as I write this, I am reflecting back on sections of the book, with gratitude:) Eva clearly understands the complexity of stressors that educators are grappling with in today’s world, and this book is written from a place of deep, personal understanding. It is a beautiful weaving together of personal, collaborative, systems, and scholarly lenses. This book is a notable standout on my bookshelf, and something I will be referencing far into the future. I hope to be able to use it with colleagues in the future.

[HaeIn Shin]

I couldn't think of a more relevant, timely, helpful & supportive guide for teachers, educators (and also students and everyone else!) during this post pandemic era. From the way the book is framed and structured, it is clear Dr. Eva has many years of experience as an educator and professional, whose thoughtful insights, knowledge, research backing and compassion are all embodied and shown in the book. The weekly "action" and "guiding questions" give especially great guidance for how all various concepts and principles of well-being can become very practical on a daily basis. If you are looking for digestible, concrete and simple ways to show up for yourself, check in with yourself and give yourself a few minutes of each day to decompress for your well-being, this book is a perfect guide. Highly, highly recommend for educators and also anyone and everyone!

[Kimberly Barnes]

After surviving through the COVID pandemic, now more than ever, teachers are burned out. They are stressed, overworked, overwhelmed and depressed. This book is a weekly journey toward improving one’s mood, attitude toward work, and overall well-being. This book is a guide to teach educators (and other working professionals) how to embark on a journey of self-care. Activities, writing prompts, vignettes, are provided in the focus areas of: gratitude, optimism, mindfulness, forgiveness, joy, self-compassion, purpose, and curiosity. The strategies are not overwhelming to implement. They are small actions one can take to improve your overall well-being. I highly recommend this book to all teachers. Thank you the publisher and NetGalley for the advance review copy in exchange for my honest review.

[Alexandra]

Thanks to NetGallery for the e-ARC!

As I read this, I was starting and participating in my second year of teaching. I thought this might be a helpful guide, but not quite. While some portions of knowledge I thought were useful, it mostly felt like one of those works that felt like they were 'trying' to help teachers when teachers need more time and money. I think that if this book was structured as more of a journal where readers could journal in their answers and fill in the blanks, it would be way more helpful. The way it currently is working is just a bunch of information, where you need to find another location to complete the recommended journaling/activities. So, if this was more of a journal format where I could fill in the responses then I would have enjoyed this more.

[Lisa Baylis]

This book by Amy Eva is giving me the time to acknowledge and practice my well-being week by week. As a tired teacher, I’ve appreciated all the research that each practice shows and the opportunity to discover what works for my wellness. The weekly opportunity gives bite-size information for the busy educator without it feeling overwhelming. A great book to put into my toolbox and to share with educators in my community.

[Meg Yar]

As a mom, teacher, and PhD student studying SEL, this book has significantly helped me. The demands of all of the roles that I play have heavily weighed on me. Using this book has reminded me to prioritize the important things in life and myself.
The structure of the book is easy to follow without feeling like I am adding yet another thing to my already never ending to-do list. This book could benefit teachers old and new.

[Judi]

As a teacher of 32 years, I was hoping that this book would help me get to retirement with a different frame of mind. Unfortunately, it just wasn't the book for me. That being said, I do feel like a lot of teachers would enjoy this book that are feeling burned out. The book is full of exercises to help change your mindset.

I was given this book for my honest feedback.

[Lisa Gisèle]

This book is greatly needed by many teacher. Any resource that can help a teacher get from September to June with a calm mind and not want to turn to educational films to get through the week, is amazing

[Betsy]

This book was spot on. It takes you through the year guiding you, and the author knows exactly what’s going on as the year progresses. Great tips. Very enlightening and motivating.

[Cristina]

3.1

[Ashley]

I liked the idea of this book, and it was great that it had activities to support you throughout the year.  However, in some ways it seemed like much more work.  A lot of the problem with the encouragement of self-care for teachers is that it just adds a lot more work onto your already overfull plate.

**Disclaimer: I received a free advanced readers copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.