In the mid-1990s, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services funded Hoover’s organization to address the emerging issue of student mental health. In recent years, however, the center has broadened its focus to include teacher mental health.
She said one approach districts often use to address teacher well-being are programs that encourage self-care strategies – things such as better nutrition and exercise, social support and stress management.
Although this can be helpful, Hoover said those efforts alone won’t fix the problem.
“Educators are increasingly vocal about the fact that they can’t just ‘take care of themselves’ in toxic environments,” she said. “We can’t expect people to just do more for themselves. We have to change the structures within which they work to support their well-being.”
Hoover said broader organizational changes are needed, including adequate compensation and giving teachers a bigger role in decision-making, more flexibility and autonomy, additional professional development opportunities and a greater sense of purpose.
“If you don’t fix some of the basic needs like compensation, it’s not going to do the trick,” she said. “It’s akin to saying, ‘Just walk more, just eat better,’ which doesn’t work if people can’t purchase the basics they need to keep themselves and their families afloat.”
Some of these issues are especially dire in Arizona, which consistently spends less on K-12 education and teacher salaries than most states.
A May Census Bureau report found that Arizona spent $8,785 per pupil in 2020, ahead of only Utah and Idaho. And Arizona was dead last – 51st among states and the District of Columbia – when it came to the amount spent on actual instruction, at $4,801 per pupil.
Arizona’s average teacher salary of $52,157 ranks 44th in the nation, according to the NEA, well below the national average of $66,432.
“Arizona’s education landscape can be more aptly described as a hellscape,” said Rodrigo Palacios, president of the Tempe Secondary Education Association and a member of Save Our Schools Arizona, a group advocating for increased public school funding.
Nationally, the NEA reports, the average teacher salary reflects a 1.8% increase from the previous school year, but after adjusting for inflation, pay declined by 3.8% over the past decade.
Throw in the added stress of teaching during a pandemic, and some educators have decided they’re done.
A January survey by the Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association showed nearly 80% of K-12 teacher positions were either vacant or filled by people who don’t meet standard teaching requirements.
In addition, the report found, more than 1,600 teachers had severed employment. Most resigned. But more than 600 either didn’t report to work at the start of the school year, or abandoned their job after the school year began.
‘I’m tired’
For nearly 20 years, Sydney Francis taught at schools in Flagstaff before she left the field in 2018. She primarily taught art classes to elementary and middle school students, but as a mother of two children, she said that she struggled financially throughout her career.
Ultimately, she said, lack of community support and budget cuts that spurred the “Red for Ed” protests in 2018 persuaded her to quit.
“Toward the end, we took pay cut after pay cut – one to health care, one to salaries – and it was like, ‘I already can’t afford to live, and I’m stressed and I’m tired,’” she said. “And then on top of that, I just didn’t feel supported in my community anymore.”
Francis said some of the main stressors throughout her career involved being chronically short-staffed.
Instead of employing teaching assistants, schools often asked teachers to monitor recess, meaning they didn’t have time to eat lunch or prepare afternoon lesson plans. Or teachers were asked to stand outside and greet students each morning, cutting into morning planning time.
In addition, Francis said that some of her students had special needs and would have benefited from the assistance of a specialized teacher, but those positions often went unfilled.
Given the pressures and her own financial struggles, Francis found it difficult to take care of her students during the day and her own kids at night.
“I felt tapped out by the time I got home,” she said. “I felt like my own kids were getting a less nurturing version of me some days.”
