Teacher Burnout Quotes

Of all the American educational system's problems, none is more severe than the academic year beginning before Labor Day.

I've had more students die than I ever thought possible. My husband urges me to quit Fairfield and teach at some school without gang members who live their lives only to die or end up as drug dealers.

We have run out of creativity for children and teachers alike in the name of pushing up standards.

Since her retirement from teaching Miss Beryl's health had in many respects greatly improved, despite her advancing years. An eighth-grade classroom was an excellent place to snag whatever was in the air in the way of illness. Also depression, which, Miss Beryl believed, in conjunction with guilt, opened the door to illness. Miss Beryl didn't know any teachers who weren't habitually guilty and depressed-guilty they hadn't accomplished more with their students, depressed that very little more was possible.

Teachers are asked to do so much, and they can't be good at every single thing.

Being a teacher was great, but it wasn't what I wanted to do, so it was ultimately crushing.

I'm embarrassed every time I look a teacher in the eye, because we ask them to do so much for so little.

Teaching school is like having jumper cables hooked to your brain, draining all the juice out of you.

The same dish cooked over and over again wears out the irksome life of the teacher.

To the teacher weighed down with paperwork, I say: you've been messed around too often. You came into teaching to spend your time teaching children not filling in forms.

Very often we developed a better grasp of the subjects than the over worked teachers.

No other job in the world could possibly dispossess one so completely as this job of teaching. You could stand all day in a laundry, for instance, still in possession of your mind. But this teaching utterly obliterates you. It cuts right into your being: essentially, it takes over your spirit. It drags it out from where it would hide.

Teachers have such hard jobs and they don't get paid well. And in order to be a teacher you need a lot of education, so people aren't teachers for any other reason than they want to be, and they want to help educate the next generation of people.

Despite the characterization of some that teaching is an easy job, with short hours and summers off, the fact is that successful, dedicated teachers in the U.S. work long hours for little pay and, in many cases, insufficient support from their leadership.

Teachers are expendable, overworked, underpaid, and many times disrespected by students, parents and higher-ups. Nonetheless, these teachers still show up because there are some who are teachers indeed.

Most teachers have no say in their schools' decisions about hiring, promotions, firing, budgets, pay levels, curriculum or scheduling. This lack of control is a big reason they leave the profession.

Many of the snarly bad-tempered teachers whom we remember with hatred were really nice people soured by years of anxiety and penny-pinching.

The fundamental problem for the teaching profession is how undervalued it is and how underpaid teachers are.

But I found that the longer you teach, the more you feel like a total stranger to yourself

I know firsthand that educators are the most overworked and underpaid people around. It influenced me in that it was always about family first, and education was right next to that. There was never any question about whether I was going to college.

We cannot expect systemic success when our teachers are underpaid and under-resourced, or when they split time being caretakers and counselors for our children as well.

Being superintendent or the superintendent's chief of staff is important work, but there's no chance it's as difficult as being a teacher, and I hesitate to say that it's as important.

I became a teacher all right. I wanted to become a teacher because I had a misconception about it. I didn't know that I'd be going into - when I first became a high school teacher in New York, that I'd be going into a battle zone, and no one prepared me for that.

I like to remind teachers that even though they're all overwhelmed and overloaded, and it's easy to get burned out, it really is about the kids. It only takes one good teacher to change a life - one time, and one book. That's what happened when I was a kid. I had one good teacher that came in at the right time and turned me into a writer. So never lose sight - you could be that teacher.

Surveys show that many talented and committed young people are reluctant to enter teaching for the long haul because they think the profession is low-paying and not prestigious enough.