Hannah shares how she learned to protect her time, recognize the weight of others’ trauma, and set boundaries that helped her be more present at home. We also explore what schools can do to support educator well-being, from providing trauma-informed training and additional staff to moving meetings into the school day. As Hannah considers whether private practice might be her next step, we discuss the working conditions that can make staying in education difficult—and why the difference you make may become visible years later.

In this episode you'll hear...

• How growing caseloads, daily crises, and competing responsibilities contribute to school social worker burnout.
• Why trauma-informed practices include understanding both students’ experiences and the personal stress adults bring into the classroom.
• How boundaries around email, lunch breaks, and bringing work home helped Hannah protect time and energy for her family.
• What supportive school leadership can look like, including listening to staff, adding personnel, and protecting time outside contract hours.
• Why building connections with students matters, even when you don’t get to see the long-term impact of your work.

Let's Connect:

Website: https://willowtreewellnesscoaching.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WillowTreeWellnessCo/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willowtreewellnesscoaching

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/willow-tree-wellness-llc/

Join Our Facebook Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beyondburnouteducators

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Their conversation makes room for both the joy and the weight of teaching. Lisa describes the difference a caring principal made when she was overwhelmed, while also explaining why individual support could only do so much when responsibilities kept piling up. She shares what she wishes she had known about boundaries earlier in her career and what she hopes school leaders will hear from teachers today.

In this episode you'll hear...

• How Lisa’s passion for teaching shaped her career and made it difficult to step back when she needed to.
• Why growing workloads and assessment demands left less time and energy for the parts of teaching she loved.
• What it can feel like to support students through difficult experiences while carrying that concern beyond the school day.
• How a principal’s regular check-ins helped Lisa feel seen, even when larger demands remained.
• Lisa’s advice to school leaders: listen to teachers before making decisions that change their work, and take something off their plates when adding more.

Let's Connect:

Website: https://willowtreewellnesscoaching.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WillowTreeWellnessCo/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willowtreewellnesscoaching

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/willow-tree-wellness-llc/

Join Our Facebook Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beyondburnouteducators

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mary and Lori talk candidly about the pressure to stay late, take on more, and treat burnout as a personal problem to solve with better self-care. They explain why educator well-being also depends on school systems: manageable demands, support during classroom crises, and time to recover afterward. This conversation introduces their Educator Capacity System and the question they hope more schools will ask: How are our educators doing?

In this episode you'll hear...

• Why Mary and Lori began looking for a better way to support educators.
• How expectations to always do more can make it hard to set boundaries.
• Why self-care alone cannot fix unsustainable working conditions.
• What repeated classroom crises can mean for educators and students.
• How the Educator Capacity System looks at both the demands educators face and the support available to them.

Let's Connect:

Website: https://willowtreewellnesscoaching.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WillowTreeWellnessCo/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willowtreewellnesscoaching

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/willow-tree-wellness-llc/

Join Our Facebook Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beyondburnouteducators

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Across the country, dedicated educators are asking themselves a question many never imagined they would have to ask: "How much longer can I keep doing this?" More than half of educators are experiencing burnout, but behind every statistic is a person, a story, and a voice that deserves to be heard.

Welcome to Real Talk about Educator Burnout, presented by Willow Tree Wellness. We're Mary Abbott, Megan Jones, and Lori Herman, school social workers and education leaders with more than seventy-five years of combined experience working in schools. And we've seen firsthand both the extraordinary commitment of educators and the toll this work can take. That's why we created this podcast.

Through honest conversations from teachers, school social workers, counselors, paraprofessionals, administrators, and other education professionals, along with insights from experts in the field, we're gonna go beyond the statistics to explore what it's really like to work in schools today, what's driving burnout, why educators are leaving, what helps them stay, and what needs to change.

At Willow Tree Wellness, we believe educator well-being directly impacts student success, and it's time our education system recognizes that connection. Imagine if every school district not only asked, "How are students doing?" but also, "How are our educators doing?" Because educator well-being and student success are not competing priorities. They're inseparable. We're not just working to reduce educator burnout. We're working to redefine what successful schools look like. We need to stop asking, "How can our educators become more resilient?" and start asking, "What's happening in our schools that's causing so many educators to burn out?" Because educator burnout isn't simply an individual problem.

It's time we start examining and changing the systems and conditions contributing to it. Welcome to Real Talk about Educator Burnout. Let's get into it.

Let's Connect:

Website: https:/willowtreewellnesscoaching.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WillowTreeWellnessCo/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willowtreewellnesscoaching

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/willow-tree-wellness-llc/

Join Our Facebook Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beyondburnouteducators

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.