The Burnout Battleground: Strengthening Teacher Preparedness in Diverse Classrooms

In the American Jewish educational sector, a silent epidemic rages: the rise of teacher burnout. Numerous studies confirm that the teaching profession is witnessing increased rates of exhaustion, stress and disillusionment. In fact, a 2022 Gallup study found that K-12 workers experience the highest levels of burnout in any industry nationally (44%), with the rate for teachers even higher at 54%. This surge in teacher burnout has become a pressing issue not only impacting the wellbeing of individual teachers, but also undermining the quality of education for students.

Research indicates that one of the main reasons teachers experience burnout is that they feel “under-prepared” to meet the wide-ranging academic, behavioral and social-emotional needs of students in today’s classrooms, with research showing that “under-prepared teachers leave at two to three times the rate of well-prepared teachers.” Gateways’ work consulting with Jewish schools on a range of topics related to inclusion has yielded insights into the most common “weak links” in teacher preparedness as well as a successful blueprint for how schools can identify and reform these areas of challenge. By following this blueprint, which covers teacher training, school structural changes and philosophical shifts, schools can improve the ways they prepare educators to meet the needs of a neurodiverse array of students and mitigate a major source of burnout.

Looking at these alarming statistics, one wonders why teachers are more underprepared now than in decades past. Another coinciding trend provides answers: Due to a combination of evolutions in diagnostic criteria, educational policy and philosophical shifts and global and environmental factors, today’s classrooms are more neurodiverse than ever before, with a substantial percentage of students having some sort of support need. Simply put, yesterday’s “atypical” student is today’s “typical” student.

Overall, the proliferation of neurodiversity in “mainstream” classrooms is a good thing. More inclusive classrooms encourage acceptance and respect for differences during formative school years. Moreover, incorporating a variety of teaching modalities benefits all learners by providing multiple pathways for the brain to encode information.

The problem, therefore, is not with neurodiversity itself, but with the fact that traditional (non-special education) frameworks of teacher training have not caught up to this reality and tend to overlook methods for teaching students with learning disabilities and social-emotional and behavioral support needs. In a recent survey, 87% of general education teachers reported feeling inadequately prepared to support students with disabilities across the spectrum of potential supports, including modifying instruction, addressing behavioral issues and providing appropriate accommodations. Teachers face constant scrutiny from students, parents, administrators and other teachers. When, on top of that, they feel ill-equipped to meet these many needs of the modern classroom, the result is a pressure cooker where burnout seems inevitable.

It is clear, then, that consistently training teachers in best teaching practices and methodologies to support a variety of learners has multiple benefits. Gateways has been working with Jewish day school educators and administrators for over 20 years to build this capacity. Our model is a “whole school” consultation approach, which operates at the structural, attitudinal and individual levels to transform student and teacher outcomes. In the course of this work, Gateways has identified four key areas of challenge for schools and developed a best practice guide for addressing them.

Challenge Area: Curriculum Differentiation

Curriculum differentiation, which occurs when teachers tailor their instruction to meet individual learning needs, is an invaluable tool for teachers managing classes of students with varying profiles and needs. However, it is a methodology that teachers are not regularly trained in and school environments are not typically set up to support.

With the increasing neurodiversity of today’s classrooms, it can easily become overwhelming for a single teacher to decipher what tools and kinds of instruction students need to support their learning and then to execute those different methods concurrently. One teacher in Massachusetts likened this feeling to a symphony: “Teaching a class of students with diverse learning needs, while lacking adequate support and training, is like trying to conduct an orchestra without sheet music or a conductor’s baton. It’s a cacophony of challenges, where every note of progress is drowned out by the overwhelming symphony of unmet needs.”

Best Practices

Through curriculum differentiation training, teachers can learn how to modify elements of their classroom based on skill levels and learning profiles. Teachers can differentiate in four domains: content, process, product and environment. “Content” means what the student learns or how they receive that information, “process” is what the student does to learn and master the content, “product” is how the student demonstrates, applies and extends their knowledge, and “environment” is how the classroom looks and feels. Engaging a consultant who can work with existing lesson plans and model how they can be modified may be especially beneficial.

However, curriculum differentiation in the classroom is most successful when school structures and attitudes support it. For example, schools can institute school- or grade-wide common time for certain subjects so that classes can be leveled. Mindsets also matter, as it can be challenging for teachers to make changes to established lesson plans that have worked well in the past. In consultation, teachers are encouraged to approach lesson planning as experimentation. Consider a lesson plan as the hypothesis. Once the lesson is presented, evaluate how different students managed the lesson and then go back to revise.

Challenge Area: Executive Function

In the wake of Covid and a youth mental health crisis, today’s students are struggling with executive functioning skills more than ever. Executive function is “the set of mental skills that include working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control,” and the impact of executive function challenges can reverberate in all academic areas.

Best Practices

Students who struggle with executive function are most successful when classroom lessons and procedures are explicitly defined and clearly structured. In many cases, once teachers incorporate executive function supports in the classroom, all students’ task completion improves significantly.

One Jewish day school teacher was struggling to help students stay focused and manage time effectively during lessons. Once she received coaching on writing and reviewing a clear, organized class plan with students, she reported that her lessons were more efficient, and students focused more consistently. Similarly, a middle school teacher whose students were struggling to complete homework and in-class assignments found it helpful to introduce a visual organizer, a sample of a completed assignment and a checklist rubric with all assignment requirements. In both cases, the teachers were highly motivated to support their students’ executive functioning skills but were left feeling lost and stressed, having not previously gotten the tools and training to do so.

Challenge Area: Behavior

A study by the Learning Policy Institute found that a third of teachers reported seeing more disruptive behaviors in the classroom since the pandemic began. Instances of students displaying aggression, defiance and emotional outbursts have become more common in classrooms, pushing some teachers to their breaking points and leading them to resign or retire prematurely. Another study found that student behaviors like “disrespect,” inattentiveness and low sociability are good predictors of teacher burnout, especially in religious schools. Already overloaded teachers have few resources to handle this volume of challenging behaviors, and it has strained relationships between teachers, parents and students.

Best Practices

One way to empower educators to manage difficult classroom behaviors is to offer training or consultation on functions of behavior (FoB). This behaviorist paradigm, which emphasizes behavior as communication, focuses on the purpose of unwanted behaviors and offers insight into how those behaviors can be replaced or phased out. Too often, teachers, who are typically not given much (if any) exposure to these ideas, respond to the behavior itself as the primary concern without understanding and responding to what the students are communicating with that behavior.

FoB may include sensory/automatic, escape, attention and tangible rewards. Gateways behavioral specialist Jodi Katz described her process for consulting with teachers: “When I enter a classroom for the first time, I look at the entire student as well as the environment. I look at what is occurring and how the student responds. I am constantly scanning the classroom looking for possible antecedents or other environmental manipulations that could work as proactive strategies to reduce inappropriate classroom behaviors. I enjoy working closely with the teachers to implement new strategies both proactively and reactively.”

Not only does FoB training equip teachers with strategies to make the classroom less stressful, but it also reduces the psychological toll that behavioral issues can take. When challenging behaviors do (inevitably) still occur, FoB helps dispel the notion that kids who behave badly are doing it out of malice. Reframing behavior and understanding that kids behave in an expected manner if they have the right skills, supports and tools can reduce stress and help teachers and students connect better.

Challenge Area: Mental Health

As academic, social and global pressures mount, teachers report a rise in student depression, anxiety, self-injury and eating disorders, among other concerns. Limited access to trained professionals in Jewish day schools can leave students and teachers without essential support. Teachers themselves are not adequately trained to identify and support student mental health needs, and, too often, school policies lack clear and sufficient guidelines. Furthermore, teachers’ own mental health may suffer when they attempt to juggle supporting students’ needs with their own workload and responsibilities.

Best Practices

Addressing the mental health needs of students and teachers in Jewish day schools requires a comprehensive approach. Gateways has been providing teachers at Jewish day schools with training in Youth Mental Health First Aid, which is a beneficial, evidence-based program designed to teach educators how to recognize signs and symptoms of mental health problems in young people, provide initial support and guidance, and connect students to appropriate professional help.

However, training in on-the-ground classroom strategies is only part of the solution. Multi-Tiered Systems of Support is a model that examines how supports can be put in place for everyone in the school (a social-emotional curriculum, mental health speakers), on an individual basis (regular individual or group counseling) and for students who are in crisis (bridge programs). By establishing partnerships with mental health professionals and community organizations, schools can incorporate onsite counseling, teletherapy and referrals to external mental health providers. Mental wellbeing is integral to learning, and when schools develop the mindset that mental health education is as important as physical health education, they can foster a more supportive environment for everyone.

Challenges and Visions

This solution to teacher burnout is certainly not without its challenges, the biggest of which is that implementing these changes is an investment of time, energy and funds. For already busy teachers, taking on new methodologies can be difficult. The dual curriculum model that many Jewish day schools also use can create even further time constraints for teachers to accomplish learning goals. Moreover, teachers and administrators across the board need to be philosophically open to these changes, which may include shifting longstanding attitudes about what kinds of students belong at their school and how students should learn.

We envision Jewish day schools as vibrant communities where every student and educator feels seen, valued and empowered to thrive. As such, we aim to embrace the increasing neurodiversity of Jewish day school classrooms as a positive trend and one that is here to stay. We know that providing a safe and equitable learning environment for as many kinds of learners as possible is the best way to keep families engaged in Jewish life and to encourage community participation in Jewish day schools. We believe that this can come to fruition if we provide our teachers with the right tools and if our schools have the right structures to support them. Ultimately, teachers who are better equipped to support neurodiverse students become better suited to support all students, and that is how we keep the magic of Jewish day school alive.