Reducing Burnout: Where to Give to Get The Best
Written by: Savannah Schadegg
How can we open the door to the conversation about burnout without feeling defensive that our efforts to reduce burnout and turnover are not up to par? Self-reflection is the beginning of reducing turnover. Turnover is not something we can ignore in the Early Childhood field. Turnover is not only an issue for centers and programs. It becomes an issue for the children we serve and their families. Continuity of care has been proven to best support children and families. We need to be a part of the conversations and find ways to keep educators in place. Burnout can take a toll on our mental and physical health. We can collectively work towards catching it sooner and begin putting support in place to benefit the health of our educators.
When reflecting on my time as a director, I often think of the lightness I felt when I could see the beautiful flow of the classrooms, the educators who put their heart into their work, and the children who were growing in more ways than the untrained eye could see. Being a director is not all sprinkles and playdough. There were days when I drank my coffee cold, cried in my car, and held educators as they cried to me about difficulties in the classroom and at home. In self-reflecting, I was burning out alongside them. Challenging behaviors have increased significantly since the pandemic and since our smartphones have become an extension of our bodies. In hindsight, I now see the hundreds of ways I missed supporting the educators because I was too focused on challenging behaviors, parent requests, or duties in the office which pulled my attention. Most frustratingly, I missed out on supporting them when I was acting as a full-time lead teacher because of turnover. I essentially held two jobs simultaneously and I was losing my passion for a job I loved. I think of how I missed the signs of burnout in myself and my team. I underestimated educators’ abilities to problem-solve small issues and overestimated how much they could reasonably hold. I regret to say that I lost a few educator gems because I missed the signs. I missed the opportunity to support better, and I missed my own self-care that could have increased my threshold of tolerance.
As a leader in an early education center, the sound of staff leaving through rotating doors becomes a sound heard in our nightmares. It can be an easy job to fill when you just need a body but when we need competent and nurturing staff, it becomes the hardest to fill and keep strong educators' motivation high and their support concrete. Educators are burning out at an astronomical rate in childcare settings. In the role of a behavioral consultant, we hear it all the time, “Our turnover is high, and children have to readjust to new teachers.” If we think about cooperation following connection, it makes sense that this would increase challenging behaviors in our classrooms. So, when we push back against turnover for the sake of our classroom functioning, we have to meet in the middle. Starting at the top to encourage owners and directors to fairly compensate educators, see their value and openly identify their strengths, find ways to keep morale up, give special days off, acknowledge that educators have families too, make work fun, and give autonomy to educators who are proving they can handle challenges, offer flextime or overtime, give praise and say, “Thank you!” Thank you goes a long way when you have people on your team who are putting in the effort, putting in the extra work to share their expertise and enhance your program. Celebrate with them for personal and professional victories. It is also seeking and filling support from the bottom up. Give an extra-long break when you can, be in the classrooms so you can see where struggles are happening and use modeling to teach over lecturing.
Recognizing burnout is paramount and knowing how to mitigate it is essential. Burnout looks different for each person, however, you can recognize signs.
Six signs of burnout in Early Childhood Education:
Emotional exhaustion: Feeling numb or detached and struggling to connect with children. Sometimes, educators simply feel “drained.”
Decreased Motivation: A loss of enthusiasm for your work. Feeling apathetic and indifferent about the tasks involved in your work.
Somatic complaints: Headaches, fatigue, muscle tension, or chronic illnesses from being “run down.”
Pessimistic view of work: Negative outlook on work with criticism of structures and losing the joy and fulfillment of being around the children they care for and the profession in general.
Decreased performance: Struggling to maintain high standards, decreased productivity, seemingly less effective classroom management and excessively calling out sick.
Isolation: withdrawn from coworkers, taking breaks alone, keeping communication short, and engaging in conversations only when called on or asked directly.
Burnout happens for so many reasons. I have noticed or experienced burnout when I was overworked, under-compensated, and unappreciated and my efforts went unseen or unacknowledged. Sometimes it happens when my creativity or problem-solving is ignored for the sake of “this is how we do things.” Micromanaging is not a learning tool that makes me feel supported. Giving me a giant list of things to do, with an unrealistic timeline, and then tracking my mistakes makes me feel that I am not cut out for the job. When I look back, I was cut out for that job, I wasn’t cut out to be bullied into productivity that was unreachable. By identifying what is contributing to educators leaving (even if it’s us), we are halfway to a solution. When we know what the problem is, we may not have the tools (yet) to fix it, but seeing it is the lion's share of the solution.