We can’t solve educator burnout by teaching exhausted educators to tolerate exhaustion

For years, conversations about educator wellbeing have often centred on what the individual educator can do differently. Practise mindfulness. Build resilience. Take breaks. Exercise. Eat well. Set boundaries. Find something that fills your cup. None of those things are inherently bad advice. In fact, many of them can be incredibly valuable.

But there is a point where our focus on individual wellbeing risks sending a very different message to educators: the problem is yours to manage. If an educator is exhausted because their workplace is chronically understaffed, we cannot breathe our way out of that. If an educator is experiencing bullying or harassment, a wellbeing webinar will not make their workplace psychologically safe. If an educator is carrying an unsustainable workload, teaching them to become more resilient does not remove the workload.

I don’t believe we solve burnout by teaching exhausted educators how to become better at tolerating exhaustion.

Individual agency still matters

That does not mean individual wellbeing should disappear from the conversation. After almost 20 years working across early childhood education, I believe there is enormous value in helping educators understand themselves as people, not only as professionals.

Educators need opportunities to recognise what affects their wellbeing, understand their capacity, identify their boundaries, build meaningful connections and consider what they actually want from their careers. They also need permission to make decisions based on that understanding. That might mean asking for help, saying no, pursuing further learning, stepping into leadership or recognising that a particular workplace is no longer right for them. Sometimes it may mean deciding that early childhood education is no longer where they want to be.

I don’t think our goal should be keeping every educator in the sector at all costs. Our goal should be creating a sector people can sustainably choose to remain in, while empowering educators to make informed decisions about their own lives and careers. There is an important distinction between giving an educator tools that increase their agency and giving them tools so they can tolerate conditions that should never have become acceptable.

Resilience needs a rethink

Resilience is one of those words we use frequently in education, but too often it becomes synonymous with pushing through, coping with more and bouncing back. My own understanding of resilience has changed significantly. Sometimes resilience is continuing, but sometimes it is resting, asking for help, setting a boundary or saying that something isn’t okay. Sometimes the most resilient response is not changing the person so they can withstand an environment. It is changing the environment.

That distinction matters when we talk about educator wellbeing because otherwise we risk placing responsibility for systemic and workplace problems onto the people experiencing their consequences. Structural problems need structural responses. Workplace culture requires leadership, psychosocial hazards require appropriate prevention and management, and workload and staffing issues require organisational and sector responses.

At the same time, educators still need the knowledge, confidence and agency to recognise what they need and advocate for themselves within those systems. These things are not in competition with one another. We can strengthen individual educator agency while also expecting workplaces and the broader sector to address the conditions affecting their people.

Who owns an educator’s wellbeing?

There is another part of this conversation that I believe deserves far more attention: privacy. As wellbeing becomes a greater focus within workplaces, we need to think carefully about what information educators are being asked to share, who can access it and how it could be used.

Meaningful reflection can involve deeply personal things. An educator might be questioning their capacity, struggling with their mental health, experiencing difficulties within their workplace, reconsidering their career, feeling disconnected from their team or recognising that they need stronger boundaries. If we want educators to reflect honestly, they need to know that reflection belongs to them.

An educator’s wellbeing should not become another piece of workplace performance data. There is a difference between a service supporting an educator’s professional development and having access to their private reflections about their wellbeing, and we need to preserve that distinction. Otherwise, the very tools intended to support educators may become another space in which they feel they need to provide the “right” answer.

We need to support the person behind the educator

Early childhood educators spend their careers noticing the individual child. We observe, reflect, adjust environments and consider relationships, development, context and individual needs. We recognise that the same approach will not work for every child, yet sometimes our conversations about educator wellbeing seem to forget that the same is true for adults.

There will never be one wellbeing strategy that works for every educator. For one person, connection might be what they need first. For another, it might be rest, professional learning, a boundary, better leadership, psychological support or a completely different workplace. The point is not to prescribe what wellbeing should look like. It is to create the conditions and opportunities for educators to understand what they need.

Individual educators have a role in understanding and advocating for those needs. Services and leaders have a responsibility to create environments where people can work safely and sustainably. As a sector, we also need to be willing to examine the conditions contributing to burnout, isolation and workforce loss rather than continually asking educators to adapt to them.

Educator wellbeing cannot become another thing for educators to succeed at. It should help us create something much more valuable: educators who understand themselves, workplaces willing to listen, and a sector where caring for the people who care for our children is simply part of how we operate.

Author bio and disclosure

Rachel Smith is the founder of The Educators Well, a professional development platform supporting educator wellbeing, learning, leadership and connection. Drawing on almost 20 years of experience across early childhood education, including Family Day Care, In-Home Care and centre-based settings, Rachel advocates for approaches to educator wellbeing that strengthen individual agency while recognising the role of workplace culture, leadership and broader sector conditions. Rachel developed The WELL Framework, the core professional learning program within The Educators Well.