The Overworked Educator
And the fine line between passion, purpose and completely unsustainable ways of working
There’s a certain kind of work, that some call “passion” work, where the lines between the mythical “home life” and “work life” blur, not because of overwork, but because the work you do is so engaging, so inspiring, that you are pulled to doing it outside of your contracted hours. For me, teaching was often that - when I was a secondary school teacher, I’d surreptitiously tear a funny article out of the magazine in the dentist’s waiting room to read to my Year 9 class, or take a photo of interesting graffiti I spotted to use as a starter in my A Level lesson about Language and Power. It was work that inspired me, work I felt excited to do.
But there was also a darker side to this pull, as there is for so many teachers, which didn’t come from the creativity and inspiration of the role. Anne Helen Peterson points out that teaching is “passion work” and this is a term often considered synonymous with “purpose work”. Teachers, mostly, teach because they feel drawn to do it - they have a sense of purpose and that they wish to make a difference. There may be other lures of teaching - for some that might be school holidays (though as I explored in a previous article, these are not necessarily the boon they are often seen as), or perhaps job security and, once-upon-a-time, a decent pension. But on the whole, teaching is not a profession people are attracted to because of its extravagant salary or flashy lifestyle.
Many teachers will tell you they’re self-motivated to work hard - they do it because they care and they want to do a good job, and often, as I found, because they really enjoy it. The challenge with these kinds of jobs though can be that it’s hard to know when you’ve done enough. In 2023, it was reported that teacher wellbeing levels hit a five year low (and they weren’t good to start with), with more than a third of the workforce experiencing burnout.
Broken systems, not broken people
It’s a rare school that would admit to deliberately and knowingly overloading their teachers, but the systems and processes which support overwork are not there by accident. As Peterson puts it, schools “implement laissez-faire practices that allow the worker to decide for themselves how much work is appropriate, or enough, or “good” — and allow the workers’ fears (of not being passionate enough) and guilt (of not doing enough) to discipline them.” In this way, teachers’ strength - their conscientiousness and commitment - is used against them. And I would add that, certainly in the English state system, punitive inspection practices not only feed these fears, but add a whole extra dimension to them.
This systemic pressure does more than exhaust; it erodes the personal lives of teachers, as I've seen firsthand. And perhaps the greater the sense of purpose you feel, the harder it can be to put appropriate boundaries in place. When you are, for instance, working in schools in very challenging contexts, serving communities who have been badly let down by the social and political system, when you are seeing poverty in action every day, it can be hard to give yourself permission to stop. Some even talk about it feeling self-indulgent to take any kind of break from the important work that needs doing.
Purpose work and boundaries
This isn’t unique to teaching. I spoke to a former colleague recently who now works to reform the prison system. They spoke about how challenging it can be to create healthy working conditions within their own environment, when they are working alongside people (both prisoners and those who work directly with prisoners) whose lives are clearly, tangibly, so difficult. It can be hard to justify taking the time to carve out a happier, healthier work environment for yourself when there is such important and urgent work to do out in the world.
But the key is questioning what is sustainable. We may be able to work very long hours for a short period of time, but most of us cannot sustain that throughout the course of our working lives. If we do, it’s usually by either leaning heavily on, or neglecting, our closest relationships.
So what’s the point of this? I firmly believe the solutions need to be systemic, and we shouldn’t blame individuals for challenges which are deeply entrenched. This is why I don’t like to hear the solution to teacher burnout being framed as “self-care”. First of all, when you’re doing purpose work, “self-care” sounds uncomfortably close to “self-indulgence” or even “self-ish” (it’s not, by the way, but it can feel like that). But more crucially it frames workload issues as being the responsibility of the individual and it demands nothing of the organisations and the systems. Struggling? Oh let me guess, you let self-care slip off your to-do list did you?
That said, all of us who are doing important, passion and purpose-driven work perhaps do need a reminder that it’s still ok to have boundaries. It’s still ok to prioritise your mental and physical wellbeing. And it’s still ok to ask for more and expect better from employers, using the collective influence we have to push for policy and change in our educational institutions that will protect workers. If there’s one thing we should be learning, it’s that the major, societal-level changes which can potentially be achieved by this sort of purpose-led work, will only be achieved over long periods of time. We need to find ways to work more sustainably.
A more sustainable future
As a final personal reflection, I loved teaching, so much so that I’d “save” my lesson planning for a Sunday afternoon, so I could take my time and enjoy it (true story). And yet I’m not teaching anymore. Like most former teachers, I have my own burnout story. Mine is not unusual - in fact, it’s depressingly common and ordinary. But we need to stop haemorrhaging committed and experienced teachers. We need to stop seeing wellbeing as free yoga classes or croissants in the staff room and integrate healthy work patterns, rhythms and hours into our systems. And we need to stop exploiting teachers’ commitment and sense of purpose. Working sustainably should not be an admission of weakness. In passion and purpose work, it has to become our strength.