With mental health challenges on the rise, educator burnout is a growing concern. Leading Educator Wellness: Six Critical Actions to Support All Staff offers a framework for school leaders who want to create a culture of wellness and support the people who care for our students. Read on to learn 6 powerful actions to make educator wellness a priority at your school!
Meet the worst-kept secret in education—the wellness crisis
As leaders, how are you going to take care of the people who take care of our students?
The rise in mental health challenges among students and educators has contributed to increased burnout and staff attrition. As schools face mounting demands, wellness is becoming a foundational leadership priority, not an optional concern. Research consistently shows that when leaders support educator well-being and nurture social-emotional growth, it positively influences both teacher effectiveness and student outcomes (CASEL, 2020; Granziera, Martin, & Collie, 2023; Nappa & Hsieh, 2025).
In our book, Leading Educator Wellness, we offer a road map for school and district leaders who understand that improving wellness is essential for stabilizing and advancing student learning and engagement. The book is organized around six critical actions. In this Book Spotlight! blog, we share the motivation behind our work, introduce our leadership wellness framework, and highlight the key questions each action addresses throughout the book.
Since 2020, there has been growing attention on mental health and well-being. Global events—including the pandemic, worldwide conflict, mass shootings, and political divisiveness in the United States—have left people reeling. These triggering factors are impacting schools and school districts, contributing to widespread dysregulation (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020; Correa & First, 2021; McMakin, Ballin, & Fullerton, 2023; Walter & Fox, 2021).
Too often, we see teachers and leaders sacrificing their own wellness for others, a practice that generates stress and may eventually culminate in burnout. As educational leaders, we have observed spikes in both student and staff absenteeism, along with rising healthcare costs, particularly with costs related to mental healthcare.
6 powerful actions for leading educator wellness on a larger scale
Together, these realities made one thing clear: Sustained, systematic, and focused attention on educator wellness is vital to preserve and then advance our work on behalf of the children depending on us. So, we set out to learn more about what might be done to lead this work at scale. While we found a growing body of literature on student and adult well-being, there was a scarcity of research dedicated to the leadership of an initiative to improve wellness in education.
Initially, we drew on what research was available and anchored our efforts into the Wellness Solutions for Educators™ framework developed by Kanold and Boogren (2021).
In their book, Educator Wellness: A Guide for Sustaining Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Social Well-Being, Kanold and Boogren define the dimensions and associated routines designed to improve the wellness of educators. We built upon that framework to write a book that could be used by district-level and school-based leaders to take that improved wellness effort to scale. Our framework focuses on 6 critical actions for leading educator wellness.
In our book, we provide practical tools, protocols, and resources that can be used by school or district leaders immediately to implement each critical action area effectively. And, for each critical action, the following key questions will be answered:
Action 1: Engage in purposeful self-care
- Why is it essential for leaders in education to engage in purposeful self-care?
- Given the demands on time, how might leaders achieve improved physical, emotional, mental, and social health?
Action 2: Implementing a common vision
- How do leaders begin to make a strong case for improving wellness in their school or district?
- Which stakeholders will be engaged to lead the design of a common vision for improved wellness?
Action 3: Conducting a needs assessment
- What is the current state of wellness in our school or district?
- What processes can be used to prioritize wellness work?
Action 4: Set goals and plan actions
- How will leaders infuse wellness meaningfully into school or district improvement plans?
- What goals, strategies, and measures of success will define the wellness work?
- What do sample wellness plans look like?
Action 5: Design and facilitate professional learning
- What professional learning is needed to increase the likelihood of reaching stated goals?
- How will leaders design and implement customized, job-embedded professional learning for educators?
Action 6: Monitor progress and sustain the work
- What actions will leaders take to monitor the implementation of the wellness plan?
- How will leaders celebrate successes along the way?
A road map to a healthier school community
Leading Educator Wellness is a book written by leaders, for leaders. We think about the book as containing three sections:
- A focus on Self-Care (Critical Action 1)
- A focus on setting a vision and assessing current conditions (Critical Actions 2-3)
- Designing and implementing actions that lead to improved wellness (Critical Actions 4-6).
Explore six critical actions to support educator wellness in Leading Educator Wellness by Bill Barnes and Erin Lehmann. This essential guide provides school leaders with practical strategies to foster staff well-being, improve morale, and create a thriving school community.
Hungry for more ways to boost educator wellness in your school or district, retain teachers, uplift morale—and take care of yourself, too? Check out these perfect companion blogs while you wait for our next post!
About the authors
Bill Barnes is the superintendent for the Howard County Public School System in Maryland. He was a recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching and has served on the board of directors for the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics.
Erin Lehmann, EdD, currently serves as an assistant professor for the University of South Dakota. She is an author, leader, and facilitator, advocating for mathematics and high levels of learning for all.
