Teaching as Hard Work, Teaching as Heart Work: Why Resilience Must Be Part of the Job
Dr. Shasha Lowe-Anderson
I entered the teaching profession in my early twenties with a commitment to improving educational outcomes for students in my community and spent more than twenty years serving in schools identified as low‑income. As a novice teacher, I was overwhelmed not only by gaps in my preparation, but by the unexpected emotional labor, the daily realities of the classroom, and the hundreds of exhausting decisions required of me each day. My personal experience is why Dr. Jill Biden’s reminder that “teaching is hard work—and heart work” resonates so deeply, and why I believe conversations about teacher burnout must begin with an honest discussion of the emotional demands of the job and the resilience it requires.
According to an analysis by Education Resource Strategies (ERStrategies), teacher turnover has increased across all experience levels, with early‑career educators leaving at the highest rates. Although teacher turnover is frequently attributed to factors such as compensation, leadership, and evaluation policies, research increasingly points to burnout as one of the primary forces pushing educators out of schools. If burnout is deeply tied to the emotional labor of teaching, the question is not whether teachers are “resilient enough,” but what structures, practices, and mindsets help cultivate resilience so educators can remain in the profession without sacrificing their well‑being.
What Resilience Looks Like in Real Classrooms
Name the emotional labor and respond before it spirals.
Jennifer Gonzalez’s (2018) reflection in Cult of Pedagogy offers concrete, classroom‑tested strategies for navigating emotional spikes. Rather than treating emotional moments as failure, she emphasizes awareness, cognitive reframing, curiosity, and intentional regulation as professional skills. Resilience here isn’t about suppressing emotion; it’s about pausing, interpreting situations differently, repairing when needed, and responding with care—for both students and teachers. Gonzalez offers some suggestions for teachers:
- Notice early triggers (racing thoughts, rising frustration) and build brief pause points—slow breathing, a counted reset, or a moment of stillness—to de-escalate before reacting.
- Separate identity from behavior. Replace “They don’t respect me” with “This strategy isn’t working”; move from judgment to problem‑solving.
- Adopt an observer stance (What would a coach notice?) and lead with curiosity (What might this student need right now?), which lowers threat and restores agency.
- Repair with boundaries. Name what happened, model accountability, and move forward. This reduces lingering shame and strengthens relationships.
Asking for Help Is a Professional Skill
In Harvard Business Review, Manfred Kets de Vries (2023) reminds us that while self‑reliance is admired, it can backfire when we’re working beyond individual capacity. For teachers, fears of seeming incompetent, burdening colleagues, or losing control often keep us silent just when we need support most. Manfred Kets de Vries suggests that we:
- Reframe help‑seeking as competence and trust, not weakness.
- Name the inner scripts (imposter syndrome, fear of rejection) that keep you isolated.
- Make SMART, specific requests aligned to a colleague’s expertise (e.g., “Could you observe Tuesday’s discussion and give feedback on student talk moves?”).
- Practice asking in small steps; let positive experiences reinforce the habit.
If teaching is heart work, resilience depends not only on how much heart teachers give, but on whether they have permission, and practice, to receive support in return.
School‑Level Moves That Make Resilience Possible
Research by Kwok and Macfarlane (2025) underscores that resilience grows when schools provide intentional, day‑to‑day supports, not just generic encouragement. Some examples include:
- Targeted professional development tied to real challenges (classroom management, discourse, lesson design, technology, curriculum, pedagogy).
- Structured peer collaboration: common planning time, observation/feedback cycles, and access to external networks for “singletons.”
- Active administrative support: clear goals, regular communication, appreciative and actionable feedback, backup with student behavior and family communication, and thoughtful coaching supervision.
- Right‑sizing novice workload: adjust class size, preps, schedules, and paraprofessional support; build time to observe expert colleagues.
These aren’t luxuries; they’re conditions for learning the job. They also make the hard work and heart work sustainable.
Sustaining the Heart Work
Teaching will always be hard work—cognitively demanding, logistically complex, and relentlessly relational. It is also heart work, asking us to care deeply, to repair when we miss the mark, and to keep believing in what students can do. Resilience, then, is not what teachers need after the work, it is what allows the work to continue. When we acknowledge this fully, resilience stops being a quiet expectation placed on individual teachers and becomes a shared responsibility—one that schools, leaders, and policies must actively support.
References
Doughty, M. (2024). Making sense of teacher turnover: A mixed-methods exploration of why teachers leave. Teachers College Record, 126(8), 32–62.
Gonzalez, J. (2024, March 17). Some thoughts on teachers crying in the classroom. Cult of Pedagogy.
Gonzalez, J., & Aguilar, E. (2018, May 6). 12 ways teachers can build their own resilience. Cult of Pedagogy.
Kets de Vries, M. F. R. (2023). Why it’s so hard to ask for help. Harvard Business Review, 101(4), 139–143.
Kwok, A., & Macfarlane, K. O. (2025, February). Strengthening early-career teachers: Effective components of teacher induction programs (EdResearch for Action Brief No. 32).
Mielke, C. (2022). Educator well-being 2.0. Educational Leadership, 79(9).
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