11 Ways to Improve Teacher Well-Being

Teaching is hard (often draining) work, and educators’ instincts about what will bring relief are frequently wrong—just as they are for most people.

That’s because our minds deceive us, says cognitive scientist and Yale professor Laurie Santos, one of the world’s leading researchers on well-being and happiness. “One of the most annoying features of the mind is the fact that we all have these intuitions about the kinds of things we should be doing to feel better. But the research shows that many of those intuitions are just incorrect.”

In this episode of School of Practice, Dr. Santos joins host Kristin Leong to debunk some of the most popular and persistent myths about happiness—more money *mostly* doesn’t buy more happiness, for example, and a values mismatch at work may be more consequential for burnout than you think—and shares a set of evidence-based tools teachers can begin to apply right away to reclaim a sense of balance.

Related resources:

Learn more about this episode

The Research on Protecting Teacher Well-Being

Coursera: The Science of Well-Being

The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos

Yale’s Happiness Professor Says Anxiety Is Destroying Her Students

What a New Survey Says About Teachers’ Plans to Leave Their Jobs

The Burnout Challenge

No, You Don’t Always Have to Confront Your Feelings Right Away