As teachers, it can sometimes be all too easy to experience burnout due to the amount of hard work, dedication and care we put into our profession. With long days spent in classrooms full of students and plenty of extra planning done outside the traditional school day, it’s no surprise that people quickly become exhausted — both mentally and physically.
To prevent complete teacher burnout, many people turn to methods such as relaxation techniques or counselling appointments. Another great way to give yourself an emotional break is by reading books by teachers and educators who have experienced teacher burnout and have successfully dealt with it.
These teacher burnout books provide a wealth of helpful tips and useful pieces of advice. In this collection, I share with you some of the best teacher burnout books to add to your reading list.
Teacher Burnout Books
Here are our top picks for teacher burnout books:
1. The Burnout Cure: Learning to Love Teaching Again, by Chase Mielke
The book is filled with research-based strategies for social-emotional learning and positive psychology. It describes how shifts in awareness, attitudes, and actions can be transformational for you and your students. Specific steps related to mindfulness, empathy, gratitude, and altruism are outlined that you can use on your own and with students.
2. Hacking Teacher Burnout, by Amber Harper
In her book Hacking Teacher Burnout, Harper lays out an eight-step process to guide you through burnout and into a more empowered state. She helps angry teachers and leaders overcome incredible challenges, showing how you can make time for things that bring growth and joy to your life again. With Harper’s help, you can become a thriving teacher—personally and professionally—prepared for whatever hardships come your way.
3. Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, by Emily Nagoski, Amelia Nagoski
In Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, the Nagoskis explains that instead of asking us to ignore the obstacles and societal pressures that stand between women and well-being, we need to understand what we’re up against. They show us how to fight back, using compassion and optimism. In these pages, you’ll learn
- how to complete the biological stress cycle—and return your body to a state of relaxation
- how to manage the “monitor” in your brain that regulates the emotion of frustration
- how the Bikini Industrial Complex makes it difficult for women to love their bodies—and how to defend yourself against it
- why rest, human connection, and befriending your inner critic are keys to recovering and preventing burnout
4. Teacher Burnout Turnaround: Strategies for Empowered Educators, by Patricia Jennings
In Teacher Burnout Turnaround, educational psychologist Jennings presents a matrix of stress-causing factors that lead to burnout and shows how teachers can tackle the sources of stress at each pressure point.
From developing social and emotional competencies―so crucial to teachers and students―to achieving systemic change through collective efficacy, she offers hope and practical remedies for overcoming a toxic trend in education.
5. Surviving Teacher Burnout, by Amy L. Eva
Written by an educational director at the Greater Good Science Center, this 52-week self-care guide offers simple, low-lift strategies for increasing resilience and fostering greater well-being, confidence, and hope. Grounded in research-based positive psychology, the book offers tons of practical activities and journal-style prompts to help you cultivate feelings of gratitude, optimism, mindfulness, forgiveness, empathic joy, self-compassion, purpose, and curiosity.
6. The Resilient Educator: Empowering Teachers to Overcome Burnout and Redefine Success, by Jaclyn Reuter
In The Resilient Educator, author Jennifer Reuter provides a guide for struggling teachers on their paths toward rediscovering the joys of this vocation. Through her journey, Reuter offers actionable steps to combat teacher burnout and work towards a thriving teaching career. For new teachers and experienced educators alike, The Resilient Educator provides invaluable insight into the common causes of teacher burnout and practical strategies for overcoming them. With personal stories and examples from her classroom, Reuter offers a roadmap to reclaiming your passion for teaching.
7. Look Beyond the Clouds: Transform Your Daily Habits to Overcome Teacher Burnout and Find Joy in Teaching Again, by Michelle Gano
This book is for anyone who wants to maintain their joy in teaching and avoid burnout. Through personal stories and helpful tips, Look Beyond the Clouds will help you feel seen, heard, and understood. It will also encourage you to transform your daily habits so you can face each day with positivity and gratitude.
8. Teacher’s Field Guide: 7 Truths About Teaching to Help You off Start Strong, Avoid Burnout, and Stay in Love with Teaching, by Kerry Hemms
Teacher’s Field Guide is designed to provide support to teachers in seven important areas of their personal and professional lives. Through essays, tips, tools, and strategies, the guide aims to lessen the stress and increase the joy found in teaching.
Written by experienced educators, the guide offers teachers answers to questions such as how they can make a difference when it feels so stressful, how to decrease workload demands, and how to maintain healthy work-life balances.
9. Overcoming Teacher Burnout in Early Childhood: Strategies for Change, by Ellen M. Drolette
Overcoming Teacher Burnout offers strategies for change to help you stay motivated and inspired in your work. It includes personal stories from the field as well as practical steps to help you refuel and bump up your morale. With this book, you’ll be able to create a high-quality early childhood environment that is both healthy and intentional.
10. First Aid for Teacher Burnout: How You Can Find Peace and Success, by Jenny Grant Rankin
First Aid for Teacher Burnout offers clear strategies to prevent and recover from burnout, based on research and expert recommendations.
Each chapter explores a different common cause of teacher burnout and provides takeaway strategies and realistic tips. topics covered include fighting low morale, diminishing stress, streamlining grading, reducing workload, leveraging collaboration, avoiding monotony, using technology to your advantage, managing classroom behaviour, advocating for support from your administration, securing the help of parents and community, and more.
11. Becoming an Emotionally Intelligent Teacher, by William Powell, Ochan Kusuma-Powell
Based on the five components of emotional intelligence outlined by Daniel Goleman, this guidebook will show you how to become more self-aware, self-regulated, motivated, socially aware, and relationship-minded in the classroom. The authors provide tons of research, case studies, and essential tools to help you improve your teaching style. You’ll learn how to:
- · Understand how your conscious and unconscious behaviours affect the learning environment
- · Refine your verbal and nonverbal communication skill
- · Manage your feelings and frustrations
- · Interpret student behaviours, develop insight into how students perceive your teaching style
- · Hone your presentation skills, and more
12. Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56, by Rafe Esquith
Featuring techniques and innovations used by award-winning teacher Rafe Esquith, this book will help your kids develop the skills and competencies needed to learn any content area. With personal codes of behaviour and tips on tackling literature and algebra, Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire is a powerful book for anyone concerned about the future of our children.
Final thoughts
The list above features some of the most eye-opening books on teacher burnout. These resources offer actionable wisdom and authentic perspectives on how to tackle the grind and emerge revitalized. As someone who’s put in over 15 years in the classroom , I can’t stress enough the value of equipping yourself with the right tools—and these books are just that.
So, if you’ve ever felt like you’re running on empty, if the word ‘burnout’ feels a bit too familiar, you’re certainly not alone. The statistics say it all; teacher burnout is real, affecting both newbies and veterans in the field.
