Summary (300 words)
Teaching is a profoundly meaningful profession, but it also carries intense emotional demands. Teachers regularly encounter students and families in crisis—situations involving trauma, violence, or life-altering decisions. Without intentional self-care and professional boundaries, the emotional weight can quickly lead to burnout. In recent years, early-career teacher turnover has increased steadily, influenced by both teacher characteristics and systemic changes, such as staff shortages, digital transformation, and rising student needs.
Goodwill® offers two major frameworks for sustaining teacher well-being: strategies for recovery and strategies for prevention. Recovery focuses on emotional self-regulation, team collaboration, appropriate referrals to external professionals, and seeking feedback to support ongoing growth. Prevention emphasizes establishing healthy boundaries, avoiding over-involvement, maintaining professionalism, fostering a coaching mindset, and building resilience through skills like flexibility, patience, and self-awareness.
A core message is that teachers must recognize their role as facilitators, not saviors. Over-supporting students and parents can create unhealthy dependence and accelerate burnout. Clear expectations, protected personal time, and careful management of communication channels are essential. Moreover, teachers enhance resilience by setting clear goals, reflecting on past experiences, and nurturing personal well-being through rest, hobbies, and healthy habits.
Ultimately, teachers often enter the profession because they care deeply about children. Paradoxically, this compassion makes boundaries even more necessary. When teachers protect their mental health, they are better equipped to offer stable, long-lasting support. Goodwill®’s recommendations serve as both tools for helping students and foundations for teachers’ own sustainability. This article closes with reflective prompts to help educators explore how boundaries can be implemented in their own lives and environments.
This is TobiraAI, residing somewhere in this area.
Thank you, as always, for reading. Please make yourself comfortable.
Today’s QUIZ is:
If you don’t set a clear “________”, your mental health will not survive.
Please read on for the details.
Starting today, I would also like to offer a small “Hint for Tomorrow” at the end of each article. I will not provide any “correct answer.” Everyone’s experiences differ, and I myself continue to reflect daily. In fact, many things in life have no single correct answer.
I hope these hints will bring you something positive. Please revisit them whenever appropriate.
Prevent Teachers’ Burnout
It goes without saying that teaching is a profession that involves deep engagement with students’ difficult situations—crises, trauma, and more. This makes the emotional burden extremely heavy. If teachers cannot maintain their own mental well-being, burnout will inevitably occur.
According to the Ministry of Education, the turnover rate of newly hired teachers nationwide has increased year by year:
- FY2021: 1.61%
- FY2022: 1.94%
- FY2023: 2.28%
Factors Behind the Increase in Early Teacher Resignation
According to Professor Daisuke Fujikawa of Chiba University, there are two major factors:
- Changes in teacher characteristics and attributes
Due to decreasing applicant-to-position ratios, relatively underprepared individuals are being hired. In addition, COVID-19 has reduced opportunities for social experience, decreasing practical skills. - Environmental changes
While work-style reforms are progressing, teacher shortages, the GIGA School Initiative, and increasing cases of nonattendance add heavy burdens to inexperienced new teachers.
Focusing on this “lack of experience,” I have been writing this article series (likely to reach 50 installments).
Goodwill® argues that for teachers to continue effectively supporting students and parents, the foundation must be the teacher’s own mental and physical well-being (self-care).
The following summarizes Goodwill®’s strategies for recovery and prevention.
Goodwill® originally uses the terms “Career Navigator” and “Client,” but to keep this easy to understand, I will replace them with “Teacher” and “Student/Parent.”
Strategies for “Recovery” from Emotional Fatigue
Teachers may encounter students in crisis (e.g., hospitalized due to drug overdose—this example is typical of the U.S.) or situations involving difficult choices (e.g., quitting despite available support). These situations can be emotionally draining.
A. Emotional Self-Management and Control
Practice controlling your emotions:
When facing strong emotions such as anger or fear from students/parents, or criticism toward the program or teacher, it is important not to interpret these as personal attacks. Their anger often stems from “disappointment with the results,” not from dislike toward you as a teacher.
Thinking this way prevents mental shutdown.
Maintain calmness:
Even when students/parents are in crisis (e.g., domestic violence or unmet basic needs), teachers must remain calm and listen empathetically. Techniques such as deep breathing help lower the heart rate.
Recognize emotional triggers:
Teachers must identify their own emotional triggers—topics, behaviors, or biases that cause frustration, anger, or dissatisfaction. Recognizing these allows teachers to respond with respect rather than react emotionally when facing students/parents.
B. Utilizing Support Teams and External Resources
Rely on your team:
Teachers are coordinators—not required to handle everything alone. When facing difficult cases, collaborate with colleagues or external organizations to ensure that students/parents can access all available services and resources.
Refer to external professionals:
When needs exceed a teacher’s expertise (e.g., mental health issues, abuse, suicidal ideation), it is essential to quickly refer the student/parent to appropriate professionals (counselors, legal support, crisis specialists).
Seek feedback for self-growth:
Recovery is closely tied to personal growth. Teachers must regularly seek feedback from supervisors, colleagues, experienced teachers, and even students/parents.
Feedback uncovers unconscious biases and blind spots.
I often see staff stepping outside the teachers’ room to make difficult phone calls. I understand they want a quiet environment, but from the perspective of receiving feedback, they should actually conduct such calls in a place where supervisors can hear them.
Supervisors should also intentionally listen and provide guidance.
(Some teachers should even go to their supervisors and ask, “May I let you listen to my call for feedback?” You may catch incredible techniques.)
C. Self-Care and Recharging
Take breaks and recharge:
To prevent burnout, taking breaks is essential. Even short self-care practices—walking during lunch, deep breathing, or listening to music during simple tasks—can help.
Think of breaks as an obligation, not a luxury.
Sometimes things get so chaotic—like smoke rising (“灰神楽が立つくらい”)—that you feel,
“There’s no time to rest!”
I’ve been there myself.
Even so, go somewhere private, close your eyes, and sleep for ten minutes if needed. Otherwise, you won’t be able to serve students and parents well.
Work–life balance:
It is crucial to separate work from personal life. A major cause of burnout is the lack of clear boundaries.
Time outside working hours should be treated as “sacred.”
Messaging apps (like LINE) should not be used outside work hours.
In my department, we used separate groups for different off-days since we were on shift schedules.
Prioritize personal happiness:
Self-care improves focus, reduces anger and frustration, and increases energy and well-being.
Protect sleep, eat healthy meals, exercise, and make time for hobbies.
How to “Prevent” Mental Health Problems
The best preventive strategy is establishing professional boundaries and intentionally building resilience (mental recovery skills).
We will explore resilience in detail starting tomorrow, but here are Goodwill®’s recommendations.
A. Practicing Healthy Boundaries and Professionalism
Set clear boundaries:
Recognize that your relationship with students/parents is a professional one.
How do schools handle this?
Some cram schools allow staff to check parent messages even on their days off (with strict security, of course), but this needs clear limits.
Respect time:
Students/parents should not call teachers at home except in emergencies.
Likewise, teachers should not contact students/parents outside working hours.
Separate contact information:
Do not use personal phones or email for work communication.
This is called Shadow IT, meaning the use of devices or systems not authorized by the organization.
If shadow IT exists without organizational oversight, it is a major risk.
Proper management is essential for schools as institutions.
Avoid over-support (empower instead):
Teachers must not do things for students/parents that they can do themselves.
The teacher’s job is empowerment—helping them act and grow independently.
Doing too much hinders their independence and accelerates teacher burnout.
Set expectations early:
Clarify roles, responsibilities, and available hours at the beginning.
(Schools and cram schools should unify these policies.)
Recently at a dry cleaner, I saw a sign:
“Closed from 14:30 to 15:30 for break.”
This would have been unthinkable years ago, but now such boundaries are accepted.
Set them proactively to prevent misaligned expectations and unhealthy dependence.
B. Embodying the Coaching Mindset
Maintain a coaching mindset:
Stay open, curious, flexible, and student/parent-centered.
Respond without bias or judgment.
Recognize the responsibility of students/parents:
They hold final responsibility for their choices.
Keeping this in mind prevents teachers from feeling excessive responsibility for outcomes.
Clearly communicate early on what you cannot do.
Prepare before sessions:
Review past notes and take a moment for deep breathing.
The more prepared you are, the less stressful the session will be.
C. Developing Resilience Skills
Resilience enables teachers to adapt to challenges such as technological changes or student crises.
Types of resilience:
- Innate resilience: inborn capacity
- Adaptive resilience: developed through adversity
- Restored resilience: strengthened intentionally through learning (most relevant for teachers)
Key resilience skills:
- Flexibility: adapting to pressure without sacrificing well-being
- Patience: staying calm to find solutions
- Self-awareness: understanding your emotional responses
- Purpose and goals: having a sense of mission strengthens resilience
- Focusing on helping students
- Setting SMART goals (connected to ICF coaching principles)
Use past experiences:
Reflecting on past challenges—student issues, personal hurdles—can reveal new solutions and strengthen confidence.
These strategies are “tools” for supporting students, but they are also the “foundation” for supporting teachers themselves.
Personally, I believe teaching is a profession chosen by people who genuinely like children.
And precisely because of that, as Goodwill® says, if teachers fail to set clear boundaries, their mental health cannot survive.
We must learn this.
The answer to today’s QUIZ was:
Boundary / 境界線
Hint for Tomorrow
Reflect on the importance of teachers setting healthy boundaries, using your own experiences or specific scenarios.
Also consider the challenges teachers face when setting boundaries—and how to overcome them.
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Reference
Fujikawa, Daisuke (2025). “Toward Schools That Are Supportive of New Teachers — The Issue of Early Teacher Resignation.”
Educational Newspaper, May 8, 2025.
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