Resources for Cultivating Teacher Well-Being

What is teacher well-being and how do we grow it?

As described in REL Pacific's How to Grow Teacher Wellbeing in Your Schools infographic, teacher well-being is reflected in a positive attitude toward teaching that stems from supportive relationships with colleagues and students, the belief that one has the ability to teach effectively, and the feeling that one's personal and professional needs and expectations are met.^{1, 2} Teachers who feel supported may be better able to manage the daily stresses of teaching, maintain effective classroom management that is productive for learning, and have supportive and caring relationships with students.

Principals and other school leaders can identify teachers' needs through surveys, interviews, and focus groups. Then, armed with this insight, school leaders can provide teachers with relevant supports such as opportunities to collaborate with colleagues, engage in professional learning activities, and participate in decision making.

Strategies for Gaining Insight into Teacher Well-Being (REL Pacific Webinar)

REL Pacific's 2020 blog post Reflecting on Teacher Wellbeing During the COVID-19 Pandemic introduces three well-known human behavior frameworks school leaders can use to explore challenges teachers experience and increase their wellbeing. One of those frameworks, the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM), examines how teachers' individual attitudes and beliefs can affect how they teach their students. CBAM includes three dimensions: Innovative Configurations, Stages of Concern, and Levels of Use.³

Building on that popular blog post and in alignment with the goals of the Palau Partnership to Support Teacher Effectiveness and the Ala (Pathway) for All Learners in American Samoa, REL Pacific hosted the two-part webinar series Strategies for Gaining Insight Into Teacher Well-Being. The series introduced two of CBAM's practitioner-friendly tools that principals and other school leaders can use for collecting and acting on data regarding teacher concerns, in order to support their well-being and professional growth.

Identifying Teachers' Concerns When Implementing an Innovation, Practice, or Program

CBAM's Stages of Concern

In Part 1: Stages of Concern, presenters shared how this diagnostic tool from CBAM⁴ can serve as a valuable resource for helping school and district leaders gain insight into teachers' self-described concerns about implementing innovations, practices, or programs. The Stages of Concern tool, consists of seven categories of questions, concerns, or anxieties that teachers may face when undergoing change. In the early-stage categories, educators are likely to be more anxious about how they personally are affected by the change. As teachers begin to adapt to the change, their concerns often shift to supporting their colleagues so that everyone can successfully navigate the change and, ultimately, to thinking about refinements that can lead to bigger positive outcomes.⁵ By identifying the most intense concern(s) expressed by teachers, principals can align their leadership actions to help decrease the intensity of the concern and help teachers collectively focus on having a greater impact on students' learning outcomes.

To develop their understanding and support future application of the Stages of Concern, the webinar participants practiced interpreting hypothetical concern statements that teachers might express while implementing a new initiative, such as team teaching.

Understanding How Teachers Describe Their Use of an Innovation, Practice, or Program

CBAM's Levels of Use

Part 2: Levels of Use focused on understanding how teachers describe their use of an initiative or practice, and how the Levels of Use, another CBAM tool, can provide school leaders with insights on supports teachers may need to improve implementation and progress toward intended outcomes. The Levels of Use consist of eight behavior characteristics that explain how educators are coping with change and becoming more familiar with new skills and programs.⁶ There are two methods for assessing Levels of Use, an informal branching interview--most often used by leaders seeking to understand and support implementation of new programs and practices--and a formal, focused-interview protocol primarily used in research and evaluation studies.

To develop their understanding and support future application of the Levels of Use, presenters role-played an informal interview and engaged participants in a discussion of how information obtained through such interviews could be used to support improved professional practice and contribute to teacher well-being.

Additional REL and Comprehensive Center Resources

Listed below is a selection of additional resources from the RELs and Regional Comprehensive Centers related to supporting educators' well-being.

• REL Northeast & Islands' Supporting Educator Well-being Using Evidence-Based Supports factsheet (May 2024) offers a social-ecological approach to encouraging educator well-being. This approach focuses on providing educators with three levels or types of external support: self-care, support from and supporting others, and a supportive environment. Informed by data about staff concerns (for example, workload, student relationships, and life satisfaction), various strategies are available for each of the support types to improve well-being.
• The Region 14 Comprehensive Center's Toward Student and Staff Well-Being: Building School-Community Partnerships for Mental Health Supports and Services presents actionable steps for school, local, and state educational agencies to help foster staff well-being by advancing mental health supports and services with school-community partnerships.
• REL Mid-Atlantic's Navigating New Waters: Focusing on Principals' Health and Well-Being blog (January 2023) calls awareness to principals' well-being, which the COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic environment has challenged more than ever. This blog shares opportunities and resources principals can take to strengthen their well-being and how district leaders can help.
• The Region 13 Comprehensive Center's Reimagining Excellence: A Blueprint for Integrating Social and Emotional Well-Being and Academic Excellence in Schools outlines school goals to improve student, staff, and family outcomes in several areas, including teacher well-being. The goals are framed within seven dimensions: equity, responsive relationships, culture and climate, instruction, instructional materials, professional learning, and leadership.
• The National Comprehensive Center's Trauma-Informed Practice Brief #4: Prioritizing Teachers: Importance of Self-Care and Adult Social and Emotional Competencies (2021) brief gives guidance to school, district, and state-level practitioners on how to foster teacher well-being by integrating adult self-care and adult social and emotional learning competencies into teacher professional development.
• The Region 12 Comprehensive Center offers a four-part blog series on teacher well-being (2020-2021). The series provides additional information about using the CBAM to support teacher well-being--including the Stages of Concern and Levels of Use tools described in the Strategies for Gaining Insight into Teacher Well-Being webinar, as well as the Innovation Configurations tool.
  1. How Are You Doing? Supporting Wellbeing and Learning Through a Concerns-Based Approach
  2. Is This Working? Navigating the Stages of Concern to Support Teacher Wellbeing
  3. How is it Going? Exploring Levels of Use to Support Teacher Wellbeing
  4. What's Next? Exploring Innovation Configurations to Support Teacher Wellbeing
• REL Pacific's Fostering Teacher Wellbeing to Support Student Learning short video (April 2020) gives an overview of research on teacher well-being and how supporting it can create a positive and productive learning environment for students while helping teachers manage the daily stresses of teaching.