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Podcast PD Episode 7: The Emotional Load of Teaching
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In this episode of Podcast PD with Kristina, we shift the focus from students to something just as important—but often overlooked: the emotional experience of educators.
Teaching is more than lesson planning and instruction. It is emotional labor, constant decision-making, and ongoing nervous system regulation. Drawing on research in emotional labor (Hochschild), decision fatigue (Baumeister), polyvagal theory (Porges), and trauma-informed practices, this episode explores why the work feels so heavy—and why that feeling is not a personal failure, but a predictable response to the demands of the job.
We unpack how a dysregulated adult nervous system can impact classroom culture, why co-regulation matters, and how cycles of stress can unintentionally escalate student behavior. We also explore the differences between burnout and compassion fatigue, the impact of secondary trauma, and the increasing complexity of teaching in today’s classrooms.
This episode reinforces a core idea: regulated classrooms start with regulated adults.
If you’ve ever felt exhausted, overwhelmed, or questioned whether what you’re doing is enough—this conversation is for you. The goal is not to fix everything overnight, but to normalize the emotional side of this work, build awareness, and begin creating a culture where adults feel supported, not just expected to push through.
✨ In upcoming episodes, we’ll dive into burnout, practical regulation strategies you can use during the school day, and how we build staff cultures rooted in support, curiosity, and ca
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Transcript
Introduction and Emotional Well-being of Educators
00:00:00
Kristina Lamia
Hey everyone, and welcome back to a Podcast PD with Christina. As we close out this quarter, I want to shift us slightly. We spend a lot of time talking about students, and that matters, but today is about you.
00:00:16
Kristina Lamia
Because the truth is, the adults are not always okay either. One of the goals with Podcast PD has always been to normalize the emotional side of this work, to create space where we can talk honestly about what teaching actually feels like, not just what it looks like.
00:00:36
Kristina Lamia
And my hope is that we continue building a culture where we can take care of each other and learn and lead from a place of curiosity and support, not judgment.
Emotional Labor in Teaching
00:00:47
Kristina Lamia
There is a part of teaching that is largely invisible. It's not the lesson plans or the data meetings. It's the emotional load that sits underneath everything.
00:00:59
Kristina Lamia
Research on emotional labor introduced by Arlie Hochschild helps explain this. Emotional labor is the process of managing your own emotions to meet the expectations of your goal.
00:01:11
Kristina Lamia
In schools, that means that you're staying calm when you're frustrated, responding with patience when you are overwhelmed, and regulating yourself all day long so that students can borrow your regulation.
00:01:24
Kristina Lamia
Over time, that constant internal management takes real cognitive and physiological energy. Layered on top of that is decision fatigue.
00:01:36
Kristina Lamia
Research shows that the more decisions we make, the more our mental resources become depleted. Teachers are making hundreds of decisions a day about academics, behavior, relations, and by the afternoon, it's not just that you're tired.
00:01:55
Kristina Lamia
Your brain is literally operating with fewer available resources. That impacts your patience, flexibility, and problem solving, which are the exact skills that this job requires the most.
Impact of Teachers' Emotional State
00:02:09
Kristina Lamia
At the same time, your nervous system is rarely at rest during the workday. Teaching requires constant vigilance, scanning for behavior, anticipating escalation, and monitoring multiple students at once.
00:02:25
Kristina Lamia
Neuroscience tells us that this kind of sustained alertness keeps the brain in a low-level stress response, driven by the amygdala. And even when nothing major happens, your body has still been working all day to maintain safety and stability.
00:02:41
Kristina Lamia
And this is where an important connection comes in. The state of an adult's nervous system directly impacts the classroom environment. Research grounded in the polyvagal theory developed by Stephen Porges shows that our nervous systems are constantly reading and responding to one another.
00:03:02
Kristina Lamia
This is called co-regulation. Students, especially those who have experienced stress or trauma, are highly attuned to adult tone, body language, and emotional state.
00:03:14
Kristina Lamia
When an adult is regulated, calm, and predictable, it signals safety and students are more likely to access their thinking brain. But when an adult is dysregulated, rushed, overwhelmed, reactive, that state is also communicated, often unintentionally, to our students.
00:03:37
Kristina Lamia
And this isn't about blame, it's about awareness. Because a dysregulated adult nervous system can lead to a sharper tone, quicker reactions, less patience, and more escalation.
00:03:52
Kristina Lamia
And when that happens, it can unintentionally create a cycle where student dysregulation increases, which then increases adult stress.
00:04:03
Kristina Lamia
And the cycle continues.
Balancing Instructional and Emotional Roles
00:04:05
Kristina Lamia
Research in trauma-informed education, including work from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, emphasize that regulation is a prerequisite for learning.
00:04:17
Kristina Lamia
If the adult nervous system is not regulated, it becomes much harder to create the conditions students need to regulate themselves. When we zoom out, it becomes clear that teaching is not one role.
00:04:33
Kristina Lamia
It is multiple roles happening at the same time. There is the instructional role, and then there is the emotional and behavioral support role.
00:04:44
Kristina Lamia
Both of those require your full attention. And for many educators, particularly in elementary settings, there's also the reality of the mental load outside of school.
00:04:55
Kristina Lamia
Research shows that women often carry a disproportionate share of invisible labor at home, meaning that many educators leave a full day of caregiving at school and step into another at home.
00:05:08
Kristina Lamia
On top of that, we are constantly absorbing messages about education. Research on negativity bias, the tendency for humans to focus more on negative information, shows that when we repeatedly are exposed to negative narratives, we begin to internalize them.
00:05:27
Kristina Lamia
Over time, that can shape how we experience our work, making everything feel heavier than it already is. And there's also another layer that we don't talk about enough, secondary trauma.
00:05:42
Kristina Lamia
Research from Charles Figley defines this as the emotional impact of being exposed to others' trauma. In schools, that looks like hearing students' stories, witnessing their struggles, and holding space for dysregulation every day.
00:05:58
Kristina Lamia
And even if nothing major happens, your nervous system is still processing that emotional load. And that is why you feel completely drained at the end of a day that looked fine on the surface.
Burnout vs. Compassion Fatigue in Teaching
00:06:11
Kristina Lamia
And this is where it's important to distinguish between burnout and compassion fatigue. Burnout, as defined by the World Health Organization, comes from chronic workplace stress that often shows up as exhaustion and frustration.
00:06:26
Kristina Lamia
Compassion fatigue comes from prolonged exposure to others' emotional experiences and can look like numbness or detachment. Naming the difference matters because it helps you understand what you're actually experiencing instead of assuming it's just you.
00:06:43
Kristina Lamia
At the same time, you're doing incredibly complex instructional work. You're trying new strategies, reflecting, researching, and adjusting constantly, often on the fly.
00:06:56
Kristina Lamia
And this aligns with the high impact teaching practices identified by John Hattie. But when those strategies do not immediately work, it can feel frustrating and defeating.
00:07:08
Kristina Lamia
That frustration is real, but it doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong. Learning is not linear. And the fact that you are reflecting and adjusting is actually what effective teaching looks like.
00:07:21
Kristina Lamia
That's the work.
Changing Educational Approaches
00:07:23
Kristina Lamia
And there's also a broader shift happening in education and I would say parenting. I believe that we're moving from more authoritarian approaches to more authoritative ones.
00:07:36
Kristina Lamia
Based on the research by Diana Baumreind, authoritative approaches, those high warmth with clear boundary approaches lead to stronger long-term outcomes for students, but they require more from adults.
00:07:51
Kristina Lamia
They require explanation, relationship building, and co-regulation. And when students are dysregulated, their prefrontal cortex is less accessible, meaning long explanations in the moment are ineffective.
00:08:04
Kristina Lamia
What they need first is regulation followed by teaching. And all of this points to a larger truth. The work has become more complex. You are not just teaching content.
00:08:16
Kristina Lamia
You're managing environments, regulating nervous systems, and building skills that extend far beyond academics. So if you're feeling exhausted, stretched, emotionally heavy, or even disconnected at times, that is not a personal failure.
00:08:33
Kristina Lamia
It's a predictable response to the demands of this work. And it also reminds us of something important. If we want regulated classrooms, we have to support regulated adults.
Fostering Supportive Classroom Cultures
00:08:45
Kristina Lamia
Classroom culture is not just built on routines and expectations. It's built on nervous system safety, and that starts with us. So today, the takeaway is simple.
00:08:56
Kristina Lamia
If this feels heavy sometimes, there's a reason for that. You're doing complex human work. And the goal of this work is not that you carry it alone.
00:09:08
Kristina Lamia
It's that we begin to normalize these experiences, take better care of each other, and continue to learn and lead with curiosity and support. As we move into the next set of episodes, we're going to build on this together.
Episode Conclusion and Future Topics
00:09:22
Kristina Lamia
We'll take a closer look at burnout and compassion fatigue so you can better understand what you might be experiencing. We'll also focus on practical, realistic strategies you can use during the school day to reset and regulate without adding more to your plate.
00:09:37
Kristina Lamia
And we'll spend some time thinking about staff culture, how we create environments where adults feel supported, not just expected to push through. Because supporting students starts with supporting the adults who show up for them every day.
00:09:51
Kristina Lamia
Thank you for joining today and I'll see you next week.