The start of a new school year is just around the corner, or perhaps some of you are already back in the trenches. The beginning of a school year is a time of anticipation and excitement but also stress and anxiety around the expectations that come with being an educator—feelings shared by teachers and administrators alike.
So, how are teachers doing? One literature review concluded that teacher well-being is “generally at risk” because of stressors like “the high burden on the teaching profession” and “the increasingly challenging societal demands on teachers.” Prior research on Christian schools has consistently found that teacher and administrator well-being continue to be top concerns, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Workload factors into teacher stress. For much of the school year, teaching can be a fast-paced, all-consuming task with little reprieve. As former high school teachers, we’ve been there. For many teachers, the rhythm of ten months of high-stress work followed by two months to cool the jets is unsustainable.
More importantly, it’s unbiblical.
The Bible instead speaks of a rhythm of weekly rest and labor, setting aside a day without labor for rest and worship (Exodus 20:9-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-15). As the author of Hebrews says, “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:8-10).
“There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.”
Hebrews 4:9-10
Given that this Sabbath keeping is the defining rhythm of the Christian life, the Christian school should yield to it, helping teachers, staff, and administrators get the weekly rest they need. Our prior research with Dr. Albert Cheng of the University of Arkansas found that teachers who keep the Sabbath report significantly lower levels of burnout. (Find Matt’s blog summary here.)
But are there things we can do systemically to protect this time of rest? What about schoolwide institutional policies to protect the Sabbath?
To answer this question, we turned to data from ACSI’s Flourishing Faith Index. (You can find our research report here.) We surveyed nearly 1,000 private Christian school teachers in the U.S. for how strongly they agree that their school has policies in place to help staff honor the Sabbath, that school administrators care about their spiritual health and support their growth, and that they engage in spiritual disciplines such as religious service attendance and Scripture memorization.
Figure 1 is a ridgeline plot of teachers’ perceptions of school Sabbath policies. Critical to our analysis, our sample revealed sufficient variation in these perceptions. For example, teachers in schools 1-5 (near the top of the figure) were more likely to disagree that their schools had such policies in place, while most teachers in schools 29-33 (towards the bottom of the figure) agreed strongly.
Furthermore, our analysis showed that when schools have these policies in place, teachers are much more likely to feel supported by their leadership and to practice spiritual disciplines. Among teachers in schools with Sabbath policies, 21% strongly agreed that memorizing Scripture was a part of their lives compared to only 16% of teachers in schools without such policies. Again, among teachers in schools with Sabbath policies, 18% reported attending religious services several times a week, compared to 11% in schools without policies. Moreover, more than 40% of the sample in schools with Sabbath policies felt supported by their leadership, compared to around 24% of teachers in schools without such policies.
When schools have policies in place to help teachers keep the Sabbath, teachers are significantly more likely to feel supported by leadership and to engage in spiritual disciplines (see Figure 2).
And yes, we are intentionally vague about what constitutes “Sabbath policies.” This is where research meets judgment. Research deals with how survey respondents interpret these queries. Wisdom and discretion are needed to interpret these findings and apply them to your context.
From an administrative standpoint, these policies may be as simple as communicating to teachers explicit “permission” to set aside their work or to avoid scheduling official school events (including practices and rehearsals?) on Sundays. Teachers, too, may implement classroom policies to extend these benefits to their students, perhaps by avoiding assigning homework over the weekend or scheduling deadlines on Mondays. The important thing is to take the time to ask ourselves, how are we planning for teachers’ well-being this year?
One Comment on “Planning for Teacher Well-being”
“When schools have policies in place to help teachers keep the Sabbath, teachers are significantly more likely to feel supported by leadership and to engage in spiritual disciplines (see Figure 2).”
I would be very interested in seeing some sample policies that Christian schools have in place to foster Sabbath rest for their staff, students, and families.