Labor and management must work together to improve teacher wellness in California

Middle school history teachers discuss their lesson plans for teaching about the Great Depression.

Credit: Allison Shelley / American Education

Mental Health Awareness Month is celebrated in May, but in terms of solving California’s teacher shortage and retention challenges, it should be celebrated every month.

Clearly, increased salaries and benefits are part of the answer. However, school workforce wellness for adults is also a key component of the comprehensive approach needed to achieve thriving school and classroom climates, which includes increased positive academic results for students.

We believe a powerful pathway toward improving educator well-being is through labor and management working together.

Over the past decade, labor and management collaborations have borne fruit on a number of issues in many districts. Thankfully these collaborations are now also turning concepts for educator wellness into concrete action.

For example, the Bakersfield City School District implemented support mechanism guides including an educator wellness website, on-site presentations about compassion fatigue, summer institute keynote sessions on self-compassion. and self-care plans.

A team of educators from schools across the district and district administrative personnel are part of the Bakersfield district’s Social Emotional Teacher Advisory Committee. Liz Toruno, the district’s instructional support services coordinator, notes that “Teachers need a voice, a safe space to bring up ideas and collaborate with peers. Our committee members help develop and approve social-emotional learning efforts, thus providing input and buy-in before the district’s administration puts any of these supports in motion.”

Another great educator wellness example is in the West Contra Costa County Unified School District, where the new labor-management agreement recognizes the burnout so many teachers are experiencing and allows educators to take a mental health day as needed. This is a groundbreaking development, achieved with labor and management coming together.

While these are innovative and important solutions, they are not nearly enough. Labor-management retention efforts must also include bold and innovative strategies to address the compassion fatigue (burnout and secondary trauma) teachers experience.

One such way is with an educator-focused multitiered system of support aimed at promoting a healthy and robust teacher workforce at all levels, pre-K-12. This multitiered system could mirror the system California has adopted for students, addressing all teachers including those just entering the profession.  There would be a second tier of supports for those who are struggling or facing significant challenges such as at urban or extremely rural school sites, and a third tier for educators in crisis (e.g., from natural disasters, community violence, and/or suicide clusters).

With a system like this, when these issues arise, educators who have access to mental health services and peer support programs will be better equipped to manage the emotional demands of the job and build stronger relationships with students. The overarching point is that for this type of forward-thinking strategy to come to fruition, labor and management cooperation at the outset is critical.

As an initial step in moving these solutions forward, the Torlakson Whole Child Institute is teaming with the California Labor Management Initiative for a session on this topic at their upcoming Summer Institute. Our goal is to uplift current effective and positive programs, facilitate conversations to promote new innovative approaches, and then help scale these educator and school workforce wellness opportunities to districts across California.

We welcome all from the education field — especially those on the front lines of both labor and management — to join us in this urgent imperative to act now, to address these challenges and make the education field the appreciated profession it deserves to be.

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Tom Torlakson is a former California state superintendent of public instruction (2011-2019) and the founder of the Torlakson Whole Child Institute. Jacquelyn Ollison, Ed.D, is the CDE Foundation’s CA Teacher Residency Lab co-director and a board member of the Torlakson Whole Child Institute.

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