Lisa McMorris loved teaching. Over 35 years in early elementary education, she built a career around helping children learn and feel supported. But as the demands of the job grew, she found herself working late, carrying students’ struggles home, and wondering whether she could keep going. In this episode of Real Talk About Educator Burnout, Lisa joins Lori Herman to reflect on what changed and why she chose to retire earlier than planned.

Their conversation makes room for both the joy and the weight of teaching. Lisa describes the difference a caring principal made when she was overwhelmed, while also explaining why individual support could only do so much when responsibilities kept piling up. She shares what she wishes she had known about boundaries earlier in her career and what she hopes school leaders will hear from teachers today.

In this episode you'll hear...

• How Lisa’s passion for teaching shaped her career and made it difficult to step back when she needed to.
• Why growing workloads and assessment demands left less time and energy for the parts of teaching she loved.
• What it can feel like to support students through difficult experiences while carrying that concern beyond the school day.
• How a principal’s regular check-ins helped Lisa feel seen, even when larger demands remained.
• Lisa’s advice to school leaders: listen to teachers before making decisions that change their work, and take something off their plates when adding more.

Let's Connect:

Website: https://willowtreewellnesscoaching.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WillowTreeWellnessCo/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willowtreewellnesscoaching

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/willow-tree-wellness-llc/

Join Our Facebook Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beyondburnouteducators

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does it look like when the people caring for students are running out of capacity themselves? In the first episode of Real Talk About Educator Burnout, Mary Abbott and Lori Herman share the experiences that led them to start Willow Tree Wellness and this podcast. Both have spent years supporting students and colleagues in schools, and both reached a point where they wondered how much longer they could keep going.

Mary and Lori talk candidly about the pressure to stay late, take on more, and treat burnout as a personal problem to solve with better self-care. They explain why educator well-being also depends on school systems: manageable demands, support during classroom crises, and time to recover afterward. This conversation introduces their Educator Capacity System and the question they hope more schools will ask: How are our educators doing?

In this episode you'll hear...

• Why Mary and Lori began looking for a better way to support educators.
• How expectations to always do more can make it hard to set boundaries.
• Why self-care alone cannot fix unsustainable working conditions.
• What repeated classroom crises can mean for educators and students.
• How the Educator Capacity System looks at both the demands educators face and the support available to them.

Let's Connect:

Website: https://willowtreewellnesscoaching.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WillowTreeWellnessCo/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willowtreewellnesscoaching

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/willow-tree-wellness-llc/

Join Our Facebook Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beyondburnouteducators

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the way we measure success in our schools is missing something?

Across the country, dedicated educators are asking themselves a question many never imagined they would have to ask: "How much longer can I keep doing this?" More than half of educators are experiencing burnout, but behind every statistic is a person, a story, and a voice that deserves to be heard.

Welcome to Real Talk about Educator Burnout, presented by Willow Tree Wellness. We're Mary Abbott, Megan Jones, and Lori Herman, school social workers and education leaders with more than seventy-five years of combined experience working in schools. And we've seen firsthand both the extraordinary commitment of educators and the toll this work can take. That's why we created this podcast.

Through honest conversations from teachers, school social workers, counselors, paraprofessionals, administrators, and other education professionals, along with insights from experts in the field, we're gonna go beyond the statistics to explore what it's really like to work in schools today, what's driving burnout, why educators are leaving, what helps them stay, and what needs to change.

At Willow Tree Wellness, we believe educator well-being directly impacts student success, and it's time our education system recognizes that connection. Imagine if every school district not only asked, "How are students doing?" but also, "How are our educators doing?" Because educator well-being and student success are not competing priorities. They're inseparable. We're not just working to reduce educator burnout. We're working to redefine what successful schools look like. We need to stop asking, "How can our educators become more resilient?" and start asking, "What's happening in our schools that's causing so many educators to burn out?" Because educator burnout isn't simply an individual problem.

It's time we start examining and changing the systems and conditions contributing to it. Welcome to Real Talk about Educator Burnout. Let's get into it.

Let's Connect:

Website: https:/willowtreewellnesscoaching.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WillowTreeWellnessCo/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willowtreewellnesscoaching

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/willow-tree-wellness-llc/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.