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Promising Results from the Total Teacher Health Project with Amanda Hiner

• Amy Schamberg • Season 2 • Episode 11

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In this week’s Taught episode, I talk with researcher Amanda Hiner, PhD student in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, about the Total Teacher Health project and what happens when schools move beyond surface-level “wellness” and start tackling root causes.

When the Total Teacher Health Project began collecting data across six New England schools, the results were hard to ignore:  76% of educators reported moderate to severe stress, 31% reported clinically significant anxiety, and 49.5% met criteria for depression.

Through the Total Teacher Health project, Amanda and her research team are using a participatory design approach to turn those numbers around. She walks us through their Learn–Plan–Improve model and describes a cafeteria case study where small environmental tweaks and light-touch incentives measurably reduced chaos, improved school climate, and protected teacher bandwidth- without costly programs.

We also explore how to balance educator voice with leadership support, how to include non-instructional staff for broader insight, and how to implement simple recognition practices that actually work.

Tune in to learn how participatory designs - and simply listening - can create transformative change.


Learn more about the Total Teacher Health Project at the University of Connecticut.

Access the Educator Well-being Program infographic here, with QR codes to watch an informational video and sign up for the Total Teacher Health newsletter.

Connect with guest Amanda Hiner on LinkedIn. 

Support the show

Read the Episode Transcript on the TAUGHT website.

Connect with host Amy Schamberg on LinkedIn

Explore:

  • Learn more about the Total Worker Health® approach from NIOSH
  • Discover Amy’s wellness workshops, coaching, and consulting at amyschamberg.com
  • Check out the book that started it all! Taught: The Very Private Journal of One Bad Teacher by Melissa Lafort — Available on Amazon

Want to Be a Guest on TAUGHT?
We're always looking to elevate expert voices and real solutions. Email amy@amyschambergwellness.com with your name, title, and a brief description of your perspective or experience in education or workforce wellbeing.

Need Support Right Now?
For immediate mental health resources, visit HealthCentral or connect with a licensed provider in your area.

Amy Schamberg:

Hi everybody, this is Amy Schamberg, and you're listening to TAUGHT, the podcast for education changemakers who want simple, effective, and actionable strategies to make schools healthier, safer, and more sustainable places to work. By now you've probably heard it loud and clear. Educator burnout is a compounding global crisis. Teachers are leaving in droves, and students are paying the price. But despite the scale of the problem, most teacher wellness efforts still focus only on the individual, the least effective level of intervention. It's time for a new approach, one that looks upstream, moves beyond surface level fixes, and focuses on real organizational solutions. Because, let's be honest, you can't self-care your way out of systemic dysfunction. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in.

Amy Schamberg:

Welcome back to Taught everybody. I am so excited to be here today because today's guest is someone whose work I deeply admire. Amanda Heiner is a PhD student in industrial organizational psychology whose work centers on the well-being of educators. She studies how daily school experiences shape teacher well-being and mental health. And through the Total Teacher Health Project, Amanda collaborates with educators to really understand their challenges and help them create strategies that promote healthier, more supportive school environments. She is passionate about translating research into practical approaches that drive meaningful change in the workplace and that strengthen the safety, equity, and well-being of teachers. So in our conversation today, we're going to dive into how daily school experiences impact teacher well-being, what the latest research is telling us about post-pandemic stress and mental health, what Amanda's research has shown. Most importantly, how we can turn that research into practical strategies for schools to start implementing immediately. So super excited for this conversation. Amanda, I'd love to just kind of start with your journey. I know that you began in ABA therapy working with kiddos on the autism spectrum before moving into what you're doing now. So tell us the story.

Amanda Hiner:

My mom was a paraprofessional growing up. So I was always in schools, around teachers, in classrooms, before school, after school, waiting for her to leave during her contract hours. And as I got older, I kind of started to see how much, not only how much teachers were doing, but how little recognition and pay they were getting, but how passionate they were, they still were about what they were doing.

Amy Schamberg:

Yeah.

Amanda Hiner:

When I was younger, I wanted to be a teacher. I think part of it was because I was always around it. And I ended up studying psychology and working with kids on the autism spectrum. I loved it and I loved the kids, but it was so exhausting. And I was already doing that every day with just one kiddo at a time. I couldn't imagine doing that with 20 plus kids at the same time every single day. And I had friends in college who went on to be teachers and they've already left the profession because it just wasn't what they expected. And we hear that a lot with some of our younger teachers, that it's not really what they were taught wasn't really what they ended up experiencing. And they're not taught a lot about outside of the teaching with students, how to manage things. I think it's it's kind of been a multitude of things. So growing up with my mom and working with kids directly, I've seen that. And then when I got to my PhD program, I was placed with another project. But as soon as I heard about the Total Teacher Health project, I jumped at the opportunity. I think it was only a few weeks into my shogram that I emailed the PI and the program coordinator and was like, hey, if you ever have any room, let me know. And then at the end of the school year, they ended up having a space. And it's been kind of everything I've worked on. My thesis surrounded it. And I've just been really, really passionate about this work.

Amy Schamberg:

Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing your story. It sounds like it's just in your bones and it's a bit of serendipity and fate, perhaps, too. And yeah, that's great. And that is hard work, by the way. I've partnered with a lot of ABAs in my career as a school psychologist over the years, and working with kids on the spectrum who really need that intensive level of support is not easy. Side note, thank you for the work that you did with that, in addition to everything you're doing now. But okay, so you brought up something very important. You said total teacher health. So for the listeners who are not sure what that means, can you kind of walk us through what that program entails?

Amanda Hiner:

So the Total Teacher Health Project is both a research and intervention study. And it focuses on the well-being of educators. It's led by our amazing principal investigator, Jen Cavalleri. We work with six schools now to learn what their concerns are and help create solutions to decrease stress and improve well-being. We use a participatory approach. So that means we focus on the educators and we hear from them what they need. So it's more like a bottom-up approach instead of the top-down approach.

Amy Schamberg:

Yeah, I love that. It's so important. I also believe in this so much. A lot of times I hear from folks who are working in education, and I experienced this myself, where you might be in a school district that has a very robust, what they call wellness program, where they have these perks and benefits. It's like extra things that are definitely nice to have, but who is that really reaching? And it sometimes adds insult to injury when it's there's a very stressful work environment. And then it's like, okay, we'll just go get some therapy and uh go to the gym, even though you're burnt out, erase all of the problems. So I love what you're doing. So walk us through a little bit more about how those educator voices really shape the interventions that you put in place. So participatory approach, I know what that means, but maybe for an administrator that's listening in a different part of the country and they've never heard that. How would you describe what that actually entails?

Amanda Hiner:

We want the employees, and in our case, the educators, we want them to drive what we're doing. We want them to tell us what they need, what they think could help. We were already in a system where administrators and school districts are telling teachers what they should need or giving them things that they think they should need. And we're not listening to the people that are actually doing the work. So for us, that's why like the participatory approach is so important for us.

Amy Schamberg:

Yeah. And I was reading your most recent study that came out, the psychological well-being of US educators remains a post-pandemic concern finding from a cross-sectional study. Maybe you'll talk about this, but I was just so shocked to see numbers of educators impacted by significant stress and anxiety and depression at this point in time. So this wasn't, or this is what was it, 23, 24 school year that you collected data? 22, 23. Okay. So I just took a couple of notes. 76% of respondents indicated moderate to severe stress. 31% had clinically significant levels of anxiety, and 49.5% had clinically significant levels of depression. That is astronomical.

Amanda Hiner:

It is. Yeah. When we were analyzing this, we were kind of going back like, are we sure this is right? We were really sad to see these numbers, but it also was, I mean, was really reflective of what we're hearing directly from our educators.

Amy Schamberg:

Right. So you collect this data, you can see quantitatively that they are stressed and struggling with mental health. And then you say, okay, tell me more about the needs in the building or what is getting in the way of feeling your best or what is preventing you from thriving at work, essentially. What are some of the problems that you heard?

Amanda Hiner:

The one I think we hear the most is high workload. Mm-hmm. And I think it's a mix of high workload and not enough time to get things done. And I think even as just students, we've been able to see teachers having stacks of papers on their desks and kind of thinking, when are they grading these papers? When are they grading these tests? And a lot of them are grading them outside of contract hours because they don't have time within contract hours to do so. So we that one a lot, we see student behaviors as a big stressor a lot. We have to kind of remind teachers that we know that your job is to focus on student well-being and student needs, but we're here to focus on your needs and your well-being. And if we can do something about student behaviors that would help that, that's amazing. But we want to make sure that we're focused on you right now. So we hear student behaviors a lot as well.

Amy Schamberg:

Do you find that some of the issues with student behaviors impacting the well-being of teachers is connected to not having the resources to appropriately support those students or manage that behavior? So, like what I'm saying is rather than saying, oh, it's the students' fault, they're causing me stress. It's, I'm sure it's more of like, I don't know how to help them when I have 30 other kids that I'm responsible for at the moment.

Amanda Hiner:

100%. One of the schools that I helped facilitate this past year, they were talking a lot about student behaviors. And I have noticed that they kept talking about the cafeteria. And we ended up being able to kind of focus in on behaviors in the cafeteria, which is something that all of our schools can relate to because cafeterias just get so loud. Oh my god.

Amy Schamberg:

And they're awful. It's like my worst place to be in a school.

Amanda Hiner:

Yeah. They're so loud and they're not in class. So it's kind of like an in-between area for students because they don't have to sit in class and listen to their teachers, but it's also not like outside at recess. So we were able to kind of figure out what was going on, and they were able to kind of adjust certain things. A reason things were so loud is because they had students who weren't eating yet waiting in the cafeteria for their line. Oh. So they were able to kind of figure it out where they could wait around the corner in the hallway so that way they could bring some of that down. They were able to bring in some incentives. So if there were no referrals or however it was they decided to do it, they started implementing where they could have like a movie or music on a Friday or something in the class, in the cafeteria. And just those seemingly little things, such a big difference already.

Amy Schamberg:

Yeah. You said the teachers brought that to your attention. I'm curious, were the teachers also responsible for cafeteria duty? Yes? W ow

Amanda Hiner:

Our educator design team, and I can go through the whole process as well, but our educator design team were made up six or seven educators, and all but one had to do cafeteria duty.

Amy Schamberg:

So when you talk about time pressure, that's part of it because you have these extra duties on top of everything else. Yeah. Wow. Of course I'm super excited and jumping ahead, but yeah, let's back up a moment and why don't you just go ahead and just walk us through if I were the superintendent of a school district and I was inviting you in to implement the Total Teacher Health project in six of my schools, what would that look like from start to finish if you could kind of just walk us through that?

Amanda Hiner:

So we first meet with the administrators, obviously, and we kind of talk to them about the project itself. And then we have them help us recruit educators. So sometimes they have like standing committees in their schools and they're able to kind of have us collaborate with committees. So we have a couple of schools where they have like teacher well-being committees. And so we're able to kind of come in on committees that already exist. Sometimes administrators have an idea of certain teachers that might be really great to do this. So first we kind of go through recruitment and we're creating our educator design team. So this is a group of educators. We've had small groups, like three or four, or bigger groups, seven or eight. It kind of just depends on who's interested. And this is the group that we meet with multiple times throughout the year. Usually it's once a month. And then we go through our learn plan improved stage. So first is the learn stage. And this is when we're really trying to learn and understand what's impacting educators. So we come into the school, we work directly with our educator design team, we have them identify workplace strengths and concerns, we have them send out polls to educators that aren't part of the design team and have them identify strengths and concerns. And then we complete a root causes analysis to decide on primary concerns. And then we move to the plan stage. And this is where the educator design team develops goals, solutions, activities based on the primary concerns that we identified in the learned stage. Okay. And then finally we have the improved stage, and this is when we do implementation. So this is when the proposed activities are being implemented, monitored, evaluated. And this can go on for a long time, depending on the activities. So we have some schools where we're not as actively involved, but they're still in the improved stage because they're still implementing activities. Okay.

Amy Schamberg:

So it sounds like the education design team, they are the spokespeople for the rest of the building. So you're recruiting people who are already kind of interested in this sort of thing because they're on a wellness committee or they're champions for teachers' health and well-being, anyways, and their building leadership recognizes that. And so you want folks that are excited for this work and don't feel like it's a burden, and also kind of have, I would assume, some influence in their building to gather some more support and input from the others.

Amanda Hiner:

What we work really hard to make it as less of a burden as possible.

Amy Schamberg:

Sure.

Amanda Hiner:

So we'll have like email templates that we can give them to send out, and we have templates for the Google polls so they don't have to remake them. Because, like I said, we know that they have high workload and little time. So we want to try and do as much as we can to help.

Amy Schamberg:

Yeah, I'm sure that's very much appreciated. I'm curious when you conduct your root cause analyses to identify those primary concerns. Are there ever anything surprising that comes out of that? Because oftentimes we say X, Y, Z is the problem, but really it's ABC. And so I'm just wondering if the there have been any surprises, maybe not so much for you as researchers, but for the design team or the administrators when you kind of show them that analysis.

Amanda Hiner:

Sometimes our educators have like a very specific idea of what it could be. Having too, I have too many students in my class. There's too many students for me to deal with. There's too many behaviors for me to deal with. And so we kind of just start with that. And as we bring it down, they realize, oh, it's about resources. It's about not having the time. It's about not having enough people to come cover if I just need a break. And so I think sometimes they're they're kind of like, wow, it's much bigger than I even expected it to be.

Amy Schamberg:

That makes sense because when you're going through the motions day after day, just trying to keep your head above water, you kind of just see the surface level issue. But you're able to dig deeper and take a step back and kind of help them see that bigger picture. And how is that received usually?

Amanda Hiner:

Most of the time I've seen it kind of relieved. Okay. And I think part of that is also when we get the poll results back. And they see that a lot of other teachers are experiencing the same thing as them. They're like, oh, this isn't just a meeting. This isn't just the teachers that are on my side of the building. We're all dealing with this. Yeah.

Amy Schamberg:

That's really interesting. I've noticed in my work, even with my clients who are not in education, but anyone who's really under high amount of stress and, you know, teetering on the edge of burnout or already there, I see time and time again, they often feel very isolated. No one else could really understand what their experience is. And so I would assume it's incredibly validating. I mean, it's also sad, like, oh gosh, someone else is suffering in the same way that I am, but also validating and comforting to know that you're not alone in this struggle.

Amanda Hiner:

Yeah. Well, think for any of us, it's hard to remember that it's not necessarily me. It's more of a systemic issue. And I think when they're able to see like these poll results come through and they're like, oh, we're all dealing with this. I think, yeah, I think validating is the best word for it. Yeah.

Amy Schamberg:

What are some of the items on the poll? Are you able to share just some examples?

Amanda Hiner:

So the poll is usually just what do you think are strengths and what do you think are concerns?

Amy Schamberg:

Oh, okay.

Amanda Hiner:

And so then they usually will have the strengths and concerns that the educator design team kind of came up with, and even some that are just like mentioned here or there. And we also have an option for them to fill in the blank. So like another spot. So we can see other people have those. So a lot of them are the ones we've already discussed, like workload, time, resources, those things.

Amy Schamberg:

Okay. So now you've completed the analyses and you know what the actual root cause problem is. And then the design team, they are the representatives of the building that start brainstorming solutions to the problem. And is there ever a point where they are going back to the other teachers and getting more feedback from them? Or is it kind of just based on that design team?

Amanda Hiner:

Well, it really depends on what they're doing. The school that was working on cafeteria behaviors, they sent out another poll basically to ask if we're focusing on cafeteria behaviors, what are the biggest issues that you're seeing? And so some of them they were asking, do you think it's behavior? Do you think it's volume? Do you think this would help? So they would have those questions. And then they would have, these are some ideas we've come up with. Do you think this would help? This would help. And again, we always like to have the like still in the blank. So that way their voices are heard if they see those and they're like, no, none of these will work. So it really depends on what they're working on if they want to get some more feedback.

Amy Schamberg:

Okay. And so that's an example of how that participatory approach is just kind of threaded throughout the entire process. Soliciting additional information, but it's not obligatory for someone to provide more feedback if they don't want to. Okay. And so now you've decided on the solution or the change. And you said that in the improved phase, it can last for a variety of time periods, depending on how big or small the change is. Is that right? Okay. So how long did the cafeteria intervention take to fully implement?

Amanda Hiner:

So we started working on that, I think earlier this year. So I think in the spring. Okay. And they're still kind of adapting and evaluating, I think, to see is this just kind of a fluke? So are things getting better just for now or are things going to keep getting better as we continue these incentives and making kind of physical changes to the environment. So honestly, we kind of let them tell us how long they think it's going to take and just check in and see if they need anything else from us. Or if they're like, you know what, I think we're good with cafeteria, let's move on to something else. Yeah.

Amy Schamberg:

So how long do you work with the schools? So if they've achieved the first goal, cafeteria is better, check and they want to move on to something else. Is there a period of time? Is it an entire school year, multiple years?

Amanda Hiner:

We uh leave it up to them for the most part. We have some schools that after a few years, they're like, no, I don't think we need as much help now. But we still are there to consult. We're there if they want to have a meeting, we're happy to go in and have a meeting with them. We have some schools that don't want to let us go. We've we've been referred to as a security blanket because they just don't, they're not ready. And that's totally okay. We're very happy to continue in whatever way. So I think that's another part of it is that we don't want to push it. We still want them to be able to tell us what they need, even if that means they don't need us. I love that.

Amy Schamberg:

How does Total Teacher Health balance leadership support with educator voices? How do you kind of manage both of those pieces?

Amanda Hiner:

So we've been really lucky to have really great administration. We try to make sure the focus is on the educators to the point where, you know, we meet with the administrators a little bit throughout the process just to keep them updated on how things are going. But then when the educators are coming up with solutions, we try not to say, oh, that we can't do that. Oh, we know that can't be done because we still want them to feel heard. So then once solutions are being created, once they come up with them, then we'll go to the administrators and say, hey, these are the things that they've come up with. And then we'll let the administrators say, that's not going to be possible. We'll have to go talk to somebody about this. So they have a say a little bit later, I think. And we want to make sure that we can get support from the administrators and like I said, see if there's things that can be done or not done, but we don't keep them in every single piece of it because we also don't have administrators come to meetings until we move into the improved stage. Because I mean, I know that I probably wouldn't be comfortable in front of my bosses saying that these are the problems. So that's another thing we're very adamant about, that they cannot be in there when we're talking about the problems.

Amy Schamberg:

Yes. And I can see how that would have mutual benefit for administrators and the teachers because administrators are slammed. Like they are so busy and stretched so thin themselves that I would imagine they are quite appreciative of the fact that they don't have to sit in on foundational meetings as well. So in addition to providing that psychological safety for the staff that are showing up and speaking freely about the problems that they see, that's also not causing a burden on the principals or leadership team.

Amanda Hiner:

Yeah. And once we start moving into the improved stage, again, very lucky that we have a lot of administrators that are really excited. Yeah. It's kind of fun when you have those administrators because they're like, we can do this, we can do this. And they start coming up with ideas.

Amy Schamberg:

The schools that you have been working with in New England, what are they learning about themselves? What kind of feedback have you heard? Like I'm thinking empowerment or just different ways of looking at things, reframing problems as opportunities for doing something differently. But what have they said to you?

Amanda Hiner:

Thinking about kind of the data that we're analyzing because we do these surveys every year. We're in the middle of doing some of the analyses right now, but I've done some recently, and we're seeing decreases in anxiety symptoms, decreases in depressive symptoms, decreases in perceived stress. And we've also seen some decreases in turnover intentions, which is a win-win for everyone. Yes. We also do interviews with our educator design team members at the end of the school year. And this past school year, I did. I heard people say that they felt empowered, which I absolutely love to hear. I've heard people say that they just feel like they have more of a place in the school because they're able to actually talk about the things that they need. So I mean, I think, well, I don't know for sure. I think that these findings and the things we're hearing from interviews, it kind of suggests that maybe these schools are learning that it is important that we hear what changes need to be made directly from educators. Yeah.

Amy Schamberg:

I would assume that they're feeling valued when their voices are heard. And I can see that better sense of connection, perhaps, as well. When you work together on these teams and you see that, hey, my suggestions are actually being considered or maybe they're being implemented and we're working together to make this happen. And it makes me kind of think about the entire school climate or culture and how that then impacts students.

Amanda Hiner:

Yeah. We try really hard to make sure we have non-certified staff as involved as they can be or want to be. We've definitely seen just changes in care professionals in meetings. First, they're showing up, and then as the years going on, they're able to speak up more. And I think that's also really important because we do put a lot of value on classroom teachers. And I think it's so easy for non-certified staff to feel like I'm just here. I don't really have as much of a voice. So it's always really great to kind of see that change in them and kind of feeling, like you said, an increase in psychological safety and empowerment throughout the school year.

Amy Schamberg:

Yes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall when I was reading your study yesterday that you separated staff based on either instructional staff or non-instructional. And within the non-instructional staff, there were administrators, support staff, and special service providers. So a principal and an assistant and a secretary and a psychologist and a speech language pathologist are the non-instructional staff, right? And then the instructional would be the teachers. Did I read that correctly? That was really cool because I don't think I've seen, I have not come across a study yet. And maybe that they exist and I just haven't read them, but I haven't seen anything where the staff within a school building are classified like that. Could you speak more to your kind of decisions around that and what you're kind of seeing with that?

Amanda Hiner:

Yeah, I think in conversations with Jen, we really just wanted everyone to feel again like they have a voice, even if it's in research that they know nothing about. Sure. We want to be able to see the differences and how people are feeling. But we also, it makes more sense to kind of just split it into two. It makes more sense to split it into instructional staff because they have a whole different set of things that they're dealing with and non-instructional staff. So I think some of that came down to analysis and how to do that the best, but also just having everyone included, but not kind of hampering the instructional staff, the audience as well.

Amy Schamberg:

It is brilliant. We should be doing this all the time because typically I see it within school districts, anyways, they talk about certified versus not certified staff. And but that's not always like the best way to kind of separate the groups either.

Amanda Hiner:

You think reading interventionists versus a classroom teacher versus a school psychologist. Like those are very different things that they're doing. But it's hard to just say, like a school psychologist is certified in very different things than a classroom teacher would be. So I think having it as instructional versus non-instructional makes the most sense.

Amy Schamberg:

Well, and absolutely, because the instructional staff who are front-facing kids all day long have a very, very different day-to-day experience than pretty much anyone else who has some autonomy over their day. Even if you are a very busy special service provider and you're certified and you have letters after your name, you typically have autonomy over your schedule. You have some agency. It's just a very, very different experience. Not to say that you're not busy and overworked and time pressures and whatnot, but it's just incredibly different. So I just really struck by that. And I was really excited to see that. And I was like, why haven't we thought of this before? It makes so much sense.

Amanda Hiner:

Yeah. And I think it probably another reason. I mean, I feel like, like I said, there's so many reasons we decided to do it, but we have a lot of social workers and school psychologists that are part of our educator design teams. So we see a difference just within our design teams. Yeah. So we're gonna see a difference within the school at large.

Amy Schamberg:

That's fascinating that you can kind of see the difference between the perspective of a non-instructional versus instructional staff member within that small design team. And how wonderful to put them together and then they can each hear each other's perspective. Yeah.

Amanda Hiner:

I mean, we definitely had classroom teachers who have said, like, I had no idea that this is what they were doing. I didn't know that they were doing with this. Like you said, it's so it's just nice to see people that may not have felt as valued or heard, not just feeling heard from us, but feeling heard from their co-horkers. Yeah. Yeah. That's huge.

Amy Schamberg:

So, okay, how can how can we start doing this on a larger scale? How can we translate all of this wonderful research that you have curated and these positive results and put them into strategies that schools can start implementing today?

Amanda Hiner:

So we within the six schools that we work with, we try to make sure that it's curated for each specific school. So that's why we do all of the uh polls and the root causes analyses. However, we're currently working on finishing up and disseminating our educator well-being program. So that goes through the learn plan and improved processes. And our hope is that other people can pick this up and they can use it for their own school. Hopefully that'll be out within the next couple months. We're really excited about it because we're not trying to gatekeep this. Of course. We've seen the changes, we've seen that this process works. And so our hope is that people can do the same thing in other school districts, in other parts of the country. We we've had someone reach out from Australia about it. So amazing. And we've seen that this these are common issues all over the world. So our hope is that we can help other people kind of translate this into practice.

Amy Schamberg:

So was, is the Total Teacher Health project the A research project that informs educator well-being program?

Amanda Hiner:

Right. So the Total Teacher Health Project is kind of the research project itself.

Amy Schamberg:

Okay.

Amanda Hiner:

And then we've kind of curated the educator well-being process. Got it. So that's the learn plan improved.

Amy Schamberg:

Got it. Okay. So the research portion is total teacher health. And then everyone will be implementing once it's ready in a couple of months is the educator well-being program. And to your point about this being a global public health crisis, I totally agree. I was doing some research actually just yesterday. So I am super interested in looking at educator burnout through a cross-cultural lens and also through an occupational health psychology lens and really looking at how we can see what's happening across the globe and find out what's working and share that. But I was floored when I was looking through the research articles with search terms just like educator burnout and psychosocial risk, that sort of thing. I got papers from Australia, Canada, Iraq, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Netherlands, Lithuania, Brazil, Turkey, Germany, Poland, Cameroon, Bosnia, Israel, Italy, Morocco, Czech Republic, Thailand, Colombia, Chile, Finland, France. And I can't read my handwriting because I was scribbling. But like that was me just doing two hours of research last night, and I came across that many.

Amanda Hiner:

I went to EOAP. It was a conference in Prague this summer. And I had a poster about some of this. And I had so many people come up to me from other countries saying that this is an issue in their country as well. And that was the first time I think it really hit me because I think it's so easy for us to think that this is an issue here, which of course it is, but not really think about how it's an issue in other places. That was when I think it really hit me that, oh, this show is everywhere. I don't think I realized the list was that long.

Amy Schamberg:

Yes. And same. I was in Portugal this summer presenting, co-presenting at the World Council for Gifted and Talented on teacher wellness. So it was a gifted and talented conference with people from all over the world. And I also was very shocked, saddened, I don't know what the emotion was, surprised, but not really, to have so many participants in our session from all over saying, yeah, this is a thing.

Amy Schamberg:

Is there a particular strategy or solution that has been especially meaningful to the educators you've worked with? I know you said you curated for each individual school and it's different. And you talked about the cafeteria intervention, which is huge. Anything else that stands out to you? I think one of my favorite ones is increased recognition.

Amanda Hiner:

And I think it's one of my favorites because it can be so simple. But we've heard educators talk about how great it is to feel recognized in their own community. So one thing that we have talked about with some schools are shout outs. And it's something that we do in our weekly Total Teacher Health meetings, like just our research project as well. So it can be something like as simple as just like, hey, I want to shout out this person for just being like someone that I can talk to when I'm stressed, or I want to thank this person for covering my class while I ran to the restroom. And then we also, for a couple schools, gave them staff reinforcement surveys so we can find out, well, we can help the administrators find out what each educator prefers as the recognition. So some don't want their name in the newsletter. Yeah. But some would prefer, like, oh, maybe bring me a snack or for bigger things, maybe a gift card to go get a massage or a day off, those kinds of things. And then the administrators can kind of see, okay, this is possible. This isn't possible, but we're gonna do whatever you prefer because that's what really matters. It doesn't matter what we think that they want to be recognized. So I really like that one because it can truly be so simple.

Amy Schamberg:

Yes, I love that. It reminds me of this book that I read a long time ago that was probably not research-based at all, but it was called The Love Languages. Have you heard of that?

Amanda Hiner:

Yes.

Amy Schamberg:

Where it's like, you know, some people want acts of service or others want gifts. The premise was we often provide or we show our love to others in a way in which we would like them to show love to us, but that doesn't necessarily align with how they would like to receive attention or love. And so that was a wonderful book to read from my relationship. But it sounds like it's also helping because I get that, right? Some people don't feel comfortable being like publicly recognized in a group. They don't want all that attention. Or maybe someone, like you said, would just like maybe a coffee or something. I don't know. But it doesn't seem to me that it would take that much time to learn the preferences of the people that, you know, are showing up and caring for our students day after day. And so that small little intervention or behavior change or whatever we would call it sounds like it could be incredibly impactful. So thank you so much for sharing that.

Amanda Hiner:

And the reinforcement survey, it actually kind of takes me back to my ABA days.

Amy Schamberg:

Okay.

Amanda Hiner:

Because it's the different, it's like sensory access, escape, attention are like the four categories. So it really takes me back to having to collect my data on students for all of those things.

Amy Schamberg:

So it's all coming together.

Amanda Hiner:

It all comes together. Yeah.

Amy Schamberg:

That's amazing. I love it. Let's just say I could wave a magic wand and we can change the future of educator well-being. And we jumped ahead, it's 10 years into the future. What would you like to see?

Amanda Hiner:

Seeing how high the depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms are, and how those don't just impact your work, but it impacts your entire life. I think if anything, I would just love to see those as low as possible. Yeah. Because and we work from like a total worker health perspective, where things in the workplace impact your life, things in your life impact your work. And when it comes to mental health, that really impacts everything. So I think if nothing else, that's what I would want to see change.

Amy Schamberg:

Yeah. Absolutely. I'm in total agreement with you. This has been incredible. Is there anything else that I didn't ask you today that I should have that you'd like to share? No, I think we talked about everything. Yeah, absolutely. And I could keep talking about this all day long. If listeners remember one thing, one thing from this conversation, what do you want them to take away?

Amanda Hiner:

Listen to your educators. They're doing so much work and they're doing so much emotional labor. The least we can do is listen to their perspectives and experiences and try to improve their lives at work. Yeah.

Amy Schamberg:

Well, I will make sure that I link the Total Teacher Health site and the educator well-being program details in the show notes. So those resources will be there. If people want to connect with you, if they have a question or a follow-up, where would you like them to find you?

Amanda Hiner:

They can find me on LinkedIn. Perfect. Just under Amanda Heiner. And if there's multiple, it's just the one with at UConn.

Amy Schamberg:

Okay. Okay. I will make sure that I link your correct LinkedIn in the show notes as well. Amanda, thank you so much for your insights today and for all of the great work you're doing to put educator well-being at the center of this conversation. It's just really encouraging and exciting to know that this is happening. So thank you.

Amanda Hiner:

Of course. Thank you for inviting me and letting me kind of geek out about this for a little while.

Amy Schamberg:

Anytime, anytime. Thanks for listening to TAUGHT. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a colleague and leave a quick review. And be sure to follow the show so you don't miss what's next. For more tools to support educator well being, visit amyshamberg.com backslash taut. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. I'd love to keep the conversation going. Finally, remember to check the show notes for links to today's guest and additional resources. See you next time.