Two Generations of Educators, One Story:
The Unchanging Reality of Educator Well-Being
Caroline Hendren and Dorothy Morelli
PART ONE: Daughter
I wanted to be a teacher since I was in sixth grade.
Teaching is prevalent in my family. Both of my parents are in the field of education, and because of that, my parents actually tried to talk me out of becoming a teacher—not because they did not love the work, but because they knew the challenges educators face. However, I was determined, and I became a teacher in 2015.
My desire was to work in Title I schools. The students were the joy of my day. That joy is why teachers keep coming back. But the reality surrounding that joy was often hard; it came at a true price to my own well-being. My experience was not unusual. It reflected what thousands of educators across the country were navigating at the very same time.
Class sizes were huge, and the mental load was constant. Teachers showed up every day trying to give students stability, while quietly carrying worries about whether those same students had a safe place to go after school. That emotional weight followed us long after the bell rang and often resulted in secondary trauma.
I will never forget one Friday afternoon. I had stayed after school for weeks, volunteering to coach a club and spending so much time away from friends and family that I even missed my best friend's birthday party. My reward…a jeans pass.
I probably need to explain what a jeans pass is. It is literally a piece of paper that says "jeans pass." You can turn in your jeans pass, and you get to wear jeans to school for the day.
I know this sounds crazy, right? Anyway, I remember sitting in my car in the school parking lot, completely exhausted, thinking, "Well, at least I have a jeans pass." How can something like a jeans pass be considered true support?
In my building, nearly 30 teachers left that year. One day, a second grader looked up at me and said, "Why does everyone always leave us?" That question stayed with me.
When teachers leave, it does not just disrupt a classroom. It reinforces a pattern many students already know too well: People do not stay. The impact is deep and lasting.
Teachers love their students. But love alone cannot outweigh burnout, an overwhelming mental load, and a system that does not support the people doing the work. We need to focus on educator well-being. This is a workforce issue, not a personal failing.
If we want stability for our students, we must provide stability for the adults in the school community. Every educator I knew was carrying the same pressures, which made it clear this was not about individual stamina. It was about a system stretched beyond its design. And yet, this story is not new. In fact, educators were experiencing many of these same challenges decades before I ever stepped into a classroom.
PART TWO: Mother
I became a teacher in 1983.
When I first started teaching, we actually had to pay for our jeans passes. As you can see from the story above, in a thirty-year span, things have not changed in education. Not with jeans passes, and not with expectations, workload, or well-being.
While other industries have evolved, education has stayed mostly the same. Demands keep rising, support keeps shrinking, and the systems that educators rely on have not been updated to match the realities of today's schools.
I have spent decades teaching and providing professional development across the country, and I saw the stress rising long before it became a national crisis. I was witnessing it everywhere—in large urban districts, tiny rural ones, and affluent suburbs. The issues were the same: exhaustion, burnout, compassion fatigue, feeling undervalued, and a lack of meaningful support.
Different generations. Different decades. But unfortunately similar stories.
If we want strong schools, strong outcomes, and strong communities, we have to start where everything begins. We must start with the well-being of the adults who show up for children every day. It is imperative that educators receive high-quality, evidence-based strategies to manage the many challenges that educators face each day.
CREATE provides a program that shows real results. It is the CARE program. A study of the CARE program in the Journal of School Psychology found that 9.5 months after participating in the program, CARE teachers continued to show significant decreases in psychological distress, reductions in ACE-related physical distress, and significant increases in the ability to effectively regulate their emotions. Findings also indicate that teachers who participated in CARE reported both sustained and new well-being benefits at a follow-up assessment almost one year post-intervention.
We also know that school communities want to see students thrive. Taking care of our educators helps students thrive. Supporting our educators is vital to our educational systems. Educators deserve to be valued by providing true, evidence-based programming that allows them to be their very best—not only for themselves, but for their students and their entire school community.
As a country, we must make educator well-being a non-negotiable.
Dorothy Morelli is the CEO of CREATE. With over 30 years of experience in education, Dorothy brings her knowledge of different learning environments to CREATE. Morelli worked as an educational coordinator for Vanderbilt University, adjunct faculty member at Belmont University, and teacher and coach in school systems in South Carolina and Tennessee.
Caroline Hendren, M.Ed., is Director of Partnerships at Bounceback. Previously, Caroline worked as an elementary and middle school teacher in North Carolina and South Carolina. Additionally, she served as an adjunct professor at Tallahassee State College.
CREATE for Education is an expert provider of evidence-based programs to help educators cultivate resilience and well-being to support student success.We have expertise in Adult SEL, Empowering Youth, Restorative Practices and Systems Transformation. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you reduce teacher stress, improve teacher wellness, and create healthier and more caring schools for all.