The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted schooling on a global scale, challenging teachers with a flood of unmanageable demands.

These demands have persisted, resulting in an echo-pandemic of educator absences and attrition — educators leaving their jobs — that threatens the health of schools.

We wrote about ways to support teachers during the pandemic based on our 2020 national survey of more than 1,300 Canadian teachers.

Since then, we have followed more that 7,000 educators in their navigation and coping efforts during and after the pandemic. From these findings, we published more than 25 research articles, including 13 peer-reviewed articles, plus 12 articles for educators’ journals, reports to government and to the Canadian Mental Health Association, and one podcast.

Since the pandemic, we’ve seen notable and important conversations about educators’ burnout and self-care in media and academic publications. An upside to this is increased awareness in the education sector around mental health needs and the importance of resources for both students and employees.

A downside is these conversations reflect education systems that are out of balance in terms of resources and needs.

In the United States, the National Center for Education Statistics reported a rise in teacher absenteeism after the pandemic.

In Canada, research based on data collected from educators in Alberta, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador from September 2022 to August 2023 found “a significant association between sick........

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