UC San Diego

The teaching profession is progressively becoming more challenging and leading to issues such as lower job satisfaction and burnout (Palad, 2023). Despite these challenges, teachers are encouraged to remain positive throughout their workday. Teachers’ use emotional regulation strategies to suppress negative naturally felt emotions and work to outwardly display positivity towards the students and greater community they serve. Not addressing these negative emotions results in emotional labor for teachers (Hochschild, 2012). This study aimed to understand how K-12 teachers define emotional labor and investigate the coping strategies teachers use to manage the emotional labor of the teaching profession. Utilizing qualitative research, this study employed semi-structured interviews to gain an understanding of how 15 K-12 teachers defined and coped with the emotional labor of the profession. Findings revealed participants defined emotional labor as: teaching as a primary part of one’s identity, the emotional labor of finding a work-life balance, the emotional labor of caring for the whole child, the impact of COVID on developmental milestones, the emotional labor of difficult colleagues and administrators, the emotional labor of posed by new and experienced administrators, and the emotional labor of feeling devalued as a professional. Districts should create policies that encourage site level administrators to promote the well-being of teachers. Advocating for better conditions will improve outcomes for teachers and students.

Keywords: emotional labor, teachers, work-life balance, burnout, emotional regulation, coping