In the post-covid world of education we are finding that teachers have gone from being locked out to burned out, and now many are afraid of being punched out. Our students and our teachers have been through incredible stresses at home personally, financially, and relationally. We have seen first hand that more students are acting out behaviorally, and teachers feel increasingly vulnerable in both the classroom and the staffroom. In the state of Wyoming, where I am currently teaching, a recent state-wide poll revealed that an alarming 65% of the state’s teachers would leave teaching if they could. I have the honor of working with some of the very best educators I have known in my nearly three decades in education, but many of them would now be counted in that statistic. Schools across the country are understaffed and struggling to fill teaching positions with certified teachers. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in March of 2022, nearly half of public schools reported full or part-time teaching vacancies. We already know that 44% of teachers leave the profession in the first five years, but recent statistics show larger numbers of teachers leaving the profession due to burnout, low
