Teaching is a hard job. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, teacher attrition had been a long-standing problem, with almost half of teachers leaving within the first five years ^[1][2][1,2]. Teaching did not get any easier during the COVID-19 pandemic as teachers became frontline workers providing instruction to students in many different formats. Throughout the pandemic, teachers took on new and unprecedented challenges to provide instruction to students ^[3][4][3,4]. Research also found that teachers had high stress levels and felt overworked ^[5][6][7][8][5,6,7,8]. For example, Pressley [9] found that teachers had higher stress levels due to the expectations of teaching multiple formats (in-person and HyFlex students) and the lack of guidance from the administration to overcome the new challenges of teaching during a pandemic. A silver lining of the pandemic for some teachers and school leaders during this time was that it forced educators to connect with parents and students more intentionally—especially when school was remote. However, not all interactions with families were positive. The negative feedback and lack of support from some parents also took a toll on teacher stress ^[10][11][10,11].

Other studies conducted throughout the pandemic found increased teacher anxiety and depression ^[12][13][14][12,13,14]. This had an overall impact on teacher well-being and led to lower morale and life-work balance by the end of the 2020–2021 school year [15]. However, some teachers found ways to limit the mental strain. For example, Walter and Fox [14] found that teachers with empathetic leadership, good working teams, and increased resources had a better sense of well-being than other teachers.

The impact of the pandemic went beyond teacher stress and burnout. Teacher self-efficacy also decreased as teachers navigated the ever-changing requirements and expectations ^[14][16][14,16]. Thus, many teachers felt they were underperforming pedagogically due to the new requirements and expectations during this time. In addition, as teachers tried to adjust to new teaching approaches and feel confident in their teaching, they also faced increased anxieties about teaching during a pandemic with very little input on return to learning plans ^[14][17][14,17]. Overall, society asked a lot from teachers during the first year and a half of the pandemic, which significantly impacted their well-being.

Demoralization occurs when teachers believe they are “violating basic moral expectations that educators should embody: do not harm students, support student learning, engage in behavior becoming of a professional” ^[18][19] (p. 43). Teachers faced new demoralization issues throughout the pandemic that challenged their morale ^[19][20]. These challenges included instructional requirements that did not meet students’ learning needs, limited parental support ^[20][21][21,22], and limited mental health resources ^[4][22][4,23]. These aspects have led teachers to have a lower teacher self-efficacy ^[23][24][24,25], higher levels of burnout ^[11][13][25][11,13,26], and higher levels of stress and anxiety ^[8][26][8,27], with risks to overall teacher well-being. Demoralization specifically focuses on “consistent and persistent frustrations in accessing the moral rewards of teaching” and leads teachers to “feel they no longer can do good work or teach ‘right’” ^[27][28] and thus feel they must leave the classroom. Demoralization is especially important in times of change ^[27][28]. Though demoralization may encompass aspects of teacher burnout, such as depression or shame, demoralized teachers will have continued frustration in providing the best instruction to their students ^[27][28]. This often occurs when teachers face a change they perceive no longer allows them to provide good teaching ^[18][19]. Thus, new expectations and requirements from school leaders can often lead to teacher demoralization ^[18][27][19,28]. Morale has been linked to mental health in a variety of contexts. In discussing teaching conditions, Edwards ^[28][29] argues that teachers must be secure in a position where “personal integrity is maintained, and group harmony is fostered” to attain high morale. He goes on to state that societal and school factors make this almost impossible to achieve, and as a result, “the morale of teachers is at a low ebb and their total mental health adversely affected” (p. 18). In a medical context, Mojoyinola ^[29][30] connected job stress to work morale, finding that job stress significantly impacted nurses’ health and mental health. Additionally, morale has been linked to mental health in military contexts ^[30][31][31,32], with findings indicating that higher morale levels lead to lower instances of PTSD. More recently, Kendrick ^[32][33] found that low morale had a negative impact on the mental health of academic librarians, citing that “demoralized academic librarians experience depression and related conditions, including PTSD” (p. 873).

2. Teacher Morale

Teacher morale is defined as the degree to which a person’s needs are satisfied and the person’s perception of how the job situation brought that state of satisfaction of the worker to fruition ^[33][34]. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, teacher morale has been shown to positively correlate with student achievement ^[34][35][35,36]. In addition, low teacher morale negatively impacts teacher productivity and results in a detachment from students ^[36][37][37,38]. Furthermore, factors such as motivation, effort, and job satisfaction have been linked to teacher morale ^[38][39][40][39,40,41]. Dunn ^[41][42] discusses how Coughlan’s 1970 work, in which he found 13 factors that affected teacher morale, is still relevant today. These factors were organized into four categories: administrative operations, working relationships, school effectiveness, and career fulfillment ^[42][43]. More recent literature on teacher morale has discussed the impact of intrinsic and extrinsic factors on job satisfaction ^[39][40]. Intrinsic factors include job security, ability utilization, and social service, and extrinsic factors include compensation, authority, school policies, the opportunity for advancement, recognition, and power distribution. Compensation was found to be a significant factor for teacher morale in a number of studies ^[37][38]. The literature has also demonstrated a relationship between teacher autonomy and their morale ^[43][44]. Teachers who feel they can make decisions that best meet the needs of their students and who are trusted to use their unstructured professional time also report higher levels of morale. Teacher morale has continued to be an important factor during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research has found a relationship between morale and an intention to remain in the profession ^[19][20]. With research before and during the COVID-19 pandemic indicating the importance of teacher morale, researchers, school leaders, and teachers should continue to develop a better understanding of teacher morale as schools move beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

3. Teacher Mental Health

Previous studies have explored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ mental health and well-being across different educational settings ^[44][45]. However, researchers have only recently started investigating teachers’ mental health and well-being, as researchers have associated declining teachers’ mental health and well-being during COVID-19 with many teachers leaving the teaching profession ^[45][46]. For example, during the fall of 2020, teachers’ mental health and well-being drastically declined due to a variety of additional demands at work, such as an increased workload, multiple roles (i.e., covering colleagues’ classes), and a sense of uncertainty, as well as a lack of resources at work, including social support, work autonomy, and coping skills ^[46][47]. In addition, the challenges of online teaching, including the lack of connection to students, have been shown to negatively impact teacher well-being and mental health ^[47][48][48,49]. The lack of connection to students that many teachers experienced and the inability to build meaningful relationships with their students affected teachers’ mental health and posed a significant barrier to their personal and professional development ^[49][50]. Kush and colleagues ^[50][51] found a striking difference in teachers’ mental health based on teaching format. Kush et al. surveyed 135,488 teachers during the 2020–2021 school year and found that teachers who taught in person were significantly less likely to report feelings of depression or isolation compared to peers teaching remotely. Teachers also reported high levels of stress, burnout, and job dissatisfaction due to the challenges they faced online teaching during COVID-19 ^[14][51][14,52]. Similar to the online environment, teachers who taught in a HyFlex environment also saw an impact on their mental health ^[46][52][47,53]. Kim and colleagues ^[46][47] surveyed teachers across three-time points in the 2020–2021 school year and found that teachers’ stress and burnout reached an all-time high in November 2020 when HyFlex teaching was introduced in schools in the United States. Teachers’ narratives reflected that HyFlex teaching was particularly challenging, as they were never trained to teach in such a way. Similarly, Pressley et al. [8] found that HyFlex teachers had the greatest increase in anxiety during the fall of 2020 when teachers returned back to school after the United States shut down schools in the spring of 2020. While instructional methods have varied and changed throughout the pandemic, teacher morale and mental health remain a concern. With the increase in teacher attrition and more being asked of teachers, having a better understanding of teachers’ morale and mental health is critical for school leaders. Providing environments that support teachers could be important ways to keep teachers in the classroom ^[45][46].