“I ended up in the lesser profession.” Ingersoll & Perda’s research shows teachers internalize the ‘those who can’t, teach’ script — then autonomy erosion (scripted curricula, standardized tests, admin surveillance) supplies fresh evidence every semester. The script doesn’t arrive from outside; it gets manufactured inside.
WIPE_SCRIPTS
The Science of Teacher Burnout: Why "Those Who Can't, Teach" Has It Backwards
13 scripts this research explains — The line that teaching is what you do when you can't do anything else traces to a 1903 play about revolutionaries, not c
“I care about every one of them — and it’s slowly emptying me.” Compassion fatigue in teachers is clinically distinct from burnout: it’s emotional depletion from absorbing student trauma, poverty, and home crises without a clinical buffer. You were never trained to hold this much, and nowhere does the job description say you’d become an unofficial first responder.
The Compassion Drain
“If I handle this wrong, they’ll go to admin and it’s over.” Herman et al. 2018 identified parent-teacher conflict as one of the top occupational stressors for educators. The power asymmetry is real — parents can escalate to administrators, school boards, and social media — but the preemptive dread and the script that says ‘apologize first, explain never’ does more damage than most actual confrontations do.