
Burnout, Boundaries and the Systems That Shape Teachers with Ruth Poulsen
Learn more about The Story of Maths and ACEL Pro - www.alta-education.com/tsom-overview and https://www.acel.pro For maths curriculum questions contact us here or via support@alta-education.com Get your tickets for the TDaPE Conference Edinburgh Maths PD Dublin, Belfast, Glasgow - https://alta-education.com/cpd-tour-26-27/ For show notes, links, and a summary episode, sign up for the Hey! What You Reading For newsletter. Mondays at 7am BST - https://tdape.beehiiv.com/subscribe AI For Teachers newsletter What if burnout in education is not primarily a problem for individual teachers to solve? Episode 317: Ruth Poulsen has spent more than two decades working in schools around the world. After experiencing burnout herself, she began looking much more closely at the conditions that allow teachers and leaders to thrive, and at the systems that gradually make that harder. In this episode, Ruth joins Kieran for a conversation about boundaries, leadership, chronic stress and the culture of self-sacrifice that still runs through much of education. They explore the difference between caring deeply about the job and allowing it to consume you, alongside the responsibility leaders have for creating schools that do not depend on people continually going above and beyond simply to keep things functioning. The conversation eventually widens into something bigger: whether we think about schools too much like machines, searching for individual problems to fix, rather than complex ecosystems in which decisions, relationships and unintended consequences are deeply connected. A timely conversation about burnout, professional responsibility and how we might build schools in which people can do excellent work without being slowly depleted by it.


















