Collaborative Aims to Help Educators Thrive

Nearly one in four teachers said they were likely to leave their jobs by the end of the school year, compared to one in six teachers who were likely to leave before the pandemic, according to the 2021 State of the U.S. Teacher Survey. Teachers also experience more frequent job-related stress and symptoms of depression than the general adult population.

NDMU School of Education's Teacher Education for Flourishing Collaborative was established to provide resources to help educators to flourish, especially during difficult times. Dr. Kristine Larson is the founding chair of NDMU’s collaborative, which partners with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University and the Consortium for Human Flourishing at Saint Louis University. The NDMU collaborative brings together researchers, administrators, practitioners, and thought leaders to promote flourishing and a focus on personal well-being in teacher education.

In 2021, Dr. Larson was appointed as a senior fellow of the Community of Practice at Harvard's Human Flourishing Program. She and another senior fellow also published an article detailing the framework of support to promote flourishing in the Eton Journal for Innovation and Research in Education.

“I really want to mitigate teacher attrition because that is a huge problem in education,” said Dr. Larson. “Teacher attrition impacts our students. When you have a school where there is a revolving door of teachers, that instability does not feel good for anybody.”