This workshop is designed to provide educators and school staff with a general understanding of what burnout is and why it matters to their personal and professional lives.
School staff are often far too familiar with the occupational challenges of functioning within an underfunded and overworked organizational system; however, those challenges have been magnified in recent years with the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers, administrators, and other school staff have been tasked with navigating the uncharted territories of virtual learning, social distancing, and threats to the emotional wellbeing of their students and colleagues. School staff may find themselves facing unprecedented stress leading to “burnout,” a syndrome conceptualized as physical or emotional exhaustion from chronic workplace stress. Teachers and staff facing burnout may feel energetically depleted, develop feelings of cynicism towards work, and become less effective in their occupational role.
Participants will be able to identify at least three factors that increase risk of burnout and a framework to identify the associated symptoms in their colleagues and themselves. Participants will walk away with several evidence-based strategies to combat burnout symptoms and increase their ability to effectively manage stressors.
Ashley Fortier, MA, Psy.D
Ashley Fortier is a Psychologist Candidate in Colorado and currently serves as a Technical Assistance Associate within the Behavioral Health Program at WICHE. She works with various stakeholders across states and organizations in the West to further behavioral health initiatives. Her professional mission is to increase service efficacy, accessibility, and workforce capacity in rural and frontier regions. She collaborates on numerous research projects and publications in the areas of rural behavioral health, trauma-informed care, child and adolescent suicidology, and innovations in psychology practice. Previously, much of Fortier’s clinical experiences focused on delivering mental health services to survivors of trauma and abuse, patients with severe and persistent mental illness, incarcerated adults and juveniles, and those experiencing acute mental health crises. Fortier received her B.S. in psychology and criminal justice from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst as well as her M.A. and Psy.D. in clinical forensic psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology-Los Angeles.
