Finding Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Perspectives from School Leaders (Part 3)

Throughout the pandemic, school communities have faced the tremendous tasks of navigating the unprecedented challenges of remote learning, returning to in-person learning, and attending to the spillover effects of the pandemic, all while supporting the needs of the school community. The demands accompanying these tasks especially impacted school principals, as their roles and responsibilities continuously expanded to attend to crisis-related needs (Clifford & Coggshall, 2021). School principals were positioned with bearing additional duties such as navigating public health mandates and implementing pandemic-related policies, which exacerbated their already high levels of job-related stress. As the impact of the pandemic continues, it is likely that long-term demands will exceed the personal strengths and professional resources of school principals, increasing their vulnerability to burnout and turnover. It is critical to understand how principals experience school-related stressors, delineate the factors that protect principals from burnout, and examine which groups of principals are most vulnerable to burnout to minimize the increasingly high levels of turnover, burnout, and work-related stress experienced by school principals.