There's a particular kind of tired that shows up around the second week of May. It isn't regular Friday tired. It isn't even parent conference tired. It's the kind where you find yourself crying in the staff bathroom because the printer jammed, and for a second you genuinely cannot remember what you were supposed to teach next period.
Every teacher knows this stretch. The mornings seem earlier, the to do list gets longer, and the kids get squirrelier. Somewhere between testing season and the field trip permission forms, a quiet question starts to surface: Am I going to make it to summer?
The answer is yes, but how you get there matters.
Here's the data, briefly, because sometimes it helps to know you aren't imagining things. According to RAND's 2025 State of the American Teacher survey, 53% of K through 12 teachers reported feeling burned out. That number is down from 60% the year before, which is technically progress, but it still means the majority of the people running America's classrooms are running on fumes. The World Health Organization describes burnout in three parts: you're exhausted, you've gone a little cynical, and you've started to feel like nothing you do is making any difference. The last six weeks of school are when all three tend to show up at the same time.
Why these last six weeks hit so hard
The end of the year work is different. You're closing a chapter while still inside it. You're assessing kids you've grown to love, packing up a room that has become home, and watching all the transitions stir up the anxiety your students – your kids - have been quietly holding for months. All the while the weather is warming and routines that were efficient in March aren’t holding up. Now, fifth graders are mourning middle school in their own confused way, and seniors have already checked out. You're grieving too, even when you're ready for it to end.
In May, self-care looks less like indulgence and more like prioritization. You decide what gets your energy, and what doesn't.
Five things you can actually do this week
Pick two anchors and protect them
You can't add hours to the day, but you can defend the ones you have. Choose two things that stay sacred for the next six weeks and protect them like they're written into your contract. Maybe it's putting your phone away by 10pm. Maybe it's no email on Sunday mornings before noon. Maybe it's a walk after school every day, no exceptions. Two anchors is the right number. Enough to make a real difference, not so many that protecting them becomes its own job.
While you're at it, block one weeknight that stays completely empty. This will allow you to show up on the other nights.
Make your existing habits easier, not harder
May is a terrible time to start a new diet or sign up for a 5k, but it is a great time to make the things you already do require less effort.
Sleep is the one thing that fixes everything else. If you change nothing else on this list, push your phone out of arm's reach at night and add a half hour to your sleep window. The rest gets easier from there.
Decide your weekday breakfasts and lunches on Sunday. Decision fatigue is real, and you spend yours making decisions all day for other humans.
Move every day, but keep it small. A short walk after dismissal beats an hour at the gym that you will never actually make it to.
Let yourself feel the goodbye
Teaching is a relational job, which is the clinical way of saying you love these kids. Saying goodbye to a class is a real loss, even when you've been counting down. If you don't process it, it processes you.
Before the last week of school, write one line about each student. Not for them. For you. Something true about who they were this year. The boy who finally raised his hand in March. The girl who taught you a little Spanish at recess. This will allow you to honor what happened in your classroom this year.
And let yourself grieve for the ones who are graduating, transferring, or moving across the country. The lump in your throat when you see them lined up for the last time isn't weakness. It's the cost of doing this job the way it deserves.
Lean on your people
The teachers who make it through May with the most left in the tank tend to have one thing in common, and it isn't a meditation app. It's people: other teachers, friends outside the building, and family.
Find one colleague you can text mid meltdown without having to explain context. The kind of person who responds with "yes, today is awful, want to come over?" instead of advice you didn't ask for. Tell someone who doesn't work in education what's actually difficult. Their perspective is a gift you can't get from inside the building.
When someone offers help, say yes. Take the covered duty. Eat the casserole. Let the partner do the pickup without arguing about it. Receiving help is a skill, and most teachers are bad at it. Practice now, while it's still May.
Plan for the crash
Nobody warned me about this in my teacher prep program, so I'll warn you. The first week of summer is often harder than you expect. The adrenaline that carried you through May leaves your body, and you crash. Sometimes hard, and sometimes for days.
Plan for it. Block the first three days of summer with absolutely nothing. Just rest. The crash is real and it needs somewhere to land.
Pick one thing you genuinely want to do in June that has nothing to do with school. Something you've been deferring since September. Put it on the calendar before May ends, while you can still picture wanting it.
Set a "back to thinking about school" date in late July, or early August if you can swing it. Until then, the classroom is closed. The August version of you, the one who has rested, is going to be a much better planner than the May version trying to do it all on the way out the door.
A note for principals and instructional leaders
You set the conditions that make any of this possible. You can hand out gratitude journals all year, but if your calendar is full of meetings that could have been emails, none of it lands.
Small moves often matter more than big wellness gestures. Look at your calendar and see if there's a meeting that could become an email, then let your team know you're giving that time back. Treat planning time as instructional time, because that's what it is. Also, don't underestimate the power of naming the hard parts out loud. In May, what teachers need most is someone in leadership saying, yes, this season is hard, and yes, I see how much you're carrying.
Write a real, specific thank you to each teacher before the year ends. Mention the unit they tried, the kid they reached, or the moment you saw them at their best. Your time and reflection will mean more than the gift card.
And the next time you have a "quick favor" to ask, sit with it for a minute and ask yourself whether it's actually quick. It almost never is.
A note for partners, parents, and friends of teachers
You probably already know they're tired, so here's what helps without them having to ask. Take something off their plate without making a thing of it, whether that's dinner, the laundry, or Thursday's kid pickup. When they walk in the door, hold off on asking about their day for the first twenty minutes or so and just let them land. Plan something for the week after school ends, because they'll forget to. It doesn't have to be big. A breakfast out or a walk somewhere new is enough, as long as it's something on the calendar that isn't school.
And if they cry over something small in May, don't try to fix it. Just sit with them.
The bottom line
The end of the school year isn't a test of how much you can endure. It's a stretch of weeks asking you to keep showing up for kids while saving something for yourself. Burnout isn't a personal failing. The research is clear that it's mostly about conditions, not character, but the small choices still matter, even when conditions are rough. They're how you stay yourself.
One last thing before you head into summer. Whether you’re a teacher, a paraprofessional, a counselor, a speech pathologist, an interventionist, or any other of the number of people doing the work, thank you. Thank you for the early mornings and the late nights, for the lessons you reworked at midnight, for the kid you stayed late to talk to, and for all the small moments that only you will remember. The work you did this year was real, and it mattered. Rest is the next part of the job.