The only thing that changes in a burnout rich environment is the workload when you go back. it's a bigger pile to deal with when you take that "mental health day" to recover.

It doesn't matter if the root cause isn't addressed.

When I refer to root cause, I don't just refer to the perhaps insurmountable task of an enormous class size, or needing to mark the work of multiple classes to "calibrate" across hallways and homegroups, but the underlying societal root causes that cause people to just not be able to cope with the environment in which they are placed.

Burnout is rarely a single root cause issue. In my mind (and I know very little about psychology, or perhaps my own metal limits and boundaries) - it must be a camel bearing a bunch of straw, then along comes a little spider (straw) - and ... it collapses in a heap.

I have probably "had" burnout as some point in my professional career. I didn't have it treated. I took the macho strong thing and "pushed on" - ultimately, that wasn't healthy, and it took a long time for it to come to the fore - when I had an annual review with a manager.

They asked "what was your biggest achievement this year?" and I almost broke down, my response was "the fact that I'm still here", and that single sentence lead to a change in circumstances to a new team environment where I could flourish, and I felt genuinely valued for my contributions, even if I was able to take a voluntary (via opt-out) redundancy shortly thereafter.

In seven days, it will be four months since the last day I had at my job, and it has really only been in the last few weeks that I have felt "prepared" to tackle new work, in spite of numerous job applications and interviews.

I'm ready, because I have renewed focus, and new goals, that will prevent future burnout. I have also learned to have my own boundaries, to seperate time into segments, and to value things like friendship, health, and everything else that brings me joy in balance.

And balance is the most important thing in the world.