At Eva Hoyt Zippel Elementary, teachers face low enrollment, budget concerns, and class disruptions, all of which make it harder to support their mostly low-income students in Presque Isle, Maine, a rural district a stone’s throw from the Canadian border.
Oh yes, and snowstorms. Lots of snowstorms.
“There’s a lot of things here in our area that would certainly impact teacher morale if you let it,” said Zippel Principal Christopher Hallett. “We are very conscious of it here in our region. We are isolated in many, many ways: It’s a low-income population in a very rural area, so as you can imagine, there’s not a lot to do. Getting people to think outside the box about their own mental health and self-care is pretty important up here.”
For the past three years, teachers in the Northeast—including the New England states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, as well as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York—have reported significantly poorer morale than teachers in the West, Midwest, and South, according to the EdWeek Research Center’s annual survey.
The survey’s Teacher Morale Index looks at how satisfied teachers are at their work now, how it stakes up to last year’s, and their expectations for the future. It’s based on a representative survey of more than 5,800 teachers across all states taken from August through November 2025. Results from states are aggregated to arrive at the regional patterns.
Just what the survey is picking up, and why teachers in New England and the Mid-Atlantic region seem so disheartened, is hard to say definitively without more in-depth studies. By many material measures, Northeast teachers seem to have reason to be pleased. The region has among the most competitive wages and among the lowest pupil-to-teacher ratios in the country. Northeast schools also have high internet connectivity and access to modern instructional technology compared to other regions of the country.
But some of the most important working conditions for teachers are harder to measure—school culture, principal leadership, and relationships with colleagues and parents among them—and here, Northeast teachers say they feel more out of step.
In recent years, job-related stress has leapfrogged over even salaries as the “dominant concern” of teachers, according to Kate Dias, the president of the Connecticut Education Association, a teachers’ union.
“They’re really feeling like the job has been set up for failure,” she said, in which “we’ve got so much being asked of our classroom teachers that they’re never going to be successful at it.”
What are some of the potential factors behind Northeast teachers’ dissatisfaction?
Teachers in the Northeast say everything from the high cost of living and parental expectations to, yes, gloomy weather can get them down.
After all, the further north you go, the longer and darker winters can be and the more likely people are to develop seasonal depression. But surveys find that residents of more overcast areas like Appalachia and the Pacific Northwest tend to be more affected by the winter blues than to those who live in the Northeast. Adults in the Northeast have about the same levels of overall depression and anxiety compared to other regions, according to federal data.
Whatever the cause, school leaders say low teacher morale is as urgent a priority as low test scores, because it can drag down student learning and well-being.
“Anxiety and stress have effects on our body and our nervous system, even as adults,” said Hallett, the Maine principal. “Of course our students are going to pick up on it if we are feeling stressed.”
Teachers say some of the region’s strengths, like high income and educated parents, can mask ongoing stressors. Teachers in the Northeast do have higher and faster-growing salaries compared to the rest of the country, but financial concerns still weigh on teachers.
Monique Cox, a Boston-area preschool teacher, said she’s been saving for a house for years while working multiple jobs. But “it’s hard. I always need a little bit more money, to be able to save and not put that money towards just the necessities,” she said. “Right now, the house market is just not in my budget.”
Salaries rose on average 3.4% in the Northeast, compared to just under 3% nationwide, between 2023-24 and 2024-25, according to data from the National Education Association. But federal data show inflation rose nationwide more than 5.7% during the same time, and the cost of living has risen particularly quickly in the Northeast.
The National Council on Teacher Quality, an advocacy group, found in a recent study that teachers’ average rent and housing costs jumped by about 50% in the last five years—faster than the 24% growth in starting teacher salaries in that time—and more teachers pick up second jobs outside the school day.
Certification requirements may also be more costly for teachers in the region. While a majority of K-12 teachers have master’s degrees, only a few states require them for licensure—and most are in the Northeast. Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania all require teachers to earn an advanced degree (or take significant post-baccalaureate credits) to maintain a professional certificate.
This puts unique stress on both early career teachers trying to make time to earn their degrees, and among older teachers paying for them, said Ithaca, N.Y., teacher Kathryn Cernera.
“Most people who go into public education are not coming from the families that allow them access to that level of education without significant student loans,” Cernera said. Paying those off “on a public school teacher salary in the Northeast is a challenge, and that might be a piece” helping explain teachers’ low morale.
Meeting high expectations
For teachers, as for students, a sense of belonging is the most significant factor influencing morale, according to an ongoing study of teacher well-being around the world.
Leoni Boyle, a principal investigator of the study at the University of Oxford’s Well-Being Research Center, says this includes both teachers’ sense of autonomy—that their ideas are acknowledged—and a sense of shared goals and community at school.
“The Northeast has a different conversation around education than other areas, and different expectations,” said Dias, of the Connecticut Education Association. While teachers say the heavy presence of Ivy League colleges and research centers can help inspire students for higher education, the often highly educated and highly motivated parents can be a source of stress, Dias said.
“The Northeast has a culture of highly educated people who value education—but not necessarily the profession of being an educator."
“We have high student outcomes in Massachusetts,” said Serge Moniz, a co-president of the Greater New Bedford Educators Union in Massachusetts. “That comes at a cost. Unfortunately, the cost is us … the effect it has on overall health and wellbeing.”
Teachers from the Northeast also are less likely than those in other regions to say they have classroom autonomy or the support of their leaders. Efforts to standardize students’ educational experiences can diminish teacher voice and expertise, said Donna Thayer, who has taught 2nd grade at Mason-Rice Elementary in Newton, Mass., for more than a decade.
“The Northeast has a culture of highly educated people who value education—but not necessarily the profession of being an educator,” she said.
Building morale through culture
Ultimately, school leaders can drive the culture of a school, Dias said, and attempts to improve teacher morale that come off as disconnected from teachers’ needs can backfire on school leaders.
“I hear a lot of principals saying, like, ‘We’re trying to give somebody a $20 Target gift card because they did something cool,’ but that’s not really changing the culture of the school,” Dias said.
After severe post-pandemic stress and burnout at Zippel Elementary School, Hallett started explicit professional development two years ago for teachers on how to recognize and support their own and each others’ mental health. His school was among the first schools to pilot Regulated Classroom, a professional development program that trains teachers to recognize and understand emotional dysregulation in themselves and their students.
The Maine and New Hampshire state departments of education recently have adopted the same framework.
“There’s this contagion that can happen when teachers get together,” said Emily Read Daniels, a former school counselor who developed the program. “They start talking about one thing that’s challenging them, and then pretty soon they’re down the rabbit hole of why everything is a problem—every kid is a problem, every parent is a problem, this work is doomed …”
Part of the training focuses on helping teachers “de-pathologize” both their own and their students’ behavior and reactions, Daniels said.
“We live in a culture right now where everyone’s got a diagnosis. Everyone’s on prescription medication for something, or in therapy for something, and everyone feels like there’s something wrong with them,” Daniels said. “Teachers are just adapting to their most frequent experiences.”
Zippel teachers said before the program that there was a general feeling of not knowing quite how to adapt.
“The entire school staff felt overwhelmed,” recalled Lori Hudson, a special education teacher at Zippel. “We did not really know how to deal with all the emotions, behaviors and needs not just of students but for ourselves too.”
The training has boosted morale in Zippel, she said, in part by reducing friction between students and teachers. “Having strategies to support student regulation has helped our staff experience more confidence and effectiveness in our classrooms,” Hudson said. “Behaviors still exist, but we have a better understanding of how to deal with them.”
Misbehavior that previously got students sent out of class now is more likely to spark brief improv-style activities—such as mirroring facial expressions—intended to build relationships and reengage students.
The tenor of the staff lounge has also shifted. While teachers still get together to vent, Hallett said colleagues more often offer each other specific help, rather than just a listening ear. A colleague might step in to watch a teacher’s class for 15 minutes so that she can take a walk or visit a quiet break room.
“Teachers are looking out for each other,” Hallett said, adding the training has been a “gamechanger” for the school.
Teachers have stepped up for each other this year, Hudson said, as declining enrollment has sparked a district reorganization which may results in Zippel being shut down. It’s not clear yet whether that will happen, but Hudson knows one thing for sure: Her students and colleagues help buoy her spirits.
“I feel blessed to have had and continue to have the opportunity to make a difference in students’ lives every day,” she said.