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As we head into the second half of the 2025-2026 faculty yr, TPT carried out a survey of practically 11,500 classroom academics, directors, and help employees within the U.S. (82%) and across the globe to uncover the reality about what it’s prefer to be an educator immediately. These findings reveal their views on points on the forefront of schooling, together with workload pressures and utilizing generative AI.
Key takeaways
- Almost two-thirds of educators describe their stress stage about work as excessive or vital.
- A majority (80%) of educators report utilizing AI instruments of their school rooms.
- Almost half (48%) use AI primarily to create assets, adopted by brainstorming concepts (20%) and finishing administrative duties (17%)
- Two-thirds of educators imagine that AI is a place to begin (40%) or that human-created assets are superior (27%). Solely 7% imagine AI alone can meet their wants and exchange what they used to make themselves or purchase.
Educator stress is reaching a vital level
Educators are below a ton of strain, so it’s no shock that the calls for of the job are taking a toll on their psychological well being. The bulk (60%) of educators describe their present workload stress stage as both excessive (50%) or vital (10%) suggesting excessive ranges of potential burnout (learn extra on suggestions for decreasing burnout).
That is notably acute amongst elementary grade (1st-Fifth) academics, who report increased stress ranges than their friends. This can be attributed to a number of the distinctive calls for these educators face, particularly with regard to managing habits and instructing all kinds of foundational studying abilities.
In the meantime, directors and help employees are extra divided about their stress ranges: 47% describe their stress as manageable, whereas 45% say it’s excessive.
Educators see AI as a instrument, not a alternative for instructor perception and creativity
As educator stress ranges proceed to rise, they’re turning to further assets and instruments — like AI — to help them and save time. As one elementary educator notes: “My new faculty is dreadfully under-resourced with no clear curriculum, however the expectations are extremely excessive. I’m additionally instructing a brand new topic. I by no means used AI earlier than, however the demand is so intense I needed to flip to it to outlive lesson planning. . . I choose human work, nevertheless it’s unimaginable to remain afloat with out some assist.”
At a excessive stage, AI has turn into more and more embedded in educators’ day by day apply. A majority of educators are utilizing AI both repeatedly (23%) or sometimes (35%), whereas practically 1 / 4 have tried it a few times (22%). For educators who describe their stress ranges as excessive, they’re extra prone to report utilizing AI within the classroom.
The ways in which educators leverage AI reveals quite a bit about their motivations for utilizing it. Almost half (44%) use AI primarily to create assets, adopted by brainstorming concepts (20%). Nevertheless, the largest purpose educators flip to AI is differentiation. Anecdotally, quite a lot of respondents cited modifying assets as a significant ache level that AI helps them remedy.
Whereas the overwhelming majority of educators are utilizing AI of their school rooms, they continue to be clear-eyed about AI’s limitations and advantages — and proceed to advocate for actual educator expertise and experience. A mere 7% of academics imagine that AI alone can meet their wants and exchange what they used to make themselves or purchase, whereas the overwhelming majority of educators view AI as a place to begin (40%) or imagine human-created assets are superior (27%). As one other educator notes, “AI is an excellent instrument to assist create a lesson, however shouldn’t be relied on to show it. My college students can inform the distinction and that’s the reason I select to make use of it much less.”
The message is unmistakable: Whereas AI could assist lighten educators’ workload, they don’t imagine it could possibly exchange the expertise or creativity of academics.
TPT Survey Methodology
TPT despatched an 21-question survey of multiple-choice and open-ended inquiries to energetic and churned customers on the TPT platform to collect educators’ opinions on how the 2025-26 faculty yr was going. The survey was despatched by way of electronic mail on January 22, 2026, and was accomplished by 11,350 educators. The margin of error is +/-3 proportion factors. Traits of the respondents are displayed beneath.
| Area | |
| West | 20% |
| Midwest | 18% |
| Northeast | 16% |
| South | 28% |
| Worldwide | 18% |
| Scholar Grades (Respondents selected all that apply, percentages could not add to 100%) |
|
| PreK-Okay | 27% |
| 1-5 | 47% |
| 6-8 | 29% |
| 9-12 | 25% |
| Grownup Learners | 4% |
| Different | 4% |
| Function | |
| Classroom Trainer | 81% |
| Administrator & Help Workers | 19% |
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