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Teaching is the most burned out profession in America. And Beth Schreiber lived that statistic for two decades before finding her way back.
Beth is a 20-year classroom teacher, Master’s degree graduate of Breathe for Change’s inaugural cohort, and now Director of Curriculum for her entire district in Montana. She walked into her career with her whole heart and spent years pouring everything she had into her students, until the year she finally had nothing left. In this warm and deeply honest conversation, Beth shares how discovering Breathe for Change in her hardest year transformed not just her classroom, but her entire relationship with herself, her colleagues, and the work she was always meant to do.
Ilana met Beth in 2022 during her very first Breathe for Change training, and has had the privilege of watching her go from depleted classroom teacher to keynote speaker at the Montana State Administrative Conference, to faculty in the Master’s program she once graduated from. Along the way, Beth conducted original research that showed how just six weeks of simple wellness practices dramatically reduced stress and reignited job satisfaction in the educators at her school. This episode is a deeply human exploration of what it means to practice Human Intelligence as an educator.
Here are some of the best moments from the episode:
- The Gravitational Pull Into Teaching
- Walking In Inspired, and Hitting a Wall
- Twenty Years In and Running on Empty
- How Breathe for Change Changed Everything
- What Actually Shifted — and Why
- When You Change, Your Classroom Changes
- The Research That Stopped Us in Our Tracks
- Unveiling the Human Intelligence Framework
- Breaking Down Somatic Intelligence
- Emotional Intelligence in the Classroom
- Social Intelligence and the Peace Process
- Universal Intelligence and Student Apathy
- Beth’s Final Words of Wisdom to Educators
If you have ever felt like you were running on empty and wondered how much longer you could keep going, this episode will make you feel seen, validated, and ready to give something back to yourself.
If this conversation moved you, don’t let it be a one-time moment.
Follow “A Work of Heart” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if it resonated, take 30 seconds to rate and review. It helps more educators find these conversations and reminds the algorithm that teachers matter. Your support helps us keep bringing voices like Beth’s to life
