This autoethnographical study was conducted to add teacher voice and perspective in the topic of new teacher burnout, which has been linked to beginning teachers’ historically high attrition rates within the first five years of their careers. The study was centered on a burned out new teacher who faced cognitive dissonance through attempting to implement critical pedagogy in the context of standards-based reform.

Data was gathered through field notes and artifacts encompassing the first five years of the teacher’s career, which spanned two schools and six grade levels in a large, low socioeconomic, southern school district. The data underwent multiple levels of analysis and classifications to allow for emergent themes. This data was then displayed as narrative vignettes, giving a representative sample of the field notes that detailed the experience of new teacher burnout.

The data from this study found similarities with the current research on burnout in identifying significant contributors to new teacher burnout. Findings suggested that contributors to burnout work simultaneously and have consistent and pervasive effects.

This made every contributor to burnout impactful, as the teacher was constantly suffering from negative health effects of the constant state of burnout.

This study contributes to the literature on new teacher burnout by suggesting that burnout contributors cannot be intervened in isolation. In the presence of a variety of contributors to burnout, removing a single contributor may not reduce the impact of burnout on a new teacher. Burnout research, policy, and practice have excluded teacher representation and voice. This dissertation study, from the perspective and using the voice of a beginning teacher, began a much needed dialogue for teachers, school leaders, and policymakers, regarding strategies and solutions to recognize and mitigate new teacher burnout.