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Faced with the ongoing uncertainty, will the teacher feel more optimistic? Do they feel trusted? What makes them wake up at night? TPT conducted a national survey of nearly 8,000 teachers to find that it helps answer these questions and more insights before the 2025-2026 school year. These findings provide insights into the cutting-edge teacher perspectives today, from students’ socio-emotional needs to artificial intelligence.
Key Points
- The majority of educators (61%) feel optimistic about entering the 2025-2026 school year.
- Most teachers (74%) do not feel that they have the trust they do the best.
- Teachers care more about meeting students’ socio-emotional needs (53%) than their academic needs (41%).
The teacher feels optimistic
Despite the ever-changing and uncertain landscape, most educators feel optimistic as they enter the 2025-2026 school year.
This optimism is particularly strong among new teachers when delving into the data. 65% of new teachers (who have been teaching for five years or less) report being optimistic, while only 59% of experienced teachers (those who have taught for more than 25 years) report being the same.
This optimism is guided by teachers’ belief in careers. Universal – spanning grades and states – 83% of educators say “making a difference for kids” is what inspired them to be teachers in the first place. 93% of teachers agree that they are guided by a strong sense of purpose, which makes them motivated even if teaching is difficult.
This positive prospect varies across the country as teachers from different states express optimism.
The teacher feels capable, but not always trusting
Trust and empowerment are the main drivers of teachers’ overall optimism. Although 95% of teachers say administrator trust can help them do the best job, only 74% feel they do have that trust.
Even so, the teachers are doing well. Despite the trust gap, 87% of teachers feel capable of teaching to the best of their ability.
Teachers are most worried about social and emotional needs
Teachers entering the new school year are most concerned about the students’ social and emotional needs. In fact, more teachers care about meeting students’ socio-emotional needs (53%) (41%) than meeting academic needs.
This is important considering the increase in classroom interference. More than half (55%) of teachers report that students’ behavior has become worse and worse over the past two years.
Although teachers may be concerned about the social and emotional well-being of students, they still see their impact on students: 92% of educators feel that they have an impact on children in general.
TPT survey method
TPT sent 18 questions to active teacher users on the TPT platform, surveying multiple choice and open-ended questions to collect opinions from educators by the 2025-26 school year. The survey was emailed by email on July 23, 2025 and was completed by 7,964 teachers. The error margin is +/- 3 percentage points. The following shows the characteristics of the school the respondents teach.
| Years of teaching experience | |
| Less than 5 years | 20% |
| 5 – 10 years | 15% |
| 10 – 15 years | 12% |
| 15 – 20 years | 13% |
| 20 – 25 years | 15% |
| Over 25 years old | 25% |
| area | |
| The west | 19% |
| Midwest | twenty two% |
| northeast | 13% |
| South | 34% |
| other | 12% |
| Student results (Respondents selected all those that apply, and the percentage may not increase by 100%) |
|
| prek-k | 16% |
| K-5 | 52% |
| 6-8 | 25% |
| 9-12 | 20% |
| Adult learners | 35% |
| other | 5% |
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