The Growth Framework: A Catalyst for Educator Wellbeing and Resilience

Educator wellbeing is increasingly recognized as a systemic priority as teachers and leaders face mounting pressures from heavy workloads, reform agendas, emotional labor, and global disruptions. Within these challenges lies an opportunity to reimagine how resilience and flourishing can be cultivated in schools. This chapter introduces The Growth Framework, a systems thinking model rooted in purpose and resilience, as a tool to help educational environments and the people in them navigate these challenges. Inspired by the author’s book The Apple in the Orchard and developed as a model in 2014, the Growth Framework illustrates how cycles of Birth, Maturity, Creative Destruction, and Renewal help school leadership teams recognize the rhythms of daily life, including practices, routines, and decisions, as opportunities to cultivate growth, resilience, purpose, and renewal. By situating these cycles within the work of school leadership, the chapter highlights how leaders can use the Growth Framework to promote wellbeing.