Every year 10 percent of new teachers quit their job, 30 percent have quiet after three years and 45 percent after five. Teacher de-motivation and burnout is a huge issue in education. There are many reasons for teacher's wanting to give up or feeling unmotivated. These include the sheer workload of being a teacher, student indiscipline, the amount of time teaching consumes even outside of work, a lack of resources and sometimes a lack of trust. There are a number of activities that can help prevent burnout and to help motivate teachers.

Team Bonding Exercise
Team bonding exercises can range from a few hours in length to a whole day or weekend. The aim of a team bonding exercise is to encourage teachers to work together better and to get to know each other more. These should include challenges such as the product pipeline, where the teachers are divided into groups of 4 to 8 members. They are given certain supplies such as paper, glue, balloons, cardboard and so on; then they must construct a length of pipeline that holds many marbles. Each team's pipeline must connect to those of the other teams. This encourages not only team work but inter-team cooperation.

Staff Nights Out
Get together away from school. This means organizing weekday or Friday-night activities designed to bring people together, but more importantly, design to allow teachers to let off some steam and have fun. Great activity ideas for this include going to the movies, sports events, going to the theater and bowling. These activities allow teachers to relax a bit and help them to avoid burnout.

Teacher Awards
Principals can organize official monthly, semester-based or yearly awards for teachers' outstanding effort. Often these awards come with a trophy of some kind, such as a golden apple, or some other token for teachers who went beyond the call of duty. The best awards though, are not principal driven, but are voted for by other teachers. These awards motivate and focus a number of teachers as making them feel appreciated.

Educational Olympics
Divide the teachers into teams; they can represent nations, states or even faculties. Design a number of events to cover all elements of the curriculum so all talents are balanced out. These could range from team table tennis to spelling contests, general knowledge quiz, math puzzles, basketball shootouts and guiding team members who are blindfolded through a maze.

Fundraising
Fundraising activities really help motivate teachers and students alike. Improving the teacher-student relationship is often an important element of motivating both of them. Pick a charity for the school term/semester or year, then have contests by class or department to see who can raise the most money through fundraising activities.