Why This Blog Exists
I didn’t set out to build a blog for teachers. I set out to understand a problem I was watching unfold right in front of me.
I work at a university hospital in Brazil — in the Clinical Research Center, coordinating clinical studies. My days are spent in a building full of professors from the Federal University of Alagoas. Over the years, I’ve watched colleagues I respect deeply go on medical leave. Not once or twice. Regularly. The pattern was always similar: years of overwork, administrative overload, emotional exhaustion, and then a breaking point that the system never saw coming — or chose not to see.
I’m a data scientist by training. When something keeps happening around me, my instinct is to look for the data behind it. What I found was both clarifying and unsettling. The burnout crisis in teaching isn’t a collection of individual stories — it’s a structural pattern playing out across countries, languages, and school systems. The numbers from RAND, the OECD, and Education Support in the UK tell the same story with different variables.
What I didn’t find was a resource that treated teachers like intelligent adults navigating a real problem. Most of what exists is either generic wellness advice, or the other extreme — hustle content promising passive income through side gigs. Neither addresses what’s actually happening: teachers who are exhausted, underpaid relative to their education, and trying to make decisions about their careers without honest information.
GrowthLane exists to fill that gap.
What This Blog Is — And What It Isn’t
GrowthLane is a research-informed resource for teachers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia who are dealing with burnout, looking for sustainable ways to earn additional income, or considering a career transition out of the classroom.
Every article on this site is built on verified data from primary sources — research institutions, government labor statistics, peer-reviewed studies. When a number appears here, it comes with a source you can check yourself. When the data is uncertain or contested, I say so. When something is my analysis rather than established research, I mark it clearly.
This is not a blog run by an ex-teacher. I’ve never stood in front of a K-12 classroom. What I bring is a different kind of expertise: years of working in clinical research, a background in data science, and the daily reality of watching what burnout actually does to educators over time — not as an abstraction, but as colleagues and people I know.
I write about teacher burnout, AI tools, side income, and career transitions because the data on these topics is rich, the existing content is often shallow, and the people experiencing this deserve better than generic advice.
How This Site Handles Information
A few principles that govern everything published here:
Primary sources only. Statistics are traced to the original institution that produced them — RAND Corporation, the OECD, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Education Support — not to blogs that cite other blogs. If I can’t verify a number at the source, it doesn’t appear here.
Honest about limitations. This site does not provide financial advice, medical advice, or legal advice. Articles in the Earn and Escape categories are informational — they describe what research shows and what options exist, not what you should do with your specific situation. Disclaimers aren’t legal boilerplate here; they reflect a genuine position about the limits of what a blog can responsibly tell you.
No hype. The teacher burnout space is full of content promising transformation, passive income, and life-changing career pivots. The data doesn’t support most of those promises. What it does support — recovery strategies that work, realistic income timelines, honest career transition pathways — is what you’ll find here.
About the Author
My name is Marcos Antonio. I’m a data scientist and clinical research coordinator at a university hospital in Brazil, where I work within the Clinical Research Center coordinating clinical studies. I hold a degree in Data Science.
I write GrowthLane in English by deliberate choice — the teacher burnout crisis is most acute and most documented in English-speaking countries, and that’s where the audience who needs this information lives. The research I draw on is primarily from US, UK, Canadian, and Australian institutions. Writing for that audience in their language is the only way to be genuinely useful to them.
I’m not anonymous, and I’m not a brand. If you want to reach me directly, the contact page has a working email address. I read everything.
GrowthLane does not provide financial, medical, legal, or career advice. Content is informational and educational. Always consult qualified professionals for decisions affecting your finances, health, or employment.