Teaching has become an increasingly challenging profession with growing class sizes, dwindling resources, expanded administrative responsibilities, and a perceived lack of support. These factors have contributed to rising rates of emotional exhaustion. The addition of teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic only intensified the situation. Prior work on teacher burnout focuses on qualities such as: poor working conditions, time, family conflicts, hours worked, and school type (Milfont et al., 2008). Principal support of teacher psychological needs (PSTPN) is a relatively new construct about supporting a teacher’s autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The literature shows that through all types of school leadership (instructional, transformational, and collective) the foundation of leadership is about conversation and relationships. Using self-determination theory as a theoretical lens, this quantitative study analyzes the University of Oklahoma’s annual climate survey that is distributed to teachers within two metropolitan school districts. The study captured the level of teacher burnout prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, if teachers experienced principal support for their psychological needs prior to and during the pandemic, and if there is a relationship between PSTPN and teacher reported burnout prior to and during the pandemic. Analyses include descriptive statistics and a series of regression models. This study shows that principal support of teacher’s psychological needs through informal and formal conversations may lead to decreased teacher burnout.