Many Hats
As summer starts, let's peer into the myriad of jobs within the job of a teacher so we can all understand the need for these two months "off".
The other month, after talking to former colleagues about this year in education, I came across a staggering statistic. “Some 300,000 public-school teachers and other staff left the field between February 2020 and May 2022, a nearly 3% drop in that workforce, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data” (Wall Street Journal, 2022). In a little over two years, 300,000 people have left teaching. Imagine filling close to four Wisconsin Badger stadiums of lanyard-wearing, classroom key jingling, red pen-toting, coffee-mouthed educators. These were not layoffs, this number exhibits the active choice of leaving the profession. It begs the question, what has led to this mass exodus?
Brief But Spectacular: Teacher Burnout Video (A glance into young educators burning out.)
The video above made me weep. I am interviewing Micaela DeSimone later this summer as a follow-up.
The Burnout is Real
From experience, I believe that one leading factor is the sheer amount of work on an educator’s plate. Not only do teachers supply actual needed content for young minds, but they do a myriad of other jobs throughout the day, wearing many hats. Teaching is not as straightforward as creating and teaching a lesson, giving a test and then grading said assessment. There are hundreds of small pieces that make up the daily routine of a teacher, and unfortunately, many of those minute jobs are ones we were never trained for.
During my first year of teaching, my roommate came home and told me she had been asked to cover PE and the nurse's office that day at her school. She was a 5th-grade teacher. We laughed it off out of pure desperation because how can you do three jobs in one day? She covered for two other jobs, on top of her own, not getting paid extra. She had to meet with her principal to fight for her pay to increase that day, which took more energy than it may have been worth. The issue here is that we all play roles in our classrooms/schools that no one ever told us we would. For starters, we play the emotional support dog.
*Mainly* Female Identifying Teachers: The Emotional Support Dogs
Teachers are not mental health professionals but are forced to be. The counselors in our buildings are overrun, supporting both students and staff, so the next adult to see students through hard times is their teacher. I am a young, unintimidating female teacher who is the perfect target for the overshare. If I think back to my days at my old school, anywhere from 3-8 students per day would tell me something incredibly difficult. I made the observation that veteran male teachers did not have this issue as I would come into lunch every day disheveled and heavy-hearted, unable to process what was just told to me. I understood that for a teenager to confide in an older male teacher has its liabilities, but it felt like a bit of a double standard to say that just because I am a young woman, students can interrupt my day and bombard me with their deepest secrets. (I am not trying to make a blanket statement here about all male teachers, I know highly relational ones, but women are impacted by this phenomenon seemingly every moment of every day.) I was concerned by this and the sustainability of this profession for me as I am a highly relational person, and it does not come naturally to me to not want to connect to every human who enters my classroom. It is a blessing sometimes, but sheesh, it is a curse too.
Brigid Schulte of The Guardian wrote an article titled, “A woman’s greatest enemy? A lack of time to herself” which hones in on the reality of women not only in the household but in the workplace. “Women’s time has been interrupted and fragmented throughout history, the rhythms of their days circumscribed by the Sisyphean tasks of housework, childcare, and kin work – keeping family and community ties strong. If what it takes to create are long stretches of uninterrupted, concentrated time, time you can choose to do with as you will, time that you can control, that’s something women have never had the luxury to expect, at least not without getting slammed for unseemly selfishness” (Schulte, 2019). That is exactly how I felt for wanting time away from students banging down my door so they could have a listening ear: selfish. I felt selfish when I left work at a reasonable hour instead of grinding it out as the sun dipped behind the mountains. I felt selfish when I told students that I did not have time that day to chat one on one, and then would send them to the counseling office. Why was that? Was I the only one feeling that way? “...women’s time at work, too, was interrupted and fragmented, chopped up with more service work, mentoring, and teaching. The men spent more of their workdays in long stretches of uninterrupted time to think, research, write, create, and publish to make their names, advance their careers and get their ideas out into the world” (Schulte 2019). So even in our workdays, women are interrupted more often as we are the maternal figures in our spaces. This is a tale as old as time, unfortunately. I burned out because of myself, but also because of the notion that young women carry the brunt of the emotional burdens and relationships in a school building. It is no wonder the teaching profession has wage issues, as it is dominated by women, 76% in fact. As one of our hats is the emotional support dog, another hat is the parental role.
Interim Parents
There are lesson plans, the actual teaching, the grading, and then the meetings. Most faculty meetings in schools can be emails (similar to office spaces), let’s just be honest about that real quick…but the meetings with parents or meetings about parents are the ones that leave the largest footprint. The role of a teacher spans beyond the confines of a content megaphone and into the territory of playing a parent. When a student does not have a solid home life, they naturally go one of two ways. The behavioral aspects of an unstable home life manifest in a variety of ways but sometimes, students shut down in class, yell at their peers or teacher, or they may never turn in work as the quiet place at home is not available…and some cling to their teachers if their teacher is someone who is a trusted adult. In my case, a lot of students were pictures of the latter (with multiple teachers and counselors). You end up having to teach them about sexual education, how to regulate their emotions, how to apply for jobs and college, and how to get gift cards for food and clothing if they are in need of those items. Then the life lessons begin. If a student, however old, lacks a parental figure at home, the teacher becomes the interim figure that makes sure their student is receiving not only an academic education but a life skills education as well.
My students would often come to me with not just dating gossip, but actual questions about how to tell if someone is treating you well, consent questions, and inquiries about access to abortion. Consent conversations are the most important to have with all parties involved, but the key here is this: I am not a health education teacher. We take on roles that are lacking in these students’ lives because we have to. Not many teachers would look a student in the eye who came to them with questions about consent, pregnancy, or dating (or even post-secondary options for that matter) and tell them, “Sorry, I can’t talk to you about this,” especially if they know that the student does not have a parental figure in the picture. We fill in the blanks.
The Counselor
We are the emotional support dogs, and the parents, but also, more often than not, we are the counselor. The emotional support dog is a steady presence that remains rather neutral and quiet, a strong shoulder to cry on if you will. The counselor however is someone who must listen, observe, act, and suggest. The counselor is not passive. None of us are trained for the moment when a student comes up to you and tells you they were raped last night just before the minute bell. No one is prepared for the moment a student screams at you in the hallway because you called his dad without knowing that his dad physically beats him. Not one human understands inherently what to do when a student is having suicidal ideations, is in a toxic relationship, needs an abortion, has an eating disorder, or is not accepted in their own home because of their gender or sexual identity. How do you deal with a kid whose parents are being actively deported? Or whose brother got murdered? Or a kid who works full time and never comes to class because they have to support their dad's heart surgery payment by working at the family restaurant? We are not trained in these hard conversations, these long-term support roles. Those are for the counselors, the social workers, and the school psychologists. But when your school of 2,700 students has nine total counselors and some of the counselors are helping the staff out with their own mental health issues, the plate has overflowed. Teachers are the ones in front of the kids most often, therefore we see them morph every single day and are on the front lines of their brain development.
Listen…I am ALL about leaving the jobs we are not trained for to the experts. I would love it if we could place all of the hats we wear back on the professionals in those areas, but unfortunately, no school has enough funding for the appropriate amount of professionals. Colorado just released a new budget for mental health funding in relation to opening schools that specialize in supporting students with mental health issues/disabilities but where is the funding for students and staff in already existing public schools?
This makes our jobs that of five humans, which is wildly unsustainable, especially for young teachers entering the post-pandemic system. Teacher training needs to morph into the modern classroom landscape of cyberbullying, the impact of social media, and conversations around the world’s hot-button issues (gun violence impacting schools as a start). Trauma-informed trainings are vital for educators to attend, but the majority of training we do as public school educators, in particular, is lackadaisical. If these professional development lessons were intentionally taught by current educators (not administration or district folk) and took the feedback of teachers, we could arm our teachers with the holistic knowledge of what they will come across in the year (not guns). It is too far-fetched of a solution to leave mental health training to licensed professionals, as educators in the classroom will always be the shoulder to cry on for their students. We have been surviving in a reactive state for far too long, rather than a proactive one. Being proactive in education means we need to be realistic about where we are at. And where we are at is staggering.
So Why the Burnout?
The article, “America’s Broken Education System” written by Nic Querolo, Olivia Rockeman, and Ella Ceron on Bloomberg, accounts for the reasons teachers are leaving in droves. “For decades, America’s educators have said they would’ve abandoned the job long ago were it not for their devotion to their students. But after a demanding and demoralizing two years that included Zoom schooling, culture wars, and shootings, those threats have finally become real. A Gallup Poll in February showed that K-12 educators were the most burned-out segment of the US labor force” (Querolo, Rockeman, Ceron 2022). I truly hope the public understands the impact of this. “An educator exodus not only has worrisome implications for the future of the profession and generations of children, it’s also disquieting for what it says about the value the country places on a career dominated by women. About 76% of the 3.5 million US public school teachers were female in the 2017-18 academic year… As women abandon the field for industries in which pay is higher, stress lower, and creative thinking more valued, education could see a generation-long brain drain” (Querolo, Rockeman, Ceron 2022). This entire article spells out the direct need for reform and how this nation is undervaluing school systems. I cannot lie, when I read this, I started crying pretty much instantly. This is dire. This is difficult to grapple with. And that is putting it mildly. Children deserve a system that benefits them. Teachers deserve a system that benefits them. Neither child nor teacher are being taken care of in our current state of education, as evidenced by the burnout rates below. The majority of the public is not asking questions of educators, and it feels as though we are not asking enough of our politicians.
The problem with our local governments is that they are not the ones inside the classrooms. If every politician could teach for one month, I believe this entire system could change. Slowly, but surely. If politicians and district folks alike taught for even one week, they would see just how many hats they would need to wear in a day in order to be an effective and successful teacher, on top of feeling constantly unsafe.
The most glaring issues (of course aside from gun reform) are funding for more mental health counselors, increased base pays for teachers, and the impact that COVID-19 had on America’s youth. In addition to that overwhelming heap, the perception of public schools poses a problem. Consistently overrun and underfunded, public schools in America have been left on the back burner for decades, forcing parents to send their children to charters, private schools, and independent schools in order for their children to have more personalized feedback in their academics. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of those options, aside from the fact that they are widely inaccessible for families without money or not in the vicinity. Property taxes, gentrification, redlining, and school board members are all culprits in the crumbling of public education, and therefore its perception within America. I do not intend to solve the education crisis within these pieces, I am not that naïve…but I hope they spark some sort of fire under readers unfamiliar with the topic.
The first step would be to get involved in your local school board and city council elections as a non-educator. Teachers require participation outside of their schools. We need our loved ones to walk alongside us, to make us even stronger. Educators are rocks y’all. When we have healthy and supportive relationships outside of the school building, that creates a more stable educator, so the non-educators role in education itself is absolutely paramount. But this job requires you to be on all the time, and the sustainability of that is questionable. Add “sturdy, unwavering rock” to our job titles too.
Your mentor dies of cancer? Got to teach first period. There is drama in your family unit? Too bad, create your lesson. A student in your class commits suicide? You show up the next day to an empty desk and the sounds of teenage sobs- but you must remain strong. We are the anchors in every classroom even when each tendon in our body is writhing with grief. We show up because we have to and because there is a need there. This profession has become so saturated in heaviness and misunderstanding that some days, it truly felt as though I was just reporting to clock in and clock out. The moment I began feeling that way, I knew I needed to take a respite. I love kids so much. They are the best and the worst, which is impossible to reconcile. But they deserve someone who wants to be in front of them, supporting them at each class period. The burnout was so real, the hats began to strain my neck and made my back feel like it was on the verge of breaking.
The snack and school supply providers, the counselor, the emotional support dog, the parent, the actual teacher, the mentor, the disciplinarian, the coach, the rock…these are just some of the hats that teachers wear on a daily basis all while being ranked on a numerical scale in observations of lessons. All while being yelled at by parents of students who have not attended in months. All while crouching in corners while SWAT scans the hallways with bomb dogs. How can we make this profession, one that is the lifeblood of this nation, more sustainable?
Happy Summer to teachers across America. You DESERVE each day you have “off” to rest and heal.