As a liberal studies major planning to pursue a career in education, I thought it would be important to gain a new perspective on what teachers experience in a typical school year.
The following is a true story about the reality of teaching. For anonymity and privacy reasons, the name Mrs.Walker will be given as an alias.
I decided to interview my English teacher, Mrs.Walker, and I had the opportunity to be in her class for my sophomore and junior years of high school.
If it were not for her, I would have never considered becoming a teacher, but she showed me how rewarding teaching can be and how you can push students to be the best they can be inside and outside the classroom.
Mrs.Walker, made me feel safe and at home in her classroom, and I want to give that same love, care, and encouragement to my future students. She has shown me the greater aspects of teaching that go beyond the curriculum.
I wanted to honor teachers and their hard work, which I feel is not recognized enough.
Mrs.Walker has been teaching for the last twenty-four years in my high school’s English department, it was not until recently that she became a health teacher. Her reason for switching subjects is because of burnout.
“I have plenty of experience with burnout. I am burnt out right now. The typical teacher’s year has two burnout months – October and March, and this happens every single year,” said Walker. “The two biggest things I have done to handle burnout are: I changed the subject I teach because I was tired of grading essays and I wanted to challenge myself with something new, and I changed classrooms so that I could be in a new environment.”
According to NEA News, Burnout is one of the leading causes of teachers wanting to leave the profession, and teachers are not given adequate resources to overcome this major challenge.
“School districts can offer to pay for health insurance, offer cost of living pay, offer mental health care for their staff, offer affordable childcare, and offer mental health days for staff,” said Walker.
Teachers are not offered the same benefits as other professional careers and are not given a high enough salary. The ongoing conversation that teachers do not receive the same respect compared to other professions degrades the hard work teachers put in each school year that goes unseen.
Burnout has become more common as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic disrupted the 2020 school year in March and changed the learning environment of all students. A couple of challenges that Walker faced during this time were working with new software (Google Classroom, Powerpoint Slides, and Google slides), being unable to see students, and knowing many students were not learning anymore.
She shared personal adversity with online teaching:
“I was an English teacher for twenty-four years before we went into shelter-in-place. I had only started using Google Classroom two years before and still relied heavily on paper and pen for most work. So when we went to shelter-in-place, so many programs were thrown at me, I didn’t know what to do. I went to several trainings and did not feel confident about using any of the programs.”
“We have been back in person at school for the last year and a half and I am still meeting students I taught online. When I am teaching, I am all about reading students’ faces and knowing them well because of the connections I make with them on a daily basis. So, when I taught online I felt very disconnected from my students and did not feel like I was making a difference to anyone, except for the handful of students who actually interacted with me on a daily basis.”
“Based on the number of students I had who did not come to class, or signed on and did not do anything, I worried about how many students were not going to school or not doing the things that were being asked of them because it meant that they would be behind for at least a year,” said Walker. “Add to that, most students are addicted to their phones and social media, well, learning was not happening then and some of that is still not happening now.”
Teachers were thrown a curveball and had to re-adjust their teaching styles when their classroom was moved online. Teachers globally were affected by the pandemic and had difficulties engaging with their students and having them fully present in the online classroom.
Online teaching has made education more complicated on the teachers’ end and continues to affect student efforts when it comes to learning.
“When we returned to in-person teaching, I noticed an increasing number of ninth graders who did not do their work and did not really feel any urgency to pass classes to graduate from high school. I have kept my high level of expectation for my students and I just keep reiterating the fact that they need to be able to pass classes in order to graduate from high school, and that they want to graduate from high school to have a good job that pays well and be able to support whatever lifestyle to which they aspire.”
This continues to occur in the classrooms of teachers where students are no longer taking their education seriously upon returning to school. Motivation in the classroom has dropped drastically, and transitioning from virtual learning to in-person remains a difficult challenge for students and teachers.
Teachers continue to encounter growing adversity in their classrooms and around their profession, and they deserve to be given more recognition for their work.
Teachers dedicate so much of their time and energy to providing students with an education, some even being parental figures that students can depend on. It is a lot of pressure to put on one individual and deserves to be seen and rewarded.
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