Burnout, shortages and why we need to celebrate teachers
If you know a teacher, they’ve probably told you how drastically their job has changed since the onset of the COVID.
And if you know a teacher you’re close to — a spouse or sibling or relative, a neighbor, a fellow parent on your kids’ sports team — you know how burned out the last two-plus years have left them.
They’re being asked to do much more than before, often with far fewer resources, and in modalities that are brand new. Teachers are opting to retire mid-year, pursue new careers or make their side hustles their primary form of employment.
These educators are leaving the field that many thought they’d remain in their entire lives. The situation is dire, and the stakes are high.
Celebrating teachers:Walsh University Teacher of the Month: Brittany O'Hara, Canton City
Celebrating teachers:Walsh University Teacher of the Month: Andrew Meister, Alliance City Schools
The ever-changing role of today’s teacher
The myriad ripple effects of COVID and quarantine (that we know of) — learning how to deliver content remotely, the rampant absences due to illness and quarantine, covering classes as a substitute teacher for a colleague, increased mental health issues, the clear and measurable brain drain that students are showing up to classes with, to name a few — leave an uncertain future for the field of education.
I have worked in education since the late 1990s, first as a fifth and sixth grade teacher at Fairless Local Schools and now as a professor of education at the University of Mount Union; both are alma maters of mine.
Teachers are giving up their much-needed planning periods to substitute teach for an absent colleague; principals and superintendents are doing the same when no one is available to sub in the building. Rarely does a week go by that I don’t get a phone call or email from a nearby district asking us about our recent graduates who could immediately substitute teach.
Hiring a full-time teacher would be the better solution, as we simply don’t have enough pre-service teachers to meet their needs.
At the same time, even though a day in the life of a teacher looks dramatically different today than it did three years ago, our accountability system hasn’t changed much. Teachers have been asked to know more and do more, and the expectations are higher.
What have they done? They rise to the challenge, daily. They work longer hours to support their peers and they differentiate more to meet their students’ needs. We know the pandemic did harm to kids, but educators are still evaluated based on student performance (among other factors), so the increases in stress are not surprising given these new realities.
A group of leaders from universities, the Ohio Department of Education and the Ohio Department of Higher Education recently offered summits across the state regarding how we can solve the educator shortages we’re facing.
We’re all working hard to try to identify strategies that will solve the crisis. One theme that keeps coming through is respect for teachers. We can only assume that as respect has decreased, shortages have increased.
Celebrating and respecting our educators
The future is as uncertain as ever, but Ohio’s teacher workforce, versed in best practices, led by visionaries at the state level and in their buildings and, crucially, armed with the empathy and compassion that they’ve always had but have now activated in incredible ways, is more than up to the challenge.
Now is the time to support our educators. Our teachers deserve to be celebrated and appreciated so that they avoid burnout and continue to have the stamina (and support) to do amazing work each day.
We then need that amazing work to become contagious so that more young people have the drive to become our future educators. We need kids to appreciate their teachers and see them as role models and want to be like them in the future.
If we all build momentum together and celebrate our educators, we could curb the shortages and offer the education our kids deserve.
So, the next time you see a teacher in the grocery store or at a ball game, take the time to celebrate them. Thank them for the tireless hard work and peerless dedication they offer our children.
If you’re a teacher, thank you. I appreciate you.
Keep doing amazing work with our kids.
Dr. Melissa Askren-Edgehouse is professor of education and accreditation coordinator at the University of Mount Union in Alliance.
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Burnout, shortages and why we need to celebrate teachers
