In a time where every student needs a little more emotional support, we educators are uniquely qualified to fill that need. We are skilled in making the connections that keep kids curious, excited about the world around them, and engaged with their peers.
This is life-saving work these days.
Our children need schools to buoy them up in times of stress. They need to have hope and inspiration of the sort that teachers deal in on a daily basis, through literature, history, science… all areas of discovery and joyous participation. What a gift we teachers can give to the children in our classrooms!
And I see it every day. I see it in the lively classroom chats and the lessons that get kids thinking, talking, and laughing. I see it in the way our staff makes time for kids: a health teacher who gives up her lunch to chat with a shy student who needs a safe place to hang out; a math teacher who comes in early to help kids with homework; a paraprofessional who visits with junior high students in the hall about sports, fashion, celebrities, whatever interests them, even patiently listening to long-winded chats about Fortnite or TikTok celebrities!
Kids need this. After a year and a half of periodic isolation and loneliness, the students in our schools have the adults on high alert. We are vigilant. Are they eating? Do they seem too quiet? Have they stopped turning in work? Did they mention they were moving again? The worry is constant.
This is our most important job- being there for kids. It takes a lot of effort and energy to truly be there for kids, as an educator, a mentor, a caretaker and much more.
But, these days, do we have the time and energy to do that oh-so-important job well? I want to say yes. Yes, because it is important, that is what we will do. But, this is a complicated situation. Educators are feeling the strain. The entire system is strained.
I definitely resonate with this on so many levels. One of my students comes to me after class, and during flex time, to show me the Twitter threads and screen grabs of his favorite video games. I have no idea how he identified me as his listener (I have zero skills or interest in any video games and he’d been fairly quiet in class until he showed me his phone) but it’s clear he gains so much joy from being heard.
I also keep my room stocked granola bars this year and the amount of students who have come to rely on those little snacks (we’re talking generic Costco here, nothing fancy!) is really astonishing.
I take pride in being a truly safe space for my students, and the care they need from us has never been more apparent.
Here’s one more item to add to the list of problems teachers face–crumbling infrastructure. My class is the only one in the school that had to go into quarantine due to me and so many of my students catching Covid. My class is also the one class in the school out in a portable (from the 1980s). I have serious questions about the HVAC in our room. (And the quality of the water in our room too, but that’s another issue.)
I support so many of the ideas offered by the Washington Post article. And I’m sad to see the “stick the nose to the grindstone” tone of the OSPI tome.
Yes, and Shari is right as well: it is brutal and unsustainable. And honestly, if it were “just” a global pandemic it would feel more manageable. Instead, it is that plus anti-mask protesters shouting down the school board and anti-equity community members who’ve adopted “CRT” as their boogeyman du jour without realty knowing what it means, and the teetering fragility of democracy, and the rest of the iceberg this ship of state has careened headlong into.
Why do we as educators feel like we have to shoulder it all? It is a tall order to continue being the buoy, the life raft, for kids (especially as teachers are once more the villains in local school board races and on NextDoor parent group threads.)
What will the broken system do when there are no more hard working teachers who can be cogs in the machine because we’ve burnt out and left…and there is no one in their right mind wanting to take on this job?
Mark,
I think you hit all the points I edited out of the original post! I don’t even know how to stay positive about it this year. Burn out is a real danger for us all.
You nailed it. This is the walk we’re all on right now. It’s brutal and it’s unsustainable. I keep trying to find solutions but it often feels like the real solutions are systems based and outside of the local teacher control.
You used the best word- unsustainable. I don’t know where this train is headed, but I’m getting pretty worried that it isn’t going to end well.