Credit: Pixabay
Fear and loathing in the classroom? Not exactly, but things aren’t that great either. According to a new study released last week by my union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and the advocacy group the Badass Teachers Association (BAT), educators are feeling significantly more stressed these days.
As Education Week reports, “The survey found that educators find work to be stressful 61 percent of the time—and nearly a quarter of respondents said work was ‘always’ stressful. Meanwhile, workers in the general population report that work is stressful 30 percent of the time.”
The result of this is that the mental health of the educators who serve our children is suffering. USA Today’s coverage of the AFT/BAT study explains that of the teachers who were surveyed, “58% said their mental health was ‘not good’ for seven or more of the previous 30 days. A similar survey in 2015 found just 34% of respondents felt the same.”
As a consequence, the vast majority of teachers (78%) are not getting enough sleep and are coming to work and encountering students who are themselves experiencing significantly increased levels of stress and anxiety. The survey cites predictable causes for this stress from budget cuts, bullying, and a lack of support from the outside world and the media to distinctly new pressures such as the fragile circumstances of immigrant students and the toxic political environment after the election.
With regard to the academic circumstances of teachers, the biggest sources of stress have to do with a lack of control over key aspects of their jobs, as Education Week observes:
While most educators report having control over classroom-level decisions, like teaching techniques and homework and grading policies, they have less influence over schoolwide decisions. Most teachers have minor or no influence over school budget decisions, nearly half have little or no say in determining professional development content, and 40 percent said they have minor or no influence in establishing curriculum at their schools.
But what seems clearly evident to me as a community college teacher, is that it is the larger social and political factors that are pushing many educators beyond their normal limits. While the college level does not always have the same discipline issues that teachers in K-12 deal with, many of my colleagues at colleges across the country have had to deal with distraught immigrant students; a new level of fear, anxiety, and anger in the classroom; and what has struck me in the wake of the election as a general malaise at the state of the world hanging over everything we do.
So while educators and students at all levels have spent many years now dealing with the pressures that come with the multiple assaults on public education from budget shortfalls litany of other ill-conceived “reforms,” the addition of a federal administration openly hostile to public education and the ugly new zeitgeist of the Trump era seems to be making an already tough job even harder.
While those of us in education have unfortunately become accustomed to relentless public education bashing as the new normal in many quarters, what should clearly be unacceptable even to those who don’t particularly care about the mental health of educators is the long-term toll that turning our campuses into much more stressful places will have on our children. In many ways, schools are microcosms of the future of our society. Perhaps we should start thinking about treating them more tenderly.
Jim Miller
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It is not an accident that suicide rates among teenagers are accelerating. The rates are at an all time US high. The observation that teachers work conditions are students learning conditions is spot on. The truly worrisome issue underlying the unprecedented stress in high school classrooms is that the teenage brain is vulnerable. Mental illness established as a result of inappropriate pedagogy will manifest even more severely when these children are adults.
Community college students reflect a broad cross section of America in terms of diversity of age, socio-economic status, culture, nationality, language and physical ability. Many districts provide free instruction to those who cannot access it or afford it elsewhere.
In San Diego, we have one of the largest of these continuing education programs in the nation. What we see in our classrooms is a strong indicator of what’s happening to people across many communities and income levels.
Yes- instructors are stressed at our jobs due to decades of budget cuts and losses of support staff and counselors. But our students are increasingly stressed from unemployment and/or working longer hours at stagnant wages. Many are single parents, and come to our classes after delivering children to school. Many are homeless and chronically sick from lack of sleep and/or hunger, while struggling to earn a degree or certificate, and have a shot at a better quality of life, higher pay, and more opportunities.
In a few of our Continuing Education sites, counselors now partner with case managers from the County of San Diego’s Health and Human Services. They help students determine if they are eligible for food, medical care and other assistance.
(In some cases- part time instructors find themselves eligible for these services.)
High rents/housing costs mean students and faculty are stressed at home- if they are lucky enough to have stable housing. Many students are housing- and food-insecure, living with friends (“couch surfing”), in vehicles, or in makeshift camps.
What all this means is: in addition to teaching students, we provide additional care on campus such as showers, free food pantries, and laundry facilities- all while offering support and encouragement.
Students can’t learn on an empty stomach, or while falling asleep at their desks. So we are stressed as educators, constantly needing to adapt to the reality of students’ (and our) overworked/underpaid lives.
Very insightful, thank you. I recently read the blurb below form the New York Times California Report and it shocked me. As an educator and strong progressive Im curious to hear your thoughts and possible solution/s for such an important issue…thanks
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FROM NYTIMES CA REPORT:
Latinos make up the majority of students in California. And the state is widely regarded as being a bastion of Latino political power, with Latinos holding many of the top positions in Sacramento. And yet, a new report from The Education Trust-West shows a stark and persistent achievement gap between Latino and white students. In every county in the state the majority of Latino students are not proficient in math or English language arts.
The report also found that California’s Latino students attend some of the country’s most segregated schools, lack access to early childhood education, are often pushed away from college-prep coursework in high school and are more likely to be required to take remedial classes in colleges and universities.
“We continue to talk about Latinos in the education world as if they are a subgroup and a minority but they are absolutely the majority,” said Ryan Smith, executive director of The Education Trust-West. “So the question is what does that mean for our K-12 education system. I think of it like this: If we saw the type of challenges for white students that we see for Latino students, we know that the government and others would declare a state of emergency. Latinos have more political power than ever before, but students seem to be lagging behind in every indicator.”
It would be tempting to assume that at least some of the gap is because of struggles to learn English, Mr. Smith said, but only one-third of Latino students in the state are considered English Language Learners. And the report points out that 95 percent of the state’s Latinos who are younger than 18 are native-born.
Ed-Trust Report: https://west.edtrust.org/resource/the-majority-report/