In my position, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to help teachers help students engage in meaningful, lasting learning. But this past year and a half has me also thinking about how we can support teachers as they navigate the new demands of the pandemic. "Pandemic classrooms," as we've come to call them, have driven our work backward, and we are forced to find new ways to engage students in collaborative activities which have proven to result in authentic growth. Because teachers want to do right by their students, they agonize over this new reality, spending more time than ever designing lessons and providing feedback that will support their students.
But this isn't what I'd like to talk about here - there are many new blogs and shotgun publications attempting to support this work. What I'd like to address are the new working conditions that seem to overtake our lives. We know that teachers are dropping out of the profession this year in larger numbers than ever before. In part, I believe that's because where we once had boundaries between work and home, we now have none. Zoom and other video conferencing platforms made it possible to teach successful lessons online during our year of online school, and to their credit they iterated their platforms through the year to meet our growing needs. But instead of thinking creatively about how to integrate this technology into our return structure, upon our return to classrooms most things we right back to "normal". We learned, but we did nothing interesting or creative with that learning.
What I have seen, particularly in my own context of independent schools, is a new expectation for teachers: evening meetings. Now, not only are the teachers designing lessons and providing feedback, not only are teachers working in the school 8 or 10 hours a day, they are also now attending meetings online from home, sometimes until as late as 7:30 or 8:00 pm. During the time when they should be eating with their family, they are working. During the time when they would normally be preparing lessons or feedback for the following day, they are in meetings. During the time when they should be reading or learning or exercising or meditating - or playing with their children - or whatever they need to do in order to maintain their own wellness - they are online. Zoom has allowed us to meet even when the work day has passed.
It creates a sad irony: we are repeatedly "reminded" to take care of our wellness, told to clear our plates of the unnecessary so that we can focus on what is important. Then our entire day is overtaken by the unnecessary.
As a school community, we need to determine what is important and then make positive change focusing on these things. I am finding it impossible to expect more growth in the classroom - of myself and of my peers - when my own work priorities have been chosen for me - and they have nothing to do with classroom practice. Teachers have experienced the same silent trauma as our students. We have been merely surviving for nearly two full years. We are being encouraged to take care of ourselves without being given the tools or the space to do that. If we really want teachers to focus on their own growth and better student learning outcomes, then those who organize our days and assign the duties will need to prioritize our work. They will need to let us get back to what matters - caring for ourselves so that we can care for our students, their wellbeing, and their learning.
But this isn't what I'd like to talk about here - there are many new blogs and shotgun publications attempting to support this work. What I'd like to address are the new working conditions that seem to overtake our lives. We know that teachers are dropping out of the profession this year in larger numbers than ever before. In part, I believe that's because where we once had boundaries between work and home, we now have none. Zoom and other video conferencing platforms made it possible to teach successful lessons online during our year of online school, and to their credit they iterated their platforms through the year to meet our growing needs. But instead of thinking creatively about how to integrate this technology into our return structure, upon our return to classrooms most things we right back to "normal". We learned, but we did nothing interesting or creative with that learning.
What I have seen, particularly in my own context of independent schools, is a new expectation for teachers: evening meetings. Now, not only are the teachers designing lessons and providing feedback, not only are teachers working in the school 8 or 10 hours a day, they are also now attending meetings online from home, sometimes until as late as 7:30 or 8:00 pm. During the time when they should be eating with their family, they are working. During the time when they would normally be preparing lessons or feedback for the following day, they are in meetings. During the time when they should be reading or learning or exercising or meditating - or playing with their children - or whatever they need to do in order to maintain their own wellness - they are online. Zoom has allowed us to meet even when the work day has passed.
It creates a sad irony: we are repeatedly "reminded" to take care of our wellness, told to clear our plates of the unnecessary so that we can focus on what is important. Then our entire day is overtaken by the unnecessary.
As a school community, we need to determine what is important and then make positive change focusing on these things. I am finding it impossible to expect more growth in the classroom - of myself and of my peers - when my own work priorities have been chosen for me - and they have nothing to do with classroom practice. Teachers have experienced the same silent trauma as our students. We have been merely surviving for nearly two full years. We are being encouraged to take care of ourselves without being given the tools or the space to do that. If we really want teachers to focus on their own growth and better student learning outcomes, then those who organize our days and assign the duties will need to prioritize our work. They will need to let us get back to what matters - caring for ourselves so that we can care for our students, their wellbeing, and their learning.