It used to be simple. Parents send their kids to school to learn. The children progressed through the grades, many graduating high school and many of those graduates heading off to universities of their choice. Those were the good ol’ days.
According to the EdWeek, teachers are quitting at a record rate, job satisfaction rates are down 19% since 2012 and many teachers feel like they have lost control. Although dwindling teacher pay has been at the forefront of the conversation, there are a multiple factors contributing to this atmosphere of discontent.
Once schools were forced into e-learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students were disconnected from school. You were no longer in the classroom, no longer facing your teacher, no longer forced to be engaged in class. With e-learning students were free to put a teacher on mute, turn off their camera and take a nap. The opposite effect was there for parents. Now that school was brought home, parents began to supervise and even micromanage their children’s education.
Some teachers were able to power through this time with an end in sight. However, when student’s returned to school, they kept these e-learning habits. Many teachers began to quit because of not only their ill-behaved and ill-equipped students, but also because of a seemingly broken trust between parents and teachers.
This broken trust has also led to an atmosphere of disrespect towards teachers. Groups like Moms for Liberty are known for antagonizing and targeting teachers and administrators. In Fla., increasingly strict laws regulating the books and topics teachers and teach, some even reaching the college level, just furthers this burnout which seems to be afflicting teachers everywhere.
Finally, teacher pay is one of the largest issues contributing to teacher burnout. In Hillsborough County especially, there is animosity between teachers and the county over pay disputes. Fighting each year to get decent pay amongst rising inflation and cost of living in the Tampa Bay Area, some teachers are even forced to get second jobs. It’s hard to focus on teaching your students when you have to focus on where you’ll get your next paycheck.
The issue of teacher pay can only foreseeably be solved through a thorough reallocation of funds and streamlining the education system on a county-level. Making education funding – without attaching strings – a state and national priority will also help.
The national atmosphere of disrespect towards teachers can only be changed by one way: parents distancing themselves from their children’s education. Yes, still hire tutors, help your kids with homework, but don’t tell teachers what to teach. Children growing up in a nation that claims to be free deserve freedom of knowledge, freedom of education. They deserve to be taught how the teachers – the trained professionals – want to teach. Parents can tell their children what they want at home and let them form their own opinion; but, they should not be deprived.
What used to be considered an important, foundational, respectable profession has become seen as a joke. And, frankly, this shift is idiotic. Once students went into e-learning and began to see the many ways to succeed outside of school, they forgot something: you need marketable skills and somewhat of an impressive work ethic to succeed without a solid education. Even becoming an influencer requires substantial work, marketing experience, and the ability to negotiate and deal with brand deals. Without simple skills, you will only get exploited by those who do.
The importance of education seems to be lost on many students now. Turned cynical by the numerous stories of college graduates crushed by student debt and working at a fast food restaurant, students have begun to shift emphasis away from education.
A solution? Emphasize a skill-focused education. Students who graduate with a bachelor’s degree in poetry complain about not being able to find a job when they failed to take advantage of their college education and learn some marketable skills. If we make arts an important part of education, yet accompany that with a larger emphasis on STEM based learning, we can continue to progress as a nation without having a large unemployed and indebted population.
The foundation of a country is its education. The children are its future, and if a country cannot effectively educate its children, it can’t survive in the long term. Focusing on a skill-based education and answering the question, “how can I use this in real life,” will not only end teacher burnout in the long-term, but better equip students in the short-term.
