A Personal Word on the BAT-AFT Teacher Stress Survey
On May 12, 2015, the Badass Association of Teachers (BATs) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) produced the first of what will likely be many reports on information collected as part of an online survey on teacher stress.
The report linked above is posted on the AFT website and introduces the survey as follows:
After concerns of stress on the job were reported to the Badass Teachers Association, a survey on well-being, working conditions and stressors for educators was designed by a group of teachers who are members of the American Federation of Teachers or BATs, and it was reviewed and refined by a workplace stress expert and a professional pollster. Circulated via email and social media, the survey was posted online on April 21 and closed on May 1. The first of its kind, the 80-question survey was filled out by more than 30,000 educators.
The survey can be viewed here.
I plan to write about the survey results; however, I am waiting until the BATs are ready to release the actual response rates for each of the categorical questions on the survey. (Some questions are open-ended and thus are not tabulated by category. These open-ended responses must be analyzed using qualitative research techniques.)
For now, in this post, I would like to offer a teacher stressor response more like an individual case study:
My own.
What I write is my experience, and I offer it here in hopes that my experience might prove useful to those who read it. Though they are candid, my words are not intended to negatively reflect on the BATs’ noble effort to support teachers by publicizing the stress we currently face as a matter of course under test-score-driven, teacher-scapegoating, corporate “reform.”
What follows is simply my perspective on the matter of both the BATs survey and my own “teacher stress” experience.
I saw the invitation to take the survey on the BATs Facebook page, and I also received an email from AFT about the survey. I chose not to complete the survey. My immediate thought upon seeing the invitation was that one needs no survey to know that teachers are under tremendous stress to prove their worth in student test score outcomes.
However, I realize now that the survey was a chance for teachers to not only have a voice, 80 questions of brief catharsis, but also for BATs to preserve a record of A Personal Word on the BAT-AFT Teacher Stress Survey | deutsch29:
