Is the classroom a stressful place? Thousands of teachers say yes
In this Friday, June 11, 2014 file photo, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten attends the ATF Reclaiming the Promise convention in Los Angeles. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)
This story has been updated.
A new survey of more than 30,000 U.S. teachers finds that most of them report high levels of stress and low levels of autonomy, but it also shows that they are not ready to bail on the classroom.
Teachers said they feel particularly anxious about having to carry out a steady stream of new initiatives — such as implementing curricula and testing related to the Common Core State Standards — without being given adequate training, according to the survey.
The online survey was created by the American Federation of Teachers, which acknowledges that it was not a scientifically valid sampling of the teaching profession.
But the AFT, the nation’s second-largest teachers union, said the results were startling enough that it has asked the U.S. Department of Education and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to follow up and conduct a valid survey to determine if there is a national problem of stressed-out teachers.
“We ask teachers to be a combination of Albert Einstein, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr. and, I’m dating myself here, Tony Soprano,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT. “We ask them to be Mom and Dad and impart tough love but also be a shoulder to lean on. And when they don’t do these things, we blame them for not being saviors of the world. What is the effect? The effect has been teachers are incredibly stressed out.”
The 80-question survey was completed by 31,342 teachers online between April 21 and May 1. It was designed by the AFT as well as the Badass Teachers, a group of teachers that has been aggressively fighting the use of student test scores to measure teacher quality, the rise of charter schools and other market-based education policies.
“What people have to realize is that this new push for corporate reform is decimating the teaching force,” said Marla Kilfoyle, general manager of the Badass Teachers, who has been teaching in New York for 29 years.
Among the survey respondents, 89 percent said they were strongly enthusiastic about teaching when they began their careers but just 15 percent felt the same way today. Most said that drop in enthusiasm has happened in the past two or three years.
Most teachers had positive things to say about their supervisors, with 55 Is the classroom a stressful place? Thousands of teachers say yes - The Washington Post:
