Pandemic Stress Has Pushed Teachers To A Breaking Point : NPR

Pandemic Stress Has Pushed Teachers To A Breaking Point : NPR

'We Need To Be Nurtured, Too': Many Teachers Say They're Reaching A Breaking Point

To say Leah Juelke is an award-winning teacher is a bit of an understatement. She was a top 10 finalist for the Global Teacher Prize in 2020; she was North Dakota's Teacher of the Year in 2018; and she was awarded an NEA Foundation award for teaching excellence in 2019.

But Juelke, who teaches high school English learners in Fargo, N.D., says nothing prepared her for teaching during the pandemic.

"The level of stress is exponentially higher. It's like nothing I've experienced before."

It's a sentiment NPR heard from teachers across the country. After a year of uncertainty, long hours and juggling personal and work responsibilities, many told NPR they had reached a breaking point.

Heidi Crumrine, a high school English teacher in Concord, N.H., says this has been the most challenging year she's ever encountered in her two decades of teaching.

"And I say [that] as someone who started her first day of teaching on 9/11 in the Bronx in New York City."

Teaching is one of the most stressful occupations in the U.S., tied only with nurses, a 2013 Gallup poll found. Jennifer Greif Green, an education professor at Boston University, says the additional stress teachers are reporting during the pandemic is CONTINUE READING: Pandemic Stress Has Pushed Teachers To A Breaking Point : NPR

Teaching in the Pandemic: ‘This Is Not Sustainable’ - The New York Times

Teaching in the Pandemic: ‘This Is Not Sustainable’ - The New York Times

Teaching in the Pandemic: ‘This Is Not Sustainable’

Teacher burnout could erode instructional quality, stymie working parents and hinder the reopening of the economy.

At Farmington Central Junior High in rural Illinois, classes still start at 8 a.m. But that’s about the only part of the school day that has not changed for Caitlyn Clayton, an eighth-grade English teacher tirelessly toggling between in-person and remote students.

At the start of the school day, Ms. Clayton stands in front of the classroom, reminding her students to properly pull their masks over their noses. Then she delves into a writing lesson, all the while scanning the room for possible virus threats. She stops students from sharing supplies. She keeps her distance when answering their questions. She disinfects the desks between classes.

Then in the afternoon, just as her in-person students head home, Ms. Clayton begins her second day: remote teaching. Sitting in her classroom, she checks in one-on-one via video with eighth graders who have opted for distance learning. To make sure they are not missing out, she spends hours more recording instructional videos that replicate her in-person classroom lessons.

All this fall, as vehement debates have raged over whether to reopen schools for in-person instruction, teachers have been at the center — often vilified for challenging it, sometimes warmly praised for trying to make it work. But the debate has often missed just how thoroughly the coronavirus has upended learning in the country’s 130,000 schools, and glossed over how emotionally and physically draining pandemic teaching has become for the educators themselves.

In more than a dozen interviews, educators described the immense challenges, and exhaustion, they have faced trying to provide normal schooling for students in pandemic conditions that are anything but normal. Some recounted whiplash experiences of having their schools abruptly open and close, sometimes more than once, because of virus risks or quarantine-driven staff shortages, requiring them to repeatedly switch back and forth between in-person and online teaching.

Others described the stress of having to lead back-to-back group CONTINUE READING: Teaching in the Pandemic: ‘This Is Not Sustainable’ - The New York Times

Minnesota teachers at 'breaking point' over pandemic stress - StarTribune.com

Minnesota teachers at 'breaking point' over pandemic stress - StarTribune.com

Minnesota teachers juggling online, in-person classes fight stress in pandemic

Erika Jagiella wakes up at night fretting about lesson plans she needs to create and deliver to kids in person and in a socially distanced way. Then, she remembers: There's online coursework to craft, too.

The crush of daily workload demands has been so great that Jagiella, a special education teacher for the White Bear Lake Area Schools, only recently finished rewriting the individual education plans required for her students. "My brain just can't slow down," she said. "I'm constantly thinking about my students, my work and the work ahead of me."

Teachers across Minnesota are frazzled trying to navigate pandemic-related combinations of in-person and online instruction — so much so that nearly one-third responding to a recent statewide survey said they were thinking of quitting. Many work extra hours on nights and weekends as they juggle students in multiple formats, forcing union leaders to press for relief from school and district administrators.

The hybrid model of learning is designed to give students and teachers at least a couple of days of face-to-face time each week and to give students access to in-person supports around mental health and other concerns. Still, there is the distance learning component to contend with, too, and in the Anoka-Hennepin School District, for example, that has pushed elementary teachers to the "breaking point," according to a petition signed by more than 1,350 people.

Teachers presented the petition to school board members on Sept. 28, imploring district leaders to let them focus on one set of students at a time. Looking in via Zoom were 183 district teachers.

Jim Skelly, a district spokesman, said last week that the state's largest district now is providing recorded video lessons in math and reading for CONTINUE READING: Minnesota teachers at 'breaking point' over pandemic stress - StarTribune.com