Fatigued, Frustrated and Fed-up…

Fatigued, Frustrated and Fed-up - Why Teaching is Taking its Toll on our Educators

By Rita H Rowe 2019

Once revered as a noble profession, a calling, teaching was a vocation that commanded respect and admiration. Not today…

Standing amidst this motley crew, made up of two parents, one hysterical and calling for blood (‘heads will roll,’ said he), and the other cooing at her ‘innocent’ child, the year level coordinator took in the scene and calculated the amount of time she would spend dealing with this situation – this could go on for weeks. The school nurse hovered beside her and the classroom teacher, hysterical as she felt as though she would be blamed for the mess, alternated between apologising to the furious parent and sobbing with remorse. In the centre of the drama, the young lad, who had been whacked in the head by another student (who had fled the scene) proclaimed complete innocence in the event and looked furtively at her. Right then, she knew she had made the right decision when she had resigned. She quickly made another mental calculation - eight days to go.

The pressures on Australian teachers in today’s schools are cited as the reasons for the rise in teachers leaving the profession before retirement. The major cause – burnout. Burnout does not only include the enormous workload placed on teachers, but also includes the social and psychological demands on a day to day basis. And oddly enough, most of these issues do not have much to do with the students themselves. Between administrative pressures, curriculum concerns, excessive accountability, parents and staff interactions, students, who should be the primary concern in schools, tend to be an add-on to the role of the teacher.

According to one teacher, Mr P, who has been in the profession for over thirty years ‘other than the counselling team I do not think that most staff (including admin) actually understand what is happening in the lives of these young people.’

The workload of teachers has increased as the role has evolved and the expectations of our teachers is enormous, with little benefit and even less job satisfaction. Teachers are now expected to work at home to keep up with the demands of the job and this is not just restricted to marking, but also involves parent contact after hours, emailing, planning and reporting.

Teachers today are expected to be accountable for everything they do, which takes incredible amounts of time. L. Murdoch, a principal at a Catholic secondary school, admits that accountability and compliance has put extra loads on teachers that did not exist previously. This is turning teachers into administrators, rather than educators. Constant reporting to different departments, especially in order to gain funding, leaves administrators in schools requiring teachers to collect data, increasing their own workload, without time or financial benefits. It is understandable that accountability is a necessity for the actions of teachers, however, when they are setting aside time for documenting issues, from whether or not a student has the correct socks on to writing curriculum on a period by period basis, so as to make their actions transparent, there just isn’t enough time in the working day and these administrative tasks are taken home.

Wellbeing leader and classroom teacher, Dawn Rodgers, assesses her workload.

Hillary Wallace, a leader in wellbeing, has seen changes in curriculum, leadership and administration, all taking a great toll on the wellbeing of teachers, which leaves little time for, well, teaching.

‘I have to leave those things, like administrative tasks, for when I get home, as there is not enough time in the school day to get them done’ says Wallace, who has been in the teaching profession for over fifteen years. ‘At one time, it was just marking and I would try to use all my time, including recesses and lunches, to do that – this is just not possible anymore, not these days.’

‘We are spending so much time worrying about the little things, trying to keep up with work, dealing with parents, that our kids are getting less and less, which is not what schools should be about,’ says Wallace.

‘The relationship formed between teacher and student is the most important in fostering a positive learning environment. This is being lost with the work load demands being placed on teachers and the perceived need to make teachers accountable. We are now having to spend our time analysing meaningless data to please and placate bureaucrats and politicians,’ says Mr P.

Then there are the meetings. After school, before school and even during school time in ‘free’ periods. The spare periods of teachers, which were designed to be planning and marking time are quite often taken up with meetings, within and without the school. Administrators and faculties often use this time to meet for a purpose that they feel is important. Meetings after school can go until five pm and most teachers, after a long day of work have already switched off. Many are tapping away at their laptops, trying to get work done, so they have less to take home.

‘Some are unnecessary, [and] can be communicated via email’ suggests Patricia Olive, who has been in the system for six years.

Curriculum is another bone of contention in schools, between government bodies and teachers who are actually practicing within the classroom. Curriculum is changing, as it should, but again the ‘experts’ who are trying to keep up with the rest of the world in education, create guidelines and theories about the learning styles of students, which are then dismissed within a couple of years. This again increases the workload of teachers as ‘better and more advanced’ ways of learning are introduced.

‘Too little time is spent covering material or ideas or themes. This is forcing shallow teaching which leads to shallow understanding’, says Mr P, ‘and I look forward to the day when schools rebel and refuse to participate in politically motivated changes to education and tell university academics to butt out of primary and secondary education’.

Olive concurs, stating that curriculum today is ‘overloaded with content [with] not enough time to deliver it.’

The increased use of technology within the classroom, while being extremely useful, can also be distracting and even with the banning of mobile phones in some schools, the existence of devices, such as laptops and iPads leaves teachers with the job of constantly checking of students, who are finding ways to beat the system and using these devices for things other than class work.

‘Technology in the classroom has been implemented badly (not just at my current school),’ notes Mr P. ‘The inclusion of technology has become an end in itself and not a means to achieving better learning outcomes for students’ and ‘all the evidence is that technology has had a detrimental impact but policy makers refuse to admit that they have taken education in the wrong direction.’

Then there are the parents themselves, who arguably run some of these schools. Parent satisfaction is becoming paramount. Teachers are less trusted in the profession and respect for teachers, especially by parents and even some students, is diminishing. School administrators are becoming so afraid of the litigious nature of society and yes, threats of legal action and indeed of the reporting to current affairs shows, are rife.

Parents also require instantaneous feedback and regular consultation. This is corroborated by Murdoch, who suggests that the nature of parental interaction with schools has changed with the introduction of online reporting and technological advances in schools. Parents of today have access to teachers at any time via email and school messaging services and feel that they are entitled to contact teachers at any time, including after hours.

Parents ‘think they can contact and reply to you at all hours and when it suits them… and I have been told how to do my job by a parent on a number of occasions (more so Wellbeing teachers)’, says Olive.

Some parents are just at a loss as to how to raise their kids today and count on teachers for extra help.

‘I had a parent literally crying to me, asking me how she could stop her son using his PlayStation, as he had become violent and suicidal when she threatened to remove it’, says, Wallace, who has had to deal with many a parent in the same boat.

Some of these parents are very supportive and work with the school to improve the wellbeing and indeed the results of their children, yet there are those who find it easier to blame teachers and schools, when those behaviours and results are not to their satisfaction. This can lead to teachers dealing with verbal abuse on a regular basis and there are occasions where this can also become physical.

Student anxiety has also risen in recent years. It seems like most kids of today have some variation of it and left untreated, it can cause chaos. Schools are trying to deal with this problem by employing counsellors and appointing wellbeing leaders, however, other administrative demands, such as paperwork and meetings take precedence over actual student contact.

As noted by Mr P, teachers, who are dealing with these students, day in day out ‘[have] limited, if any, say in decisions that impacts on teachers and students.’

Students are begging for teachers to give of their time, especially those teachers who have an affinity with kids. Unfortunately, it is those teachers who are the most burned out because of their willingness to work with these students.

The rates of mental health issues among children, especially teenagers, have increased to such a degree that counselling teams in schools are overloaded and have begun restricting visits by students due to time constraints. As reported by health.gov.au, ‘the Australian Child and Adolescent Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing, conducted between June 2013 and April 2014 by the Department of Health, estimated that almost 14 per cent of young people aged 4 to 17 years (or 560,000 people) experienced a mental disorder in the 12 months before the survey’.

Beyond Blue has reported that ‘over 75% of mental health problems occur before the age of 25...one in ten young people aged 12-17 years old will self-harm, one in 13 will seriously consider a suicide attempt, and one in 40 will attempt suicide [and] almost one-fifth of all young people, aged 11 to 17 years, experience high or very high levels of psychological distress’.

Murdoch has seen the types of issues of students evolve over time, but bullying remains rife with a large proportion of time being taken up with dealing with it. As Murdoch suggests, bullying is not just restricted to the school, but can take place in the homes of students, which used to be a safe haven, through technological devices and social media platforms. Wellbeing leaders and classroom teachers, as well as administrative staff are then called upon to carry the load, which can also be dangerous as they are not qualified for help of that kind.

A psychologist, who works full time at a secondary school, James Barnes, outlines some of the concerns stating that ‘the most common presentations I’m engaging with currently would be anxiety, poor emotional regulation, stress regarding schoolwork, high expectations of own self and parents, parent separation (increasing amount of chaotic separations), depressive symptoms and self-harm.’

Most of these issues are not even school related. So, why then, are schools being asked to take the load? Are parents being let off the hook and allowing schools to deal with all the problems of their children?

Student stress also occurs with the introduction of exams, tests and the dreaded NAPLAN. NAPLAN has been an issue with teachers since its inception as teachers are aware of the stresses on students.

Mr P dismisses the process as ‘useless, a waste of time, resources and energy.’

Teachers, and indeed parents, prepare for these issues when they occur and teachers are aware of how students handle these standardised tests, especially when they are faced with students who show up at their offices, or even while they are teaching a class, in a panic. Parents are quick to relate to the school how their kids are reacting, and again, the onus falls on the school. The process of NAPLAN is time consuming, with methodologies and content being taught in the classroom, which renders it somewhat useless. And time, again, is taken away from the curriculum.

‘Nobodies academic capabilities should be determined with the use of standardised testing,’ states Alexis Panners, a youth worker, who is now completing her Masters in Teaching. ‘A strengths-based approach is not being considered at all with the use of these specific tests and this pigeon holes students at a young age and only sooner do students hit a wall and feel discouraged in their learning when tests are telling them their worth. Tests such as this only assist in early onset anxiety and lack of motivation.’

Older, more experienced teachers feel like they are being weaned out and believe that the staff room is a representation of the school yard. Cliques and butt kissers are rampant, with administration favouring innovation and change over experience and age.

‘I don’t necessarily think that students respond to teachers because of their age. If that were the case, I would have been ineffective years ago and here I am lamenting the loss of my students, because I have had to cut down on my work hours’, says Wallace, who prefers talking and chatting with students, even those she doesn’t teach, to conversing with her colleagues in the staffroom.

‘I just look around and see people competing for one thing or another, whether it be popularity, positions within the school, whatever. I sometimes just watch and listen and wonder how these adults behave more like the students we teach than the kids themselves. And yes, staff bullying is rife too. Baffling, considering it is something we are constantly dealing with in the classroom every day,’ says Wallace.

Mr P agrees. ‘The politics involved in the education system, ironically enough, are not from that of the students themselves but from partnerships with other educators.’

So why do teachers stay, or even begin teaching, knowing what they are in for?

‘Making a difference.’ It is that simple phrase that has been quoted by all sources in some form or another. As humans, we want to believe that what we impart, in our teaching, in our behaviour as role models can be lasting and we leave our legacy through the children we teach.

‘Seeing the difference I have made in a child's day. Seeing the lightbulb moment when you can see they have understood a difficult concept. Having a great working relationship with my students', says Olive, of why she continues in what she calls a mostly thankless job.

‘When a student sends you an email or gives you a card at the end of the year and tells you that you have had an impact on their lives in some way, when a bunch of students crowd around you to chat while you are doing yard duty, when a parent breaks into tears when you tell them you’re leaving, that’s the satisfaction, that’s the reward. Does it balance out all that you have to do to get that? I don’t know, but I’m still here’, says Wallace, who has now quit teaching full time and works as a substitute teacher.

Barnes also discusses the satisfaction that he can receive within the school environment. ‘The positive experiences for me are too many to mention specifically however what they have in common is a young person presenting in distress due to things they often can’t control, we will then work together consistently for a number of weeks, developing coping strategies, promoting resilience and eventually the young person feels better able to manage/sit with the distress and no longer requires my specific support.’

‘Working with disadvantaged young people has led me to realising that I want to work with young people in the education system, disadvantaged and not alike’, says Panners. ‘Also watching my mother be an amazing teacher and how the students responded to her teaching and her purposeful connection with students inspired me to build positive and impactful relationships with students to enhance their desire for knowledge and education.’

So, what is the solution? How are schools going to address these problems? Do they even acknowledge that there are problems? Basically, it comes down to money. Resources need capital and funding is limited, especially in Catholic and public schools. Wallace, who has worked in both has seen the difference in resources from one school to the other and has found that a lack of resources, including human resources have had an impact on ‘burnout’.

‘And yet, we stay’, says Wallace. ‘I often revert to that oft quoted phrase by Maya Angelou, “a student may forget what you taught them, but they will never forget how you made them feel” – that’s why I will stay.’

Murdoch attributes the stick-ability of staff, even those who are stressed and burnt out, to wanting to ‘make a difference’. As a principal who has welcomed many a staff member to vent in his office, he has seen teachers leave the profession only to return as they have seen the difference they can make.

‘This is what drives them’ he says, ‘making a positive difference, ‘seeing kids learn, develop and achieve.’

Note: Some of the names in this article have been changed upon request.