When Molly Lane was a social worker at school, walking through the hall with her colleagues sometimes ended up with improvisational therapy sessions.
She says it has become clear that the school system is not doing enough to support teachers’ mental health. These experiences have led her to open and guide the teacher’s story, a therapy practice that caters to the needs of educators.
“People sometimes say, ‘Teachers take away the summer and they have better working hours, so it has to be very easy,” Lane says. “Teachers are either spending more time outside of contracted working hours or doing extra things to make sure students are engaged and feel truly supported, and there is a lot of catch-up happening. [student] Academic skills and socially emotional work, and being back after the pandemic is a big deal. ”
That’s why it makes sense that in recent polls on workplace satisfaction, teachers reported that they were happy at work, even though they felt different levels of burnout. However, she says the energy that supports students’ mental health has not been expanded to teachers.
“A more holistic approach to teacher support and [working] Together we can help ease some of that together to create a more sustainable workplace,” she says. Unfortunately, there is still a stigma to talking about mental health care in general, so it can be difficult for them to ask for help when they feel they should be helpers. ”
Edsurge reached out to the experts and learned that these two seemingly contradictory feelings, that they are satisfied with their work while the teachers are generally worn out – at the same time, true.
Filled and crazy
Katherine Storn, dean of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, was not surprised by the findings of the study on teachers’ emotions and workloads towards the workplace.
“You can see contradictory places on your face,” she says.
The report found that teachers who are satisfied with their workload and pay are more likely to be part of a group that is satisfied with their overall job, but not the most important factor for workplace well-being.
“Although it is important to the employee’s experience, both workloads and gross wages have less impact on teacher engagement than whether they feel that their work gives them the opportunity to do their best every day,” the researchers wrote.
Strunk says 5% of teachers who say they won’t return to education in the fall are normal, while 13% say they’re still undecided.
“Part of that may be ambiguity in the question. This is when we see Esseldor running out,” she says of the fall of 2024 when the data was collected. “This was before the election, but we were still worried about a lot of things about the fiscal cliffs that the district might be facing.
Also, black teachers were more likely to say they were leaving the profession, Strunk could be a function of where they are employed, Strunk said.
“We usually see black teachers overrepresented in charter schools, especially urban areas. [which] “Teachers are much more churn,” she says. “I know that black teachers are often more likely to teach in urban and poor neighborhoods.
Mental health connections
Lane says that it’s hard to generalize why teachers seek treatment, but many of her clients know they’re burning out and can help set boundaries and “do the work they love without putting too much strain on them.”
“They feel tension from their parents and their families, and a lot of tension from the administration and all the systematic parts,” Lane says.
It was not surprising that the data showed that teachers frequently worked outside contract hours. For many teachers, she says the job goes beyond tasks related to their lesson plans.
“They want to be sure [their students] They are not only their teachers, but now they are additional support for therapists or all these different works, supporting students who come into the building. I think that definitely puts a lot of weight on the teacher’s mind. ”
Strunk was intrigued by the companion report of the research on Gen Zers, particularly the findings on what students said.
“While middle and high school students consistently share that classroom experiences are often interesting, important or unmotivated, when academics are engaging, it’s often because teachers do it,” the researcher said.
For Strunk, it demonstrates the need to make things that are more efficient when teachers move away from working on classroom planning. One of the technologies discussed provides potential solutions. It’s artificial intelligence.
“This is actually something we should think about when we think about how AI will change education,” Strunk says. “AI can do some memorization things, but my feeling is that there are really very high quality teachers who shake up students through this technological change, and in an exciting and engaging way, not only will it just bore 16 different issues equally, but also increase the need to have very high quality teachers.”
