But I also considered whether my grueling schedule was the only way to be a good teacher. The other is to more efficiently use the resources that are already available.Īs the expectations of teachers have risen, can anyone really claim that school systems have done either? Is Teacher Burnout Avoidable?īack when I started to feel burned-out, I actually considered leaving the profession. One way is to increase available resources (time, staff, money, technology, etc). In essence, there are only two ways to improve outcomes. But we can’t just ask educators to do these things in addition to everything they were already doing. And they do improve the student experience. We are expected to meet each student’s unique academic and social-emotional needs. But it wasn’t a requirement of the job.įor today’s teachers, the bar has risen. Of course, there were many great teachers who inspired and connected with their students. In a traditional classroom, a teacher was expected to play two roles: present content, and determine who had learned it. There is a simple reason why teacher workloads have become so overwhelming: we expect more from teachers than we used to.Īnd while the mandates have increased, little has changed in terms of the support and resources we provide teachers. When Did The Teacher Workload Get So Heavy? Even medium-sized districts, this can add up to millions of tax dollars per year. Urban districts spend an average of $20,000 to onboard each new hire. This means more students learning from novice teachers. Roughly one-third of educators leave the classroom after one year. These high levels of stress also contribute to teacher turnover. Research shows that when teachers don’t have time to plan properly, or are too stressed to be their best, children suffer. Another study found that 78% of teachers feel they don’t have enough planning time to properly address Common Core standards.Īlmost half of teachers report stress levels high enough to interfere with their health, their sleep, and the quality of their work.Īside from concern over teachers themselves, teacher workload presents a problem for our entire education system. Why Teacher Workload MattersĪnyone who cares about education should be concerned with teacher workload.Īccording to Primary Sources (a study conducted by Scholastic and the Gates Foundation), the average teacher works 53 hours a week. All while taking care of your own children, and fielding help requests from parents and students, 24 hours-a-day, 7 days-a-week. Redesign the learning experience overnight. Today, teachers are being asked to do even more. Keep in mind, all of this was before COVID-19 and online learning. I knew I couldn’t keep up this pace for an entire career. Then, I can relax.” But deep down, I knew I was already behind on the next one.īut even before my first decade in the classroom, I was starting to burn out. I kept telling myself, “I just have to meet this one deadline. There was always a big pile of paperwork and a looming deadline. Once I pulled an all-nighter so I could get my grades in on time. I guess I’d just come to accept that a never-ending teacher workload was part of the job. For the first 5 or 6 years of my teaching career, I worked all the time.
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