What Teachers Really Want
By: Cindy Shapiro
Tags: Learning, Teaching, Schools, Education, Teachers

It all started with a simple question: “Teacher friends, if your school were to offer to take something off your plate to help you with your workload, what would you choose?”

In just a few days since I posted this question on a handful of teacher-focused pages on Facebook, over 200 educators from the state and Colorado and around the country responded, not to mention the hundreds of “likes” for various answers.

And teachers’ requests were highly similar.

Photo by Valentin Petkov on Unsplash

During the holiday season, some teachers are given recognition with a small gift, a token of appreciation. Every teacher I know loves being recognized for their efforts — whether it is a heartfelt bit of praise from a student or a Starbucks card from a parent. But this year, teachers don’t want gifts, so much. What they really want is less, not more. They want their leaders to stop telling them: “Take care of yourselves” when there’s no action behind it. What they really want is a reasonable workload.

Let’s face it: teaching has always been a demanding job. It requires managing young people (the idea of which strikes fear in the hearts of many, or is likened at times to herding cats). It requires developing lessons using preordained state and national standards. It requires creativity, personality, flexibility, and time. A whole lot of time. Because for the vast majority of teachers, when they are in front of students, whether in person or online, they still have a pile of grading waiting for them, paperwork to fill out, meetings to attend, lessons to create, and phone calls to make. And that’s in a normal year.

This year has been anything but normal, and the workload has ballooned to two to three times its normal size, which, judging by the number of young teachers who leave the career each year in disgust, flocking to other higher-paying careers that have more sensible demands on personal time and energy, was already out of hand.

Teaching this year can feel like working two to three jobs for most classroom teachers. Many teachers responded that they wish they only taught in one way, whether it be in person, hybrid, or remote — and many currently juggle at least two of the three. One teacher wrote, “Having to teach online to students at home while simultaneously teaching students in my classroom [is what I’d like removed].” For those who cannot picture what this might look like, imagine trying to work from home and you’re on a Zoom meeting with colleagues. Suddenly, your child begins torturing the dog or wanting to make her own breakfast with every ingredient in your pantry or demands your attention in some other way — maybe he just needs help with a math problem. What do you do? Do you continue on with your Zoom meeting, or do you rush to address the need of the person in front of you and then try to return to your meeting, zigzagging around your house trying to accommodate all but satisfying none? This is the dilemma of today’s teachers during the midst of a pandemic. Over 25 teachers “liked” this idea of teaching in one mode, whether it be hybrid, face-to-face, or entirely online rather than managing two to three at once.

Another popular idea was taking parent contact off of teachers’ plates. Now, parents, this doesn’t mean that teachers don’t like you or don’t care to talk to you about your student. But for the average teacher, whose planning time is contractually 50 minutes per day, and even for the lucky few who get an hour and a half each day, the demands of teaching this year require that materials be offered differently, and many teachers wind up revamping or creating digital lessons for students to accommodate various learning modes and students’ needs. Add in staff meetings, IEP meetings, PLC meetings, MTSS meetings (I won’t go into what each acronym means; it would make your head spin), and you have already carved away a solid chunk of valuable planning and personal time. You might ask, well, can a teacher use her lunch time? It is true that she can’t meet with colleagues any more to eat face-to-face. But the reality is that many in-person teachers at the elementary level and middle school level no longer have a respite of a quiet, uninterrupted 30-minute lunch during which to reply to emails — now, most teachers eat with their students in front of them, as cafeteria spaces are closed. And there are some teachers who chimed in that they would just like to have a regular planning period each day. That’s right. There are some teachers with zero planning time built into their schedules on a daily basis.

But I digress.

Parent contact this year is a whole other beast — rather than contacting the few students who are failing, teachers now have to contact parents of students who don’t show up online — and we all know based on recent findings, that many students, particularly older students, are opting out of attending their online classes, much to the dismay of their teachers. According to The Boston Globe, “School districts from coast to coast have reported the number of students failing classes has risen by as many as two or three times — with English language learners and disabled and disadvantaged students suffering the most.” In addition, there might be students who show up, but they may not turn all of their work in. One teacher from Colorado said she would like to remove “constant outreach to students about missing work. [It] takes like 30% of my work time.” At my rough count of “likes,” 107 teachers liked this idea about removing parent contact from teachers’ plates, but it’s not as though they want it to disappear.

One teacher posed a solution: “One thing that my school does that I love, love, love is we have a student support form. If a student is not showing up, not doing work, or is struggling with anything emotionally, socially, or academically, we email the family but then we put it all on this form.” She teaches at a private school in Texas, and it seems their system is working well. The teacher submits a Google Form on the behalf of a struggling student, and the administrative team takes it from there. She added, “[Administration] follow[s] up with the family, get help if needed, have the tough conversations, etc. After my first email to the family, I don’t have to worry about it, and I am assured that kids won’t fall through the cracks.” Problem solved. But then we have to wonder — what could be removed from administrator’s duties to allow for more time in their hectic schedules? It’s not as though they’re sitting around eating gift boxes of bonbons, either.

It’s easy: remove the teacher evaluation process this year.

The evaluation process is a time-sucking, rarely growth-producing, sometimes hurtful, going-through-the-motions laborious exercise. (Trust me, I have another article forthcoming just on the topic of evaluations and how to make it work better for all involved.) This year, when so many teachers are learning how to make this work and experimenting on a daily basis, it would be best to toss the whole process and save everyone the time. Eliminating evaluations this year came up on nearly every teacher page where I posted my question. On one page, the idea received 11 “likes.” We need to step away from this age of constant accountability for teachers, and instead provide supports that teachers actually want — but that doesn’t mean hit them up with more professional development.

Speaking of accountability, teachers have George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” mandates to thank for the era of standardized testing we live in. My own children have already undergone MAP testing twice this year alone — and that’s during a pandemic. There has been no indication yet this year that the Colorado Measures of Academic Success test (otherwise known as CMAS — another acronym) will be called off. Personally, it was during proctoring these three-day long tests each year with my students that gave me time to ponder my other career options as I actively proctored, wandering up and down the aisles to prevent students from doodling or sleeping during the 120 minute-long intervals of the assessment.

I have heard the following truism many times, in a few different states and schools I’ve taught in: They’re setting us up to fail.

My husband even heard a teacher yelling it as the man ran down the hallway of a high school he taught at many years ago. The teacher ran past him, yelling, as he clutched test preparation booklets in his hands — the teacher was convinced that the state government was out to get teachers and schools and shift to a charter-based system to lower teacher pay and increase inroads for businesses to run schools and make a profit (hello, Florida, I’m looking at you). And this year, with so many troubles going on in American families, what will likely be the outcome of any statewide or national testing? It will show what we all already know: gaps in student learning are growing, with students from affluent families remaining mostly static and children who are growing up in poverty and other hardships falling behind. Testing shows the inequity in our system, time and time again. When will we learn that we need to shift the money away from the mandated testing that costs millions of dollars to other places, such as materials for students, teacher salaries, and perhaps — improved air filtration and PPE for educators who are in person?

Removing standardized testing this year, a year when so many districts around the country are cash-strapped and teetering on the brink of financial disaster while students and teachers are stressed to the max, is only common sense.

Something that makes no sense at all is when teachers are forced to attend pedagogical trainings provided by those who are not in a classroom this year. Professional development (widely known by the acronym PD) is too often a one-size fits all topic with a sit-and-get approach. Anyone who follows any kind of current research in the field of education knows that passive learning doesn’t work for hardly anyone, adults included, especially not when the sitting lasts for over 20 minutes. And still, for teachers’ professional learning, this model persists. One teacher shared that the PD she has experienced is district-mandated, led by people who have been out of the classroom for 20-plus years, if they’ve ever been in a classroom at all. 18 teachers “liked” her response. If I were in a classroom this year, I’m sure I’d be raising my hand and “liking” this one, too — I’ve experienced this debacle nearly every year out of the 15 I’ve been a teacher. Another teacher said she would love to eliminate PD and the PD homework — yes, teachers often get homework, too, on top of their classroom duties and pile of work. And in Colorado, many elementary and middle school teachers are facing a new requirement, added just last year, with a deadline of January 31, 2022: 45 hours of additional literacy training. On their own dime. Merry Christmas.

PD is just one of a plethora of meetings teachers must attend. The much-loved show The Office satirizes the concept of the meeting, and yet many office-dwellers would be surprised to learn of the worthless barrage of meetings that are found in school settings, too. Eliminating or reducing meetings came up on every teacher page where my question appeared — in fact, a teacher who responded with a request to let go of “irrelevant meetings” got 16 “likes.” A personal teacher-friend of mine responded, “Besides the obvious risks of death,” she would like to “eliminate excessive meetings that do not add value to what we do.” We all know that the meetings that Michael called on The Office were a way to justify his job — in the education world, with so much to do, it seems as though rather than holding a meeting, the information could be conveyed in an email, in most cases. And no one would really miss them this year.

A few other notable things that teachers would be glad to hand back to Santa: student loans. Extra supervisory duties outside of the classroom. Covering other teachers’ classrooms when they are sick because there is an utter lack of willing substitutes this year. And of course, as a former colleague of mine said, “risk of death.”

As parents and community members, we must remember that what we see is but a tiny fraction of what teachers actually do. Teaching was already an exhausting year before 2020; now, it has grown like the Hulk. One parent who was on a teacher page said this, after reading the multitude of wishes for things to be removed from teachers’ plates:

“Reading this just breaks my heart for all teachers. You guys are all working so hard for your students and families to the point of exhaustion. You are essential workers and need to be treated as such. I hope you can finally be heard…

“Wishing each and every one of you a relaxing Winter Break, even though I imagine you all will be working during parts of it bc that is the life of a teacher.”

If only all of us parents could show a little more empathy for what teachers do.

If we continue to pile things on teachers’ plates without removing anything we will burn out a valuable, essential workforce. Many teachers are already there, applying for retirement or leaving the profession to find something else to do. I’ve witnessed it firsthand, since I began my career in 2001 in a high school English classroom in Davie, Florida: more is given, nothing is taken away. And the list of must-dos in 2020 has exploded. A retired teacher I worked with a few years back had this to say on the whole situation: “It seems to me that we have effectively greatly reduced teacher salaries [over the years] while increasing their overall workload. If we cannot pay teachers more, we MUST offer greater work/life balance.”

Administrators, district leaders, politicians — here’s your list of things you can remove. Now it’s your turn to get to work.

Cindy Shapiro has been a teacher since 2001, with 17 years of experience in the classroom. This year, she took a year leave of absence from her classroom teaching position to stay home and supervise her own kids who are engaging in remote learning. Her book, For the Love of (Remote) Teaching is available on Amazon for Kindle.