Teacher Well-Being in Today's Educational Environment
For a complete video transcript and references see below:
My presentation is the teaching landslide.
The reading I’ve done made me think about the Landslide song from Stevie Nicks. And as I went
through the different materials from Ginley’s Voices from the Field and from the Loewus Ed week
article, certain lyrics popped in my head throughout the time and it kind of seemed appropriate while I
was reading.A little bit about me, I‘ve worked in technology HR and Behavioral Healthcare technology and I felt like I
had climbed up that mountain. And every time I turned around, especially when I was working in Chicago and Philadelphia, we were working in public schools that had classrooms that had behavioral specialists and I just wanted to be in the school. I always wanted to be a teacher. And every time I went to one of the classrooms, I just, it just, kept that fire burning inside me. So this is now my eighth year teaching. I taught in a voucher School in Wisconsin that was in between Milwaukee and Chicago and I teach now is Southeastern Georgia West of Brunswick right by the Okefenokee Swamp. I've taught gifted kindergarten, first grade, fourth grade, inclusive, just Ela sometimes, in person, digital distance, using paper packets, which is its own challenge. And also I've been ELA chair and grade-level chair for a few years.
Now, the ocean constantly changes and over the five years that teachers teach the some of them
do lose their passion. Why? Because of the low earning the working conditions, the lack of mentoring
collaboration. That was something that really resonated with me, discipline issues, lack of support,
respecting the resources, the pressure of these high-stakes testing that we do plus all the data
collection, and then there's a developmentally inappropriate expectations that are tested on the
high-stakes testing.
This is a picture from our opening session pep rally that we had in July and we had a Wordle based
upon a survey that we have taken while we were there in the audience. There's a thousand staff from bus
drivers to teachers to admin to kitchen staff and our presenter was saying, “look at how excited everyone
is!” and the murmur in the audience was pointing out that we are worried and cautious that we are
overwhelmed. That we are challenged. We are scared. We are scared to death. We are apprehensive
and exhausted. We have anxiety. We're concerned. We have all these other feelings and they're just not
being addressed, and it's overwhelming, yet still a little exciting because it's what we love to do, but
there's so many other underlying emotions there, too.
So why do we stay? Well, you know, time does make you bolder, you have a love of the field that
you're not willing to give up and you see the progress being made. Some of it is so helpful when you
have good, collaborating and wonderful, professional development and when you can get that support
within your school from the parents, from the community, that's why we stay.
So why do I personally stay? You know, last year is, this is my bitmoji classroom for when I was digital
and, you know, as challenging as everything was last year. I love and I understand my students and year
after year that's why I stay; it’s for the students. I love them so much and I can see that. I am actually
helping not just in the data but also in them as people and I'm inspired by unicorns, unicorns of
professional development like Annette Breaux and Ron Clark, being able to meet them and to be
inspired by them and for them to still make themselves available even after the sessions over and to
answer questions and to continue inspiring is just something that keeps me wanting to stay.
So, what threatens our passion? Well, you know as much as you build your whole life around
teaching, sometimes there's that threat and you might succumb to it and want to quit, there is politics within the school outside the school, the school board, the state, the federal Politics, the changing
climate of teaching be at the digital situation, or even just this testing that we have to deal with and all of the stress. It's such an incredibly stressful career. These are all my references that I used, and it was a pleasure of presenting to you.
References
Ginley, Mary. “Chapter 2.” Why We Teach Now, edited by Sonia Nieto, Teachers College Press, 2015, pp. 23–35.
Landslide [CD]. (n.d.). 1975. Stevie Nicks.
Laureate, Inc. (2019f). Voices from the field: Learning environments and changing students. [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Loewus, L. (2021, June 04). Why Teachers Leave-or Don't: A Look at the Numbers. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/why-teachers-leave-or-dont-a-look-at-the-numbers/2021/05
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