Our Teachers Are Afraid

Florida has long been a less-than-ideal place for teachers.  In fact, our teachers are some of the lowest-paid in the nation, yet they operate under some of the strictest scrutiny.  Micromanagement is an epidemic at every level of educational administration at the school, county, and state levels.  Gone are the days when teachers were made to feel as though they do an important job by educating our future generations.  These days, teachers are asked to do more and more with less and less and for smaller and smaller compensation.

This school year, the median salary for 10-month teachers in Escambia County is $40,187 (step 13 of 26 steps).  That may not sound so bad, but when you do the math, it gets worse.  Teachers in this county, on average, work 7½ hours per day at school.  While their contract guarantees them a duty-free lunch, high school teachers are the only ones who get that "perk" on any regular basis, meaning that they are on the clock for that 7½ hours each day.  Based on my own observation, I would say that it's not at all unusual for a teacher to spend 2 hours per night at home (or staying late at work) grading papers on weekdays and another 4-6 hours over the weekend.

$40,187 annually for a Step 13 teacher (32.825 on step 1 or 51.986 on step 26) (link) works out to a miserable pittance, once you take into account the hours that teachers spent "working" on their own time (working lunches, grading papers, and writing plans at home) during the school year and over the summer.  That is less than the average McDonald's employee (link)!  And those are the figures for a Step 13, veteran teacher!  Add to this the fact that teacher's pay is spread over 12 months, for most, instead of just the 10 months during the school year and you can plainly see that our teachers are being hugely underserved by the system that could not operate without them!

In addition to the low pay, most teachers spend their own money on work.  Teachers at several schools I know of each received a $100 budget this year to be spent on classroom and office supplies.  Teachers and aides also each qualify for up to a $250 tax credit on their annual income taxes.  Ask a teacher how much they spent last year on their classroom and work-related supplies.  It's very probable the number will tally far higher than $350.

And this is how our governmental system shows its appreciation for educators!

While the pay isn't going up, the school days aren't getting longer, and far too many parents are less and less active in their childrens' educations, teachers are also having new duties piled into their workloads at an alarming rate.  In elementary and middle schools, we are preparing every single student to go to college, even while most every educator knows that not everyone can or should go to college.  We are ignoring the needs of the nation's future by insisting that every student is able to learn the same material, in the same way, in the same amount of time, to the same level of proficiency.  This is simply not the case, and any rational person should be able to see that.

Science teachers must also teach writing and math skills in their classes.  Math teachers must also teach reading and science skills.  History teachers must also teach sociology and writing and science.  In the meantime, however, students are arriving at middle school without knowing how to form letters and write legibly, or without knowing how to sounds out words phonetically.  They can't use a dictionary, they can't read, they can't tell time on an analog clock.  Yet, even these students who can barely read must learn to execute a perfect 5-paragraph essay in under 45 minutes.

Every week there's a new "strategy" teachers are mandated to start using in the classroom to help their students engage.  Each new added strategy stacks unto the tops of the previous methods, until we are spending more time teaching the students how to learn than we spend actually teaching them information!  But still they pile on more.

And through all of these additions, through the micromanagement and the scrutiny, teachers have become afraid.

Our teachers are afraid.

Teachers are afraid, at workshops, training, and faculty meetings, to share their methods and techniques, for fear that they will be told they are doing something wrong.

Teachers are afraid of the constant change, knowing that most students thrive on consistency, and knowing that the failing grades—brought about in part because of the constant upheaval—will be blamed on them.

Teachers are afraid to openly disagree with administrators, knowing that in today's economy there is always someone younger and newer who wants a job desperately enough to put up with anything.

Teachers are afraid to say that their experiences with these learning "strategies"—like Kagan, Abstracting, Guided Discovery, Predict/Check/Connect, and many many others—are that they bring more distraction and inconsistency into the classroom than useful order or effective learning.

Teachers are afraid before nearly every parent/teacher conference, hoping against hope that the parents will be reasonable instead of making excuses for their lazy, unmotivated children and praying that the parents of the non-genius kids are aware of their childrens' struggles.  Teachers are constantly met by parents who accuse a them of being responsible for every shortfall of every child.

Teachers are afraid of the people busy climbing the administrative ladder, afraid that they will be trampled in another person's race to the top.

Teachers are afraid to communicate, in some places even among their fellow faculty members, for fear that they will confide their own shortcomings in the wrong person and that all will be dutifully and maliciously reports up the chain of command in an effort to garner the approval of the higher-ups.  In some schools, the walls are growing ears, and teachers are growing justifiably paranoid.

Teachers are afraid of "the test," knowing that very few people can accurately be measured by such rigid, inflexible standards.

In an overcompensating measure to "save" a few failing schools and students, we have actually set up all schools to flounder, to scrape by with too many regulations and far too few resources.

Morale is beyond down, Beyond low...it is gone.

I have started to believe that people have figured out that I'm a "safe" person to talk to.  I won't run to administration with every piece of potentially-juicy morsel gossip I hear.  I have had conversations this year with several of my coworkers and other teacher friends who are demoralized, who are working harder than ever and still seeing falling scores on tests and quizzes.  And it's not just teachers at my school who have shared these types of concerns with me.

I could name (but won't) nearly a dozen good, dedicated teachers who have recently given serious thought to leaving the profession rather than continuing to operate under the omnipresent stress that has come to permeate every fact of their professional lives.

I can't say that I know of a definite solution to this problem.  I do, however, know of a number of factors that might begin to bring about some positive change.

• All teachers deserve a fair, competitive, living wage.  These are college-educated people responsible for passing on their knowledge to our children.  They should be getting paid more than people doing jobs that require essentially no education.
• Teachers need to know that they have the support of their administration.  They shouldn't feel as if they are pitted against their administrators in an "us vs. them" scenario.  In some places and situations, teachers are lucky enough to know that their administrators will support them.  In other places, teachers are less blessed.
• Teachers need to be afforded a certain amount of trust, as professionals, eliminating the constant perceived "need" for micromanagement from above.
• Faculty meetings, workshops, and training sessions should become judgment-free meetings of minds, where teachers are free to openly share their experiences with one another, and where every opinion is valued for its intent.  There may be any number of "wrong" ways to teach, but there are so so so many more right ways!
• There should be a way for parents to be held at least partially accountable for their children's commitment to education.  When I got bad grades in school, my parents never placed the blame on my teachers!  They knew, and they made sure that I knew, that my academic shortcomings were almost always the direct result of my lack of care and attention to my studies.
• Students should be taught as much as they are actually able to learn.  Those students who have a genuine ability to learn advanced subjects should be taught those subjects, and those with genuine disability should not.  I don't mean this as a discriminatory measure, but a realistic one.  We all know that not all adults have the same abilities and talents, so it is unrealistic to expect that our children to be any more uniform a population than adults.
• Politicians, and society in general, need to realize that not all students are college-bound.  Additionally, our non-college-bound students would be far better served if we gave them more opportunities for practical vocational training.  Current high school students must take and pass Algebra, Geometry, and Chemistry or Physics to graduate.  I say that's ridiculous.  While these are certainly worthy subjects of study, I'd say it's fair to assume that the majority of people don't use that sort of knowledge on any regular basis.
• We have to stop being afraid to let students be retained when they need it.  I have a student right now who cannot read, who even has trouble spelling his/her* own name.  Why is this student in middle school?  I honestly don't know.

I say again, Our teachers are afraid, for the reasons I have listed here and for numerous others that I will not mention because I refuse to list any identifying workplace details of my teacher friends, either those who are local or the ones scattered to other parts of the country.

I fear that we are approaching a boiling point in our nation's educational system.  It's like working in a pressure cooker, going to work every day to do my job and try to remain in neutral territory, waiting for the top to be blown off.  I guess it's not just the teachers.  I'm afraid, too.

[*Gender intentionally nonspecific for student's privacy.]

It should be noted that I am among those lucky school employees who enjoys a good working relationship with my administrators.  This post does not voice the specific opinions of anyone but myself, and is based on largely anecdotal accounts told to me by teacher friends who work in schools both local to me and spread around the country.  This post contains no information individually identifying any person with any school-related or education-related profession.

Attention: Anonymous posting of comments is enabled.  Those wishing to comment, but fearing a negative backlash from their workplace, may post anonymously by selecting that option from the pull-down in the comment form.