Changing Nature of Pupil / Teacher Contact & Burnout

Changing Nature of Pupil / Teacher Contact & Burnout

These days, there have been so many different ways in which the issue of teacher burnout has been covered in the professional and popular press.  It was written in the cards that the opening and closing of schools, the sometimes online and sometimes in person nature of instruction, the need for hand washing and social distancing and mask wearing would all become burdens to be borne by the professional educators in our society.  That alone is enough for some teachers to complain about burn-out. However, what no one was bargaining on and few knew to expect was the issue of time on task per student in the act of teaching either online or in the classroom.  The old industrial model of students all being in one class and benefitting from lessons delivered by the teacher at the front cut down on the amount of time each single teacher needed to spend on instruction.  A professional educator would then spend the rest of the time helping those who needed it the most and leaving the best students to do what they had to do without much intervention.  Now, however, the whole idea of age mates being in one classroom and benefitting from whole class instruction has gone out the window.  I just read a brief note about the problem of the numbers of students who are out of step with the assumed ability and knowledge level of any particular class or grade.  That is further proof that what is required today is individualized teaching.  This is only compounded by the need to be online where time-on-task is only increased for the teacher.  When I've talked about this with others, I have commiserated but pointed out that I knew exactly what all this teaching online was going to demand of my colleagues.  I used to drive to Toronto to teach my students at Niagara and then teach and work with them on their skills and knowledge then drive all the way home (a total trip time there and back of almost 5 hours) and only then go online and answer e-mails from my students and read their postings online in the various discussion threads that I had created.  Of course, I didn't need to do that much work.  I didn't need to make my students do anything online.  No one else did. But I told my students that during the lifetime of their career, they were going to need to be able to teach online and that they had better have some idea of what it was all about. I hope that they think of me now when they are working online and realizing that I was wise, yes very wise, to make sure they knew what to do.  Most of my students would be fewer than 12 years into their careers, assuming that they got jobs.  So now, many of them are having to work online with their students, just as I told them they would have to.  This significantly increases their workload but it also makes the learning process, the pupil-teacher ratio of time on task better for learning.  I feel badly for those who were not prepared for what they were going to have to do, but the future is now and it is best these teachers either learn how to do what they have to do for the benefit of their students or they just leave the profession.  It does get easier and now they can visit with their students individually or coach them online instead of everything having to be written so the teaching / learning interactions will only be more productive. Welcome to the real reformation of education in the 21st Century.