Let Teachers Teach!
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Gerry Brooks is a well-known educator advocate for both teachers and administrators. Right before winter break, The Principal Center shared Brooks’ video about teacher stress in their blog post, “First Order vs. Meta-Work: It’s Time to Scale Back to Keep Teachers from Quitting.”
Additionally, Maricopa County School Superintendent, Steve Watson, sent a Teacher Stress Survey to 35,000 Maricopa County teachers in October and November 2021. Here are some results from the approximately 2500 respondents.
96% experience stress at work.
75% said anxiety is their top stress symptom.
80% have “severe” and “extreme” levels of stress.
29% feel their school leadership is mitigating their stress.
What can school and district leaders do to support teachers and address these challenging conditions? Gerry Brooks and The Principal Center offer suggestions that boil down to one simple message: let teachers teach, which includes planning, grading, taking attendance, family communication, and supervision duty.
“Everything else” can wait. Consider the number of meetings teachers are asked to attend in a week. Are there tasks and activities that can wait that will allow them to focus first and foremost on their own effective classroom instruction?
Moreover, your stress of ensuring “everything else” is completed is reduced, leaving you more time to visit classrooms to support both teachers and students.
We invite you to read the entire blog post, “First Order vs. Meta-Work: It’s Time to Scale Back to Keep Teachers from Quitting” to learn more.
Finally, on January 20, 2022, Superintendent Watson will hold a Town Hall with district superintendents, governing board members, and charter leaders to discuss how to mitigate teacher stress. We hope you will be part of the conversation on this pressing issue. You may register here.