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Why Teachers Think About Quitting
Yesterday was the first day of school and I thought about quitting for most of it. Mostly I’m just relieved it’s Saturday today.
I work at a small independent Catholic school. Our admin decided that we would reopen for in-person instruction (which is clearly preferable to remote for all the obvious reasons), but offer a remote option to students who preferred to stay home — “hybrid” instruction. Leave it to admin to give it a name that makes it sound like it’s a perfected model. Herein lies the problem. Our school’s remote experience last spring worked pretty well mostly because everyone was remote at the same time so there was no balancing act required, at least for school.
Admin has now promised too much. There are parents who apparently threatened to withdraw their children from the school if they did not get remote instruction, and there were parents that threatened to withdraw if they did not get in-person instruction. So the school guaranteed both and promised that the teachers could handle it without asking our input (I get that teachers don’t make policy but we do offer constructive advice).
We were switched to Microsoft Teams for our video format, and on Wednesday there was a rushed 15-minute presentation on how to use the OWL cameras, $1,000 devices that were installed in certain classrooms that plug into our laptops with huge, hoselike cords that allow the remote students to see the class. The first day of school was Friday and there were still frantic discussions among teachers about whether we needed to plug in the HDMI cable with the USB cable for the OWLs to work properly, frequent audio problems, whether we needed to call the remote students on Teams to start the class or whether they would dial in first…In short, for a first day none of us felt competent and focused on the actual work of teaching because of the technology weighing on us.
On Friday I had 3 different classes and in each class, I had different numbers of remote students. In my first class, a student installed the Teams app on her phone so we were able to escape the suffocating heat of my un-air-conditioned classroom and go sit outside in the shade. In my second class, I wasn’t sure if the student from Saudi Arabia (there are also many students from China at the school- none of the internationals could get visas to come back this fall) was joining us or not and then there were another two students who were joining, but at any rate we had to stay in the room. To make the room bearable, I turned on two fans. Apparently, the students couldn’t hear much of what was being said on the OWL because the fan creates evident background noise. Also, the OWL is like a walkie-talkie with the speakers sharing a channel so the students who are remote cannot interact seamlessly with everyone else. I had to keep darting over to my computer to see if they had questions and sometimes they would talk but there wouldn’t be audio so everyone would have to be silent to see what was happening which wasted a lot of time. It was like running two entirely separate classes. Then I discovered that the OWL cannot read my handwriting on the whiteboard. I tried in darker markers — no deal. I finished the class dead-tired and nearly in tears from angry stress and it was only 11:20.
I tried to talk to my principal. I told him that I needed advice on what to do because my room was extremely hot, but with the remote students needing the OWL I couldn’t go outside (or use another classroom as we would have done in the past because of COVID cleaning restrictions) but to stay in the room, we needed the fans on which created impossible noise and the students couldn’t read the board. My principle replied, “You’re going to have to learn how to use One Note and run your class that way then,” and shrugged. I felt like scratching his face off. There was one more class in the afternoon with one more missing student (same deal- noisy fans, I really couldn’t hear her at all, it was depressing)- and then I got on the bus for the train back to the city. I have never felt so exhausted, depleted, and worn out on a first day of school.
The teachers were required to come back to work again on Aug 10. When they told us they invested in these OWL cameras for our classes, they didn’t mention that they couldn’t focus on the whiteboards. If they had, I would have been prepared for this. When One Note was brought up, it was just a useful tool for remote learning, but I am now envisioning my in-person class on their laptops, me on my laptop typing stuff into “One Note”, and not using my whiteboard at all. How does that represent in-person instruction? I am in favor of real in-person instruction. Otherwise, I’d rather go all remote now. And I haven’t even mentioned trying to teach French to French 1 students while wearing a mask. I’ll leave that to you.
No idea what the other teachers/relatives of teachers might make of all this … or the people with children going back to school. I’m curious … despite being so evidently frazzled.
Published in Education
Thank you for the links for Dave Stuart. I’ve opened all of them and I’ll look into them later tomorrow. When you do find out what your school will be doing with remote learners, please do either respond to this thread or send me a message. Hopefully your experience will be more thoughtfully handled!
I suspect our admin had a similar summer. And yet I don’t think they really thought they would just “stick us” with this impossible situation. I think they completely misunderstood why our remote spring went well and when faced with the impossible threats of student withdrawls, they cowered (as usual) and offered hybrid because they thought if teachers could handle remote, they could handle anything. It was a crappy compliment.
What angers me the most about this situation is that our principal is also a math teacher at school. He is a strikingly unimaginative, unempathetic, charmless, micromanaging apparatchik. I could almost understand if a 100% admin figure came up with this hybrid idea because then you could say, “they aren’t in the classroom so they might not understand how this could be hard for a teacher to implement”, but someone who also teaches thought this was a good idea and spoke to their fellow teacher so dismissively when they were falling apart on the first day?
I would wring my hands but I’d have to unclench my fists first.
Several cities are experimenting with stitching together body parts from teachers who died of burnout, inserting bluetooth dongles and attaching electrodes. These hybrids have been able to duplicate or exceed the teaching output of several inner city schools.
I expect math lends itself to hybrid teaching more than any other subject.
I am a freelance editor, and I work from my little humble home office. Over the twenty years I’ve been doing this, the technology that publishers use has changed dramatically from one year to the next. I have to worry about everything, starting with my security system. Throughout these years, some of my dearest friends have been my local tech support companies. I have to pay for their services myself, but it is well worth it, and of course, it is a deductible business expense for me.
I imagine a teacher at a tiny private school must really love the job–the kids and the classroom, the autonomy. It would be well worth your money–if you have some job security there, and I assume you do or you would have left last week–for you to hire your own tech support guy to come into your classroom and spend a little time with you. It would probably cost about $1,000 to $1,500, but you would learn a lot, and he or she would solve a lot of your problems. These guys know about add-ons to your software or hardware peripherals that you would not know about or know if it was safe to download or install.
If your school has a hard-and-fast rule about not altering the classroom software, then you might convince whoever is running your school’s programs into spending some time with you in your classroom with your computer equipment. If he or she says no, then ask if you can bring in your own tech support with a promise not to interfere with whatever the school has installed.
I promise that you won’t regret doing this. :-)
This lifelong general purpose IT guy endorses this recommendation.
The people who manage technology are usually without technique themselves. When you pay for expertise, the expert works for you.
I’ve worked for people like that, but only in business organizations. I can’t imagine why someone like this math teacher is in charge. Why a soulless zombie would be promoted to the position of principal says a lot about our school systems, be they private or public.
You have my sympathy and support.
One problem for Giulietta if she were to ask to do this, schools now over-vet people. Whatever computer tech she might choose would need a full background check and more, which can take a few weeks. Schools see everything as a liability; everything is about safety.
Safety is good, but schools use that issue to keep anyone they have’t already gotten on their payroll locked out.
Maybe she could ask around and find a computer tech who looks like they might be a cousin or sibling, and then pretend they are merely on campus to offer a ride home or whatever.
I am glad to finally have support for my long-held position that people who are good at math do not possess souls.
In your FACE, Mr. Snyder, Algebra 1, Thornview High School 1973!
I would think it would not be a problem if the consultant came in before or after school or on a weekend. Do schools vet the electricians, plumbers, and their own computer support consultants? I wonder if they do.
I can’t believe this would take weeks. And maybe a local company already has clearance.
I really think this is doable.
Unfortunately I can’t do that, even it does sound like a good idea. First of all, thanks to the new covid rules, only faculty/staff and students are allowed in the building. Not even the parents are allowed in (I’m not sorry about that but that’s another post for another day). The other thing is that a tech person would need to get administrative permission to work with my laptop and that’s highly unlikely.
And lastly, our primary tech person is another math teacher who has been elevated to the role- he’s far more empathetic than the principal and when I mentioned the issues with the OWL, said, “oh wow…well…I don’t know…” We actually share a classroom for 1 period which could be useful, but he’s obsessed with social distancing (he made all 6 of his students wait in the hallway while I went in my room to get my laptop so I could work somewhere else while they had class- “social distancing everyone!”) so I have to really see if he will be helpful or ineffectual.
This speaks to a whole other blog post that would be interesting to write because I find education a compelling topic that is very opaque to those outside the field. Like any other job, there are upsides and downsides. I wonder how similar education is to other fields that have private/public sector versions. I’ll think about writing one…@goldgeller mentioned I should during the RNC coverage so it’s been on my mind. Thank you for taking the time to write such a kind message:)
Wow. That must be so frustrating.
Still, I’d ask someone outside the school to see if there’s a way around all these rules so you can get some help.
You can always make a case to the administrator in a friendly e-mail. Just say, “I love you and this school and these students, but I need some tech support help that is not available here. It’s not the math teacher’s competence or anyone else’s, just my inability to put my problem into words he can act on to help me. I also need a lot of time, and I’m uncomfortable asking anyone at school to spend that much time with me. Everyone is so busy, and it will take time and patience to work with me. I have a tech support person-friend whom I know well, and I’d love for him [or her] to come in at some time when the kids weren’t in the classroom so I could explain the difficulties I’m having. I’ll pay for it myself. But I really want this year’s classes to work well for everyone. Is there some way we can do this?”
There’s a company that works at the school and takes care of all the electricity, plumbing, etc- apparently also the cleaning of our classrooms now. Since I share with the tech guy, I’m not supposed to clean my own room so the crew of 4 guys is tearing around the building with disinfectant spray to these certain shared classrooms and spraying down the tables during the 20 min passing periods. I’ve never seen anything more chaotic or useless in my life. One of them arrived winded, only to find some students were seated already and he told me, “I can’t clean if they’re already seated” and I had no idea what we were supposed to do at that point. I just told him I thought we’d be ok and he looked relieved and ran off again with his Lysol spray.
I’m not sure I can make my fingers type “I love you” in an email directed to my admin- they will have an arthritic seizure, but I get your point:)
A local college planned remote classes through August and hybrid classes starting sometime in September. I helped a computer illiterate professor prepare online assignments and grading schemes. She’s a veteran instructor, but never used a computer for anything more than email and storing photographs.
We fought through several technical terrors before classes even began. Not everything was settled or understood at the start of the semester. I dread hearing what fresh hell the move to hybrid teaching brings.
I, too, teach at an independent Catholic high school. We’re all remote with a few of my colleagues teaching from campus. After 2 weeks of remote teaching, it’s going ok in large part because my students are eager to learn and we’re all having similar experiences with technology and home distractions. I’m still hunting around Canvas for my resources/files, assignments (easy to find in Modules). My students are confused, too. I consciously make time to help them troubleshoot problems (screen share!!) and invite their suggestions. As Zoom class ends, we wave & say thank you to each other.
Current irritation is the 1st five minutes when students are joining the class. We use the zoom waiting rooms so are interrupted by the “doorbell”. I’m thinking of sharing the prayer & agenda while everyone arrives.
A teaching fried who works for a local public high school commented that alcoholism will shoot up for teachers.
@Guilietta, I am not looking forward to going hybrid. My school has installed cameras. Tests done by our tech team, a few teachers, & admin suggest the remote students can see the writing on the white board. We’ll see.
Hang in there. It will get better.
Now, I’m off to record a 5-minute welcome video for our remote Back to School Night. Sigh.
Be not afraid.
A Freudian slip?
I wonder if teachers shouldn’t all band together and say, “sure, I’ll do hybrid teaching, you’ll just have to pay me double.”
Yup. That’s what I would do. :-)
The smart idea would be to have distance kids in one class and the live people in the other.
Exactly.
I think the first step is to have the administrators teach a week’s worth of the hybrid classes. :-) :-)
Yes! Of course it is! We’re all fried now.😉
@aaron you are such a good soul. Thank you for helping her. I’m pretty good with tech & this situation is making me anxious.
I’m writing on my phone so I hope this formats correctly.
I shared your post with my husband, as he often has to do various things to prepare for his online tutorials and infomercials. So I thought maybe he would have a handle on how to help you.
One thing he immediately came up with was that the key to his online success is how he always uses microphones to help in terms of sound amplification. This overcomes the problem of how computer systems that are most popular these days have an inability to jack up the sound. (As a slightly hearing impaired person I can’t believe that I am 37 years into using computers – and the sound volume situation is worse than it was fifteen years ago!)
Anyway he suggests you look into a headset that has a microphone attached, so you don’t have to hold it. I prefer a microphone I hold when I am on camera, but that is just me. Everything like that is wireless these days, but then I imagine you are doing Wi fi already in order to be even using the computers in the classroom.
It’s an interesting suggestion. We are indeed on WiFi but as my part of the school is cinderblock construction, we sometimes have signal issues. Today went better than Friday, but then it only could improve, couldn’t it? :)
Add a few repeaters in key spots. It should improve.
Yes I think they have a lot of those- I am assuming the WiFi issues are more with the remote students at this point. I have usually done just fine with the WiFi myself.
The school can’t fix problems on the home end.
It could be just a matter of sitting closer to the router on their end. My parents have WiFi, and by experimentation I have determined that the kitchen and dining rooms are dead spots. They are diagonal both vertically and horizontally from the router. The signal has to go through a lot of structural metal and ventilation shafts to get to them and get back.