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Teacher explains why she burned out: 'We do too much with too little and for too little' [1]
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Date: 2022-10-21
The same UTLA report offers a reason for that: Los Angeles teachers are paid 22% less than other Los Angeles workers with the same level of education. That’s in line with the 23.5% teacher pay penalty the Economic Policy Institute finds nationally. Pay for first-year Los Angeles teachers is $51,440, an amount that does not allow them to afford average rent in any neighborhood of the expensive city they teach in without being rent-burdened—and that’s according to the school district.
The combination of financial struggles with difficult teaching environments, including understaffing and overly large classes, has led 70% of Los Angeles teachers to seriously consider quitting. As the school year started, one teacher who was doing just that talked to CBS News about her decision to step away from teaching for a year after 16 years, 15 of them in Los Angeles.
“We do too much with too little and for too little,” Nicole Fefferman said. “We just don't have enough support and resources to make things right.”
Because “The pressure of the system that we work in was really just grinding me down,” Fefferman said, she wasn’t able to do the work she knew herself to be capable of, while her home life suffered as well. “I could feel it impact all the pieces of my life. I wasn't the same teacher in my classroom... When I came home, I was a mess for my family. It just felt like I wasn't doing good for anybody.” The end result was that, though the decision to step away was hers, “I feel like I was pushed out.”
The struggles of Los Angeles teachers come in the context of a national teacher shortage. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment in teacher training programs had declined amid widespread attacks on the profession, the imposition of rigid standardized regimes that often penalize teachers based on metrics that were not designed to assess teaching at all, and funding shortfalls that often led to large class sizes and scant resources.
As high school senior Alondra Nava said at the Wednesday UTLA pickets, “With the current class sizes, teachers struggle to provide the appropriate support for every single student's needs...No matter how dedicated a teacher is, there is just not enough time to meet the needs of all 30 to 40 students in a class.”
All those problems were in place even before the pandemic forced teachers to adjust repeatedly to remote and hybrid arrangements while understaffing was frequently made worse by their coworkers being out with covid. Teachers haven’t gotten a break since schools have been largely back full-time in person (with unplanned interruptions when covid cases spike), either, as Republicans have attacked them on one made-up controversy after another, from critical race theory to “grooming.”
Unfortunately, in many places, the “solutions” to all these problems being proposed by those at the top involve weakening requirements for teachers—doing away with degree or certification requirements, for instance—rather than investing in schools and turning teaching into a profession that people not only want to do but can afford to do and can do for a full career without burning out. That means not just sustainable pay and benefits but smaller class sizes and adequate support staff so that teachers are not trying to also take the role of counselor and occupational therapist and school nurse, and more. It means enough supplies for every classroom. It means classroom buildings with adequate ventilation and filtration (helpful for preventing the spread of more than just covid!) and without mold and rodents and leaks. It means passing laws to meaningfully reduce the threat of school shootings. It means the space to actually teach students and open up their worlds rather than teaching to the test (and having those tests take up large swaths of time through the year).
Fixing all these things will improve teaching as a profession—and it will equally improve U.S. education as a whole.
On Daily Kos’ The Brief , we speak with polling giant Drew Linzer , who runs polling firm CIVIQs and comes in to talk about a new poll his team conducted for Daily Kos. He is also here to explain, as a professional, how to not stress out every time you see a poll going your way or the other way. One thing is for sure, though: We are living in historic times, and what that means for these midterms cannot be easily predicted—so Get Out The Vote!
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