The pandemic has forced teachers around the world to convert their curriculums and teaching methods to distance-learning, and many of them have felt exhausted or burnt out by the overwhelming changes to their work-lives and by the lack of social interaction with their students and colleagues. Teachers Glen Barrett, Annie Shine, and Benjamin Ravey voiced their perspectives on teachers’ stress and exhaustion during these trying times.
English teacher Annie Shine explained her position as a teacher at MHS during the pandemic and the duties that come with being an educator during these difficult times. “My role as an educator, I think, is very complicated,” Shine said in a Zoom interview. “I think to preface this, the role of an educator, even in normal times is incredibly difficult. You are connecting students with the services they need. And, you’re just kind of trying to be a role model and a good community member. So, none of that has changed, particularly during the pandemic, but it has become much more difficult to make sure that our students and our colleagues are getting the help that they need. As a teacher, you want to try to model positive mental health strategies during this incredibly stressful period.”
Shine said the most difficult part of being a teacher during distance learning is the lack of social interaction and communication with her students. “There’s not a lot of connection right now, and some of the choices that I’ve made in the name of equity, like not making people turn their cameras on, I stand by those choices. I think it’s the right thing to do, but it has resulted in a serious drop off in participation in most of my classes, and that’s a real struggle because if you’re not feeling connected to the kids. If you’re not feeling like they’re engaged and participating then it’s like, ‘What’s the point of any of this?’ That can be pretty discouraging,” Shine said.
Lastly, Shine spoke about how it feels as a teacher to quickly change and adapt to the new style of learning. “I already spent a lot of my life online, so this was not a huge pivot for me. It feels fine in some ways; it’s nice. I like the live chat aspect of it. I think in a sense that provides a space for some of the quieter students to participate. So, I don’t know if I could figure out a way to keep that part of it when we go to a live lecture. Other than that, it’s kind of lonely. There is less direct engagement, and I feel really bad because I know some kids struggle with Internet problems, but there’s not anything I can do to help them. It’s frustrating,” Shine said.
Science teacher Glen Barrett also shared his opinions on teacher burnout and on how he thinks teachers are performing during the pandemic. “I think we’re doing the best we can given the circumstances, especially in the second semester, but we’re not trained for this,” Barrett said in a Zoom interview. “We’re trained for in-person lectures. So I think we’re doing the best we can, and I think we’re doing very well compared to a lot of other schools in the county, the state, and the country. I keep track of a lot of forums on different levels, and [MHS] is a little like an island of sanity. There’s a lot that students have to adapt to.”
Barret continued to explain his work-life balance and how distance learning has affected it. “I think mine is pretty good. I think we’re all having COVID nightmares right now,” Barret said. “We’re all under stress and realizing, ‘Oh my gosh, my shoulders are three inches higher than they usually are from sheer stress,’ but, I’m technologically happy. I’m very happy with the software I’ve been using, like Google Classroom, for example. I think we’re all suffering from work-life balance right now—students, teachers, literally every human being in the country that’s taking this pandemic seriously. As far as my actual school job goes, I think I’m doing pretty well. I feel very supported by both students and the leadership of the school, whether it’s Mr. Maneja, Mr. Rojas, or the superintendent.”
When asked what is the most difficult part of distance learning, Barrett said, “I have absolutely no way of making sure students aren’t doing themselves a disservice by cheating. I can’t do a huge number of different types of assessments. Statistically, I don’t think any of my AP students are cheating because I did the math from previous years, and I did my statistical surveys, but I can’t prove it. FRQs are a nightmare right now because I can’t tell. After all, it’s so hard to find one that isn’t already online. And, that’s tough, and I still don’t know what students are writing or how they’re doing assessments.”
After being asked about how he has adapted his teaching to distance learning, Barrett said, “There are a lot of changes to my teaching. We’re all first-year teachers again, to some degree, and at this school, we have a shockingly high average of experience. So, when we all get pushed back to being first-year teachers again by rebuilding all of our lessons, our curriculum, our style—it’s hard. We don’t have the social interactions with students or with our peers to boost us back up again. Department meetings, at least for science, have turned into just talking to each other, just reconnecting with friends saying, ‘Oh my gosh, other adults.’ I think that’s the burnout which is we’re all reinventing the wheel a bit. We’re stressed, just like you guys are; we’re all stressed. The whole world is stressed.”
Barrett elaborated on his main concern as a teacher in MHS during the pandemic. “My biggest concern as a teacher is the students who are doing poorly. My introverts are excelling. I’ve got students I know very well from previous classes who are anxious or are introverts who are getting A’s and are doing very well. My extroverts are going stir crazy. You can certainly see that and I worry about them. The average grades are about 10% higher than usual, but the bottom 10% are so much lower. Education is honestly recoverable from a human being’s point of view. I worry about my extroverts, and I think that’s the thing that’s been the toughest.”
Social studies teacher Benjamin Ravey spoke about what causes teacher burnout during the pandemic. “We get refueled by the laughs and giggles of our students when we make a funny comment or we make an effective point, and with Zoom, we don’t get our happiness refueled like we normally do by being in class because we’re just staring at screens, and we don’t have the interaction,” Ravey said in a Zoom interview. “So yeah, we’re burned out. We’re having to learn new technology that we didn’t have, and our teachers are social people, and we’re not able to be social. So it’s tiring and sad for us.”
Ravey said, “The most difficult part has been taking lessons and making them computer-friendly. I am someone that normally has a lot of posters, a lot of drawings, and a lot of what we call kinesthetic learning, and I’ve had to completely change that because I can’t do it effectively online.”
Like Ms. Shine, Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Ravey, many other teachers at MHS have worked hard through these trying times to convert their teaching methods to suit online learning, to create effective communication with students, and to deal with a slew of other matters that can cause teacher burnout.