While the exodus of educators hasn’t played out the way researchers expected at the height of the pandemic, national surveys suggest there is still cause for alarm. In February, the National Education Association (NEA), which represents nearly 3 million educators, released a survey of members’ opinions on key issues facing public education during the pandemic. Teachers reported that massive staff shortages exasperated by COVID-19 were leaving them increasingly burned out, so much so that 55 percent indicated that they are ready to leave the profession earlier than planned.
ike those who participated in the NEA survey, Burnett, Wheeler and Schlatter pointed to raising educator salaries, providing additional mental health support for students, reducing class sizes and hiring more teachers and support staff as potential solutions to stemming educator burnout. Yet the one theme common among all three was the desire to see state and local policymakers take this chance to adapt public schooling in ways that truly meet the needs of all students — an opportunity they say is currently being wasted.
“I love teaching, I just don’t believe in our education system anymore,” said Wheeler. “The pandemic has played a role, because everything at our school feels harder now than it ever has — there are more student fights, less capacity among admin to support us as they’ve turned into full-time contact tracers, more acute mental health issues among students and teachers and a general sense of stress in the system. However, the biggest impact that the pandemic had for me personally is the sense that we’ve wasted an opportunity to rethink schooling. Distance learning posed its own challenges, but in many ways, it opened up an awareness that we could do things really differently.”
California State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond said that with new state and federal funding streams, more districts are beginning to rethink the ways in which schools are organized to better meet the needs of both students and teachers.
“Our schools were not typically designed 100 years ago to both personalize education for students who learn in different ways and have different needs, or to meet all of their social-emotional and academic needs,” said Darling-Hammond, who also serves as president and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute.
“We’ve got to begin moving toward these 21st-century designs that are focused on relationships as well as on teaching and learning, and that provide teachers the time for collaboration around content and kids,” she continued. “I think the way people should think about the new funding is to use it for foundational purposes to get things designed and going … and once they are launched, districts can use federal and state funds to make them long-term solutions to the problems that we’ve long had with teacher retention.”
“I think this could have been a transformative year. Instead, we were exactly back in pre-pandemic conditions in terms of schedule and student load but with the added stress of public health risk mitigation measures and the huge increase in trauma among adults and children alike,” he said. “Nothing other than a factory model is possible in these conditions, sorting kids by what they produce according to inflexible metrics of achievement.”
West Contra Costa USD trustee and longtime teacher Jamela Smith-Folds agrees that leaders should have struck when the iron was hot. However, to break out of the status quo, it’s important to acknowledge why it exists and be thoughtful about how to move forward.
“The system of education is one of the oldest systems we have, and because it’s one of the oldest, it’s also one of the most stringent and doesn’t lend itself to educating the people in the circumstances that we have now,” Smith-Folds said. “The American education system was never for poor white people, it definitely wasn’t for Black people [or] brown people, they didn’t even make it for women. Everything has changed in 200 years. It’s not breaking the broken system, it’s making the system work for the people who it doesn’t work for — and that means being very intentional about what to do.”
One critical step moving forward is adding support staff to every campus, she said. While teachers have long acted as counselors and more, they aren’t equipped to do it all — especially now that so many students and educators themselves have dealt with loss and mental health struggles stemming from the pandemic. Now, every district needs to have a health center, every school needs to have access to a psychologist and enough counselors to address student need, and everyone needs to have a smaller class size because they’re dealing with bigger issues, she continued.
Also important will be decision-makers’ willingness to adopt more innovative and flexible programs, schedules and instructional models tailored to student needs, Smith-Folds said. Boards should be gathering input regarding what teachers and students need to be successful straight from the source and use that to inform next steps.
“I think teachers are now expected to be everything. You’re supposed to be a babysitter, you’re supposed to be a miracle worker, you’re also supposed to be an expert in the field, but you have to make sure that you’re an expert in the right way that fits all the kids,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like an impossible task and that’s where it gets frustrating.”
That’s also what keeps the job interesting, she said, but “sometimes I think we’re setting ourselves up for failure by trying to do all that.” That’s why new delivery models must be explored, be it increased capacity for virtual schools or hybrid models in which students come to campus certain days or participate in dedicated “office hours” where they can get targeted support in smaller groups, Schlatter said.
Several such models of instruction are being explored throughout the state. West Contra Costa USD is working to expand its virtual academy after significant interest from families of students who thrived in distance learning. The virtual academy is distinctly different from the hybrid model popularized as schools began reopening for in-person instruction, said Smith-Folds. Rather, it has some of the freedom of independent study, but with more synchronous and asynchronous learning.
Many districts are looking to transform campuses into community schools, which emphasize whole child development and strengthening relationships within the school and community. Some, like Hillsdale High School in San Mateo Union High School District, redesigned the bell schedule about 20 years ago to ensure students spend more time engaged in deeper learning than shuffling from class to class.
About 15 years ago, Lindsay USD recognized that the traditional sorting of students by age wasn’t working, and in 2007 trustees adopted a student-centered competency-based model, or a “performance-based system.” Students are referred to as “learners” and teachers as “learning facilitators.”
This model allows students to learn at their own pace, receiving additional support when necessary. Children must demonstrate mastery of learning to progress, which they can do independent of their age or grade and have many options for how they might demonstrate their learning, which are verified and validated by the district for rigor.
Typically, a school system is built for the kids in the middle since they’re the majority, but it leaves some children to struggle while holding back those who could excel from reaching their full potential, explained Vahnn Blue, a Lindsay USD board member since 1998. This model “allows the fast runners to run fast and the slow runners to take their time until they grasp what’s there.”
Blue recalled a phone call from a friend whose child was a part of the first class under the performance-based system. When asked why the system was changing after all this time, Blue responded, “If you drive to work the same route every day and you get a flat tire every day, are you going to change your route or do something different? … We’re not doing the best that we can for these kids.’ We know that learning doesn’t occur the same for everybody. There’s not a cookie cutter approach to learning.”
The move required significant buy-in from the whole school community, as well as professional development, but after all this time, the shift continues to pay off both in academic achievement and school climate, Blue said. Everyone has seen the benefits of ensuring students develop strong foundational knowledge. “It makes perfect sense to me as a builder, a foundation’s the most important, and that’s the key. But the key for the good foundation is the buy-in,” he said.
“Not only was I a first-year teacher struggling to find solid ground, but now I was a first-year teacher struggling to find solid ground in the middle of a pandemic,” Burnett said. “Students were losing family members left and right — I also lost my grandmother — and they weren’t able to learn through a webcam at their dining room table. I had students who had to park in Starbucks parking lots to use the WiFi to attend class. Then we returned to school for a hybrid learning model and I had to learn yet again how to teach in an unfamiliar environment. I had so much anxiety that I frequently vomited in the restroom before work.”
That level of professional stress and anxiety can be quelled through participation in a quality, affordable induction program, said Walnut Valley Consortium Induction Coordinator Julie Sheldon. Through induction programs, new teachers are assigned a mentor for their first two years to offer the support needed to be successful. As soon as someone is hired with a preliminary credential within the six-district Walnut Valley Consortium, Sheldon matches them with a mentor at no cost.
Sheldon, who has been involved in induction for about 23 years, said someone like Burnett would have benefited greatly. In her consortium, he would have had a mentor he could go to in his subject area for materials, guidance, lesson plans, support and who could advocate on his behalf.
So, if induction is so beneficial — and required as part of the credentialing process in California — why don’t more new teachers sign up immediately? Often, it comes down to access and cost. New teachers can go through a university or county office of education program, or they can find a district induction program with space to accept them.
“These teachers are coming from teacher preparation with a ton of student loans [and] make the least of anybody in the district,” Sheldon explained. “The universities, I’ve heard, can go as high as $12,000, and county offices are about $4,000 per year. This is a big expense, and many teachers put it off. Problem is, then they don’t have support in their first two years.”
Districts can offer their own free induction programs to new teachers, or cover the cost of one, as many did prior to the recession. Those that do should ensure that mentor teachers are purposefully selected, receive training throughout the process, that other duties are taken off their plate and they receive some kind of stipend, Sheldon said. Though it may sound burdensome during a time in which school districts are struggling to stay afloat, these programs benefit new teachers, mentor teachers and the district, which can better retain teachers.
Schlatter said she was able to get back in touch with why she began teaching in the first place, noting that as a second-career educator, she knows that what one can get out of the profession and school setting is hard to find elsewhere. “But if we had to go through another public outcry over education and teachers and what they do, I wouldn’t make it — I’m done being dismissed. I feel like I would either have to get rid of social media and isolate myself or just quit,” she continued.
Smith-Folds said self-reflection is vital, both in her own district and among her peers. “Anybody who’s trying to get to pre-2020 is fooling themselves, it doesn’t exist anymore. You’re never going to have that norm again,” she said. “We have to stop banking on that and start accepting the fact that we need to create what we need and want now. We [can’t] continue to force a square peg in a round hole — that’s the biggest mistake that we can make.”
Alisha Kirby is a staff writer for California Schools.