Response to We Know the Real Cause of the Crisis in Our Hospitals. It’s Greed. NYT Jan. 19 2022
This was a critical and convincing article! I strongly support nurses and don’t want my following comments to undermine their support. Their crisis ends in deaths. But listening to them talk about understaffing in hospitals reminded me of my experience teaching. I taught fourth grade for eleven years. I loved teaching. However, I was not forced to teach because of financial necessity. So, when I burned out, I was able to leave and pick a more desirable journey in life.
I loved teaching. I loved the kids. I loved trying to meet each child’s special needs. But eventually, it became overwhelming.
At one time, schools had fewer demands on teachers and society had fewer expectations of schools in general. But our country’s expectations just grew and grew and demands on the system grew and grew. Everyone kept getting ‘good ideas’ and the ability to access news about these new ideas was ubiquitous. So, what is expected from schools continues to grow. It has become a babysitter so it can’t close down. It provides meals for the needy and a safe haven for the threatened. But those are just the bigger cultural requirements of schools. Professional development is overflowing with good ideas! And no question, they are good ideas. I was very inspired by them. When I went to the conference on differentiation, tailoring each lesson and most particularly each assessment to each child, I was inspired. But the hours I spent trying to prepare the next social studies unit to accommodate this idea were unbelievable. I mean I was at school late every night and still took work home. Then there are additions to the curriculum! Everybody’s good idea about what we could teach kids. I kept track. Every year I taught school, something new was added to the curriculum, and NOTHING WAS TAKEN OUT! Sometimes it was just one lesson, a SAPTE day at school, but sometimes it was an entire health curriculum or a new technology curriculum. Administration told us to just try and fit it in with everything else, piggy-back a health lesson with a literature or social studies class.
Oh, and teaching instruction should include all the new, good ideas that people came up with: Literary circles, core curriculum, curriculum mapping, group work, centers, different spaces where kids can work etc. Lectures and note-taking were no longer enough, and I agree. I didn’t want the kids sitting in their desks all day listening to me talk, but it takes imagination, knowledge, resources, and TIME to create different instructional approaches.
One thing that irked me the most was educational research that said smaller classrooms had no effect on a good education. All I can think is they meant testing scores remained unchanged in smaller classrooms. The size of my class ranged from 16 to 26. But I’m sorry, smaller classrooms are much easier to manage. Each child gets more attention. There is space to move around in and to learn and create in. When I had 26 students crowd-control was out of control. The time to connect with parents is much improved. You can actually read and respond to what your students write. It’s quieter. There are fewer discipline problems to deal with. The list is endless. But schools can’t afford to hire more teachers, build more classrooms, and provide for smaller classes.
I found if I wanted to manage everything, my students, my instruction, my curriculum, differentiation, reading my students writing, everything that was expected of me by administration and the community, I was often at school from 7 am to 7 pm. And when I arrived at school unprepared, I didn’t enjoy teaching. I didn’t enjoy not being able to meet the expectations of my administration, parents, students, and myself. I realized I was burning myself out. I didn’t have to work for financial reasons, and so I found a way out. I quit my job teaching fourth grade, went back to graduate school and taught an education class at the local college.
I don’t quite know where to lay the blame. I can’t lay it on the administration. They were at the mercy of ‘good ideas’ as much as I was. I suppose we have to lay the blame on good ideas. I think a good idea would be to have fewer good ideas.
Comments