The high cost of energy

 The high cost of energy

 

Schools are having to deal with lots more student disruptive behavior and the teachers have a lot less energy to manage the behaviors. Schools are seeing lockdowns and outsider aggression.   Many educators are on edge because of staff shortages and staff quarantine.  Each of the five largest school districts in Maryland opened school this fall still looking hundreds of teachers.  All opened with long-term substitutes in positions where certified teachers should be.  And that is after huge salary increases.  To add to the stress, there aren’t enough bus drivers to get the kids to school.  Some teachers are reporting that they feel as tired now as they typically do at Thanksgiving.

Teachers are demonstrating their stress in differing  ways.  They are raising their voices more often and are quicker to add consequences for behaviors.  They are calling out sick more often. Kids are being suspended at a higher rate.

The pandemic has not just hit children and their families; it has disrupted the family lives of teachers as well.  School counselors say they are overwhelmed both by student needs and staff needs.

More attention is finally being paid to the social emotional needs of students.  Families are not complaining so much about meeting those needs.  In the past, it was not unusual for parents resist social-emotional attention and insist that the time be spent on academics.  Now with kids returning to school and showing the mental health damage brought on by quarantining at home and absence of social contact, attitudes are changing.

There is a heavy emphasis on making schools more welcoming to differing populations of students and often it is the kids who are leading the way in those efforts. Kids are organizing clubs for marginal populations and majority students are going as well because the, too, want to understand. Students are much more in need of someone to listen.  But listening to someone else’s problems takes energy and right now that is energy teachers don’t seem to have themselves.  Counselors are in short supply and are spending big chunks of their time doing scheduling and testing. 

Students need a time out and someone to walk and talk with.  But so do teachers.  Energy is being drained from both sides.   It seems that now kids need our energy the most and yet teachers have the least to give.  The high cost of energy isn’t just at the gas pumps.