What’s Wrong With Teachers?
The problem is how teachers feel about workload versus pay.
Studies from across Canada consistently show that teachers work an average of 50 to 55 hours per week. Teachers work 10 to 20 hours per week outside of regular school hours. These long hours create stress and exhaustion, which, in turn, lead to high rates of absenteeism and burnout. Summer months that are considered by the public to be “holidays” are 50% devoted to creating and/or revising curriculum for the coming school year. When asked to estimate how much time they spend on work-related activities, studies say that teachers tend to underestimate their hours of work. Although reported work time tends to vary depending on a teacher’s sex, years of experience, geographical location and specific assignment, these correlations are relatively weak, suggesting that overwork is a universal problem affecting teachers not only in Canada, but in all G7 countries.
The work of teachers is highly complex and involves a wide range of tasks. As a result, teachers often multitask during the workday, a situation that sometimes prevents them from focusing on such higher-order activities as planning, engaging in professional development and reflecting on their practice, activities that would almost certainly improve their effectiveness as teachers over the long term. Students have a wide range of learning needs, and teachers lack the supports and resources necessary to support an increasingly diverse student population. External reporting demands and curriculum guidelines are especially difficult when multiplied by diverse needs and ability levels under one teacher’s tutelage.
Stress related to non-instructional issues like student behaviour, student and family mental health and/or addictions, and poverty are also issues. Teachers feel that students’ basic needs must be met before learning can take place. Gaps and lags in teachers’ cultural literacy with respect to teaching First Nations, Métis and Inuit students is exacerbated by a perpetual cycle of novice teachers who start out in rural or remote schools and then leave these communities, or leave the profession due to isolation and stress.
Starting pay is $43K a year on average. In Lethbridge, Alberta this might be enough in a 2-person income family, but in Vancouver, BC it won’t attract many with real talent and ambition. The top salary for a very experienced and highly educated teacher is $68K, which again is not enough in Vancouver or Toronto to retain people in markets that value their experience and skills, like for example HR training for larger Tech companies like Hootsuite which offer $100K to lure these experienced educators away.
Coupling these stark realties – being overworked and underpaid – it does not take a rocket scientist to realize there is a problem. The solution is more money for more teachers so class sizes can be more manageable, and higher pay so the profession can attract and retain high quality people, and more planning resources and professional development opportunities to improve their knowledge and skills so teachers feel they have the tools to do their jobs well. The real problem is, where is more money going to come from?
