Don’t Teachers Deserve a Little Grace too?
As a teacher, it’s hard to write about how schools should take better care of teachers without sounding like a whiner. The minute I start writing about the real work we do and the problematic ways we are treated as professionals, I start feeling self-conscious, because, of course, so many people have it worse. My brilliant photographer/DJ husband, for instance, is grinding away at a Trader Joe’s at all kinds of crazy hours to help us make ends meet, and I know so many others who are doing difficult work they don’t love, just to put food on the table. I think most people can agree that we are living in tough times, amplified by a pandemic that just won’t quit, and often it seems that the very people who are working the hardest to get us through it are the ones who are treated with the least care.
So, let me begin this post by saying that I feel infinitely lucky to have a job that is a career, a vocation, really, that I love and that gives me so much. Nonetheless, there are ways that this job is getting more challenging and the endless list of things teachers are expected to do is getting longer, while the way teachers are managed—almost everywhere—is getting more problematic. Although I don’t like to focus on the negative too often, after doing this job for such a long time, I feel compelled to use my voice—and my agency—to write about this particular issue, especially since I believe it can be fixed.
The first problem is the huge divide between the business office of a school and the place where education actually happens—the school. School business offices like to pretend that public schools are businesses. Of course, there is a regular schedule that dictates work hours, holidays and vacations for employees, which is the nature of schools and to be expected. But, there are also rigid rules for teachers around personal and sick leave, religious holidays and general supervision, which are not only incommensurate to the educational/professional level of the people being managed, but also antithetical to the caring culture of most schools.
Examples abound and can be found in any conversation in which teachers participate. Would you be surprised to learn, for instance, that teachers in some places must utilize personal days to celebrate their religious holidays if those holidays are not on the school calendar? Or, that in some school districts, there are strict rules about teacher bereavement days (for a spouse, or a parent or a child) that say the days must be used adjacent to the actual day of the death and must be taken together, regardless of the circumstances or the location of the loved one’s death? Or, that in many districts, teachers are expected to clock in (like hourly workers) well before the start of school, regardless if they have a class first thing in the morning or not, and without exception. Again, this may not seem unreasonable to most people unless you consider that most public schools start before 8:00 am and that most public school teachers in America (70%) are women. When you consider that women are often the ones dropping their own children off at school or helping them to get on the school bus, you have an untenable situation in which the very people taking care of our children in schools aren’t afforded the flexibility they need to take care of their own.
Meanwhile, back at the school part of school, teachers are literally moving heaven and earth to help students. We modify, accommodate, facilitate and make exceptions for any student we identify as struggling. We come in early, stay late, meet with students, call parents, twist our plans and expectations in every which way in an effort to address the needs of our students and to help them to be successful. And, not just teachers. In my school, for example, almost every single person who works directly with students seems to go above and beyond. My principal, in particular, is the embodiment of empathy and works tirelessly to make sure that teachers are supported, that they have what they need to be effective and that not a single child falls through the cracks. There is no situation in which we do not act in a way that is flexible and responsive to the human beings in front of us—our students. Why? Because we are a school and schools are human places that understand that one size does not fit all.
And, yet, we are often managed in a way that is not humanistic—or empathetic. In every online teacher group I am a part of, the story is the same. Teachers are exhausted and overwhelmed and the schools they work for aren’t helping. Yes, there’s a superficial conversation about teacher wellness and a lot of performative gratitude around teacher appreciation, but at the end of the day, teachers are still asked to go to extraordinary lengths to address their students’ needs, but when those same teachers need a little flexibility—a little grace—about their own schedule or some accommodation for their family situation or individual challenges—there are no real systems in place to ensure flexibility or accommodation. Yes, there are empathetic building-level administrators, as I mentioned, who are actually in the trenches with us, fighting for our students, but when it comes to the hard and fast policies that shape our working conditions, there is an astounding lack of empathy and flexibility.
So that’s what I would like to advocate for here. More grace, empathy and flexibility in the way teachers are managed. I have seen the evolution of school culture over the past three decades. Schools are better places because teachers, principals and counselors understand that there is really no downside to being flexible, responsive and empathetic to the human beings who are our students. I think most of us would just like to be treated in the same way.
