Fort Worth school teachers are frustrated amid COVID-19. Will there be mass retirements?
This month, leaders met with teachers at a Fort Worth middle school to talk about what would happen if a student came to school with COVID-19.
Leaders went over how long the student would have to quarantine, contact tracing protocols for other students in class and how teachers would handle attendance for students who had to stay home after they’d been exposed to the virus.
After a while, an 8th grade science teacher raised her hand.
“At what point does the teacher quarantine?” she asked.
At no point in the meeting had administrators mentioned what a coronavirus outbreak at school would mean for teachers and support staff, said the teacher, who spoke to the Star-Telegram on condition of anonymity. That left teachers to wonder whether they would be asked to teach from home if they had to quarantine, who would cover their classes while they were gone and whether they would have to take sick leave, she said.
Even in a normal year, teaching is a stressful, complicated job. But the COVID-19 pandemic has added even more complications. After schools shut down last spring, teachers were forced to learn to do their jobs online rather than in person. As students return to school, teachers must find a way to balance work with the students in their classrooms with those at home. And many worry they could catch the virus at school or unknowingly spread it to students or coworkers.
The science teacher said those stresses have led her to look seriously at leaving the classroom years before she planned to do so. She’s applied to doctoral programs at several universities and looked into certification to teach yoga and pilates. Several colleagues have either told her they plan to leave the profession earlier than they’d expected or said the job left them so stressed that they’re unable to function well, she said.
Last summer, education leaders and experts were concerned the pandemic would cause large numbers of teachers to leave the profession over the summer. That mass exodus hasn’t materialized here — Fort Worth ISD started the school year with fewer vacant positions than it had in either of the two years prior, according to district records. But depending on how long the pandemic lasts and what district officials do to help mitigate teacher stress, teachers and experts say that mass exodus is still possible. If it does happen, it could lead to severe teacher shortages and a decline in the quality of education districts can provide.
“My sense is the dam has not broken yet,” said Nathan Jones, a professor at Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education & Human Development.
Teacher exodus could be in the offing
Jones, who studies teacher quality and development, said one of the biggest factors driving teacher burnout is the fact that districts have asked them to do a job they never signed up to do. Colleges and universities train people how to teach and build relationships with students in a classroom setting. But few teachers have been trained on how to build those relationships or keep students engaged through online classes, he said, and there’s little guidance that they could turn to for help. Although there are steps districts can take to support teachers, Jones said the move to online learning creates stress for teachers that’s largely unavoidable.
But there are other areas where districts have more control over how their teachers feel about their jobs, Jones said. He pointed to a survey of teachers conducted in April and May by researchers at Brown University that indicated that teachers’ sense of success in their jobs was strongly tied to how well they felt their districts supported them during school shutdowns. Among teachers who said they felt supported, the percentage of teachers who felt successful dipped from 99% to 93% once schools shut down. But among teachers who didn’t feel supported, that percentage who felt successful plummeted from 90% to 48%.
That’s good news for school districts, Jones said, because it highlights a way for administrators to help teachers feel more fulfilled and successful in their jobs. By offering teachers clear communication about guidelines for remote learning and what’s expected of them, school leaders can help eliminate some sources of teacher stress and prevent burnout, he said. School leaders should also recognize that remote learning is new for most of their teachers and offer professional development to help them learn to do it effectively, he said.
If districts could tell teachers they’d be able to go back to normal in a few months, they might be able to avoid a major effect on the teacher workforce, he said. But because of all the uncertainties associated with the pandemic, it’s impossible for districts to give teachers those kind of assurances, he said. If districts continue with remote learning for the rest of the school year or even longer, it’s likely that they’ll lose teachers in larger numbers, he said.
Many teachers are also concerned about the safety of going to school in person, Jones said. Last summer, school districts across the country worked out plans to reopen schools without much solid data to inform their decisions, he said. Many teachers felt like guinea pigs in a nationwide experiment, he said. As COVID-19 case counts climb in many states, Jones said those fears are likely to become more intense.
School leaders should be worried about losing teachers in all age groups, Jones said. Many of the longest-tenured teachers may decide to retire earlier than they’d planned rather than deal with the frustrations of online learning, he said. Many mid-career teachers have childcare responsibilities of their own and may find that the longer hours their jobs now demand are unsustainable, he said. And many teachers in their first or second years may be less committed to the idea of spending their entire careers teaching and more willing to change professions, he said.
Teacher shortages are likely to be a particular problem in low-income urban districts, which struggle to recruit and retain teachers even in normal years, Jones said. Those shortages are also likely to make it harder for districts to recruit new teachers in areas that have always been hard to fill, like science, math and special education, he said.
If teachers leave en masse, districts would likely fill vacant teacher positions with long-term substitutes and new, emergency-certified teachers, Jones said. The learning curve for new teachers is steep, he said, so first-year teachers generally aren’t as effective as those with even two or three more years of job experience. When districts are forced to hire large numbers of inexperienced emergency-certified teachers, the quality of education in the district is likely to take a hit, he said.
High rates of teacher turnover also carry a financial cost. A 2017 analysis by the Learning Policy Institute, a California-based education think tank, suggested that urban districts spend on average more than $20,000 on each new hire, including expenses for recruitment, hiring and training. Those investments don’t pay off when teachers leave the workforce after a year or two, according to the institute, and new teachers with little preparation are more than twice as likely to leave the classroom after one year than their well-prepared peers.
Teachers’ union sees uptick in retirements
Steven Poole, executive director of United Educators Association, the union that represents teachers in Fort Worth ISD, said the union has already seen indications that an unusually large number of teachers may retire at the end of the fall semester. In a typical October, the union doesn’t get many requests from teachers for information about the retirement process. But this fall, the union has fielded the number of inquiries it usually hears in the spring, closer to the end of the school year, Poole said.
Poole said the district’s COVID-19 response plan demands too much of teachers. Teaching online and in-person classes at the same time is an almost impossible task, he said, and it leaves teachers overworked and stressed. Teaching in both formats at once means teachers spend longer hours developing lessons, he said. Since the beginning of the school year, teachers have told the union they regularly work 12-14 hour days, he said.
The class format teachers have to use for online and in-person hybrid classes is a drastic shift from the way teachers have done their jobs for most of their careers, Poole said. For decades, school leaders and education researchers have told teachers that working with students in small groups or guiding them in inquiry-based learning is a more effective strategy than standing at the front of the classroom and presenting the information while students listen, Poole said. But that’s difficult for teachers to do when they manage two sets of students at one time, he said.
“It goes against the norm of everything they’ve done in their career,” he said.
Besides juggling two groups of students at once, teachers must also do temperature checks, wipe down surfaces between classes and monitor hallways to make sure students stay safely spaced out, Poole said. In some cases, teachers have told him their principals use teachers’ planning periods — time teachers use to grade papers, talk to parents and plan lessons — to go over plans for fire drills, safety measures and other things that could be handled in an email. That means teachers must find other time, usually before or after school to do other tasks, he said.
Poole said he’s advised district officials to reevaluate any new responsibilities they plan to assign teachers. He also suggests school leaders try not to interfere with teachers’ planning periods, since any work they don’t get done during that time is work they have to take home at the end of the day.
On top of all those other issues, many teachers are also worried they could be exposed to COVID-19 while they’re at school, he said.
“Fort Worth ISD is not doing well taking things off their plate,” Poole said. “They’re actually adding more on.”
Teacher blames state, federal officials
A seventh-grade English teacher in Fort Worth ISD who spoke to the Star-Telegram on condition of anonymity said she knows several teachers who either are strongly considering leaving the profession or have already done so. Over the summer, she was concerned she might have to do the same. She wasn’t happy she was forced to confront that possibility, she said. She’s committed to the students and families at her school. But she was alarmed that conversations about reopening schools, both nationally and in Fort Worth, didn’t take teachers’ safety into account.
“I am a ‘hell or high water’ person,” she said. “But I’m not dying for it.”
The teacher said she was reassured when members of the Fort Worth ISD Board of Trustees listened to teachers’ concerns about how teachers and school support staff would be affected if the district reopened too soon. She was also reassured when she heard board members Jacinto Ramos and Quinton Phillips acknowledge the fact that COVID-19 disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic students. The teacher, a Latina, said that’s especially important for leaders in Fort Worth to understand because the school district primarily serves Black and Hispanic students.
The teacher said she’s been happy with how the school board and Superintendent Kent Scribner have handled the situation. She thinks the policies they’ve put into place, like bringing students back to school in phases, have been the best they could be under the circumstances. She also said she’s gotten strong support from her school’s principal. But she knows that isn’t the case for every teacher, and she worries about teacher friends in districts where officials haven’t been as cautious.
But she’s angry that state and national leaders haven’t taken sufficient steps to control the spread of the virus, and she thinks state officials have boxed local school districts into a difficult position in which they’re left to choose from bad options. She’s also been upset at the number of community members and leaders who have called teachers lazy for being reluctant to return to school in person in the middle of a pandemic. She pointed to a city council member in suburban Austin who wrote a Facebook post calling teachers leeches and calling for districts to fire those who didn’t want to return to school in person.
But as angry as the situation makes her, the teacher said she still finds her job rewarding. Her students have adapted well to online learning and found ways to make each other laugh while they’re separated, she said.
“If I had to choose a group that I was going to be doing this with, this is who I’d choose,” she said.
District tries to keep teachers in Fort Worth
Jerry Moore, Fort Worth ISD’s chief academic officer, acknowledged that teachers are doing their jobs in difficult circumstances this year. The district has asked teachers to do their jobs in an environment they’ve never worked in, he said, but officials have tried to offer support where they can.
Before the beginning of the school year, the district held focus group conversations with elementary, middle school and high school teachers to hear what teachers were excited about, what made them nervous and what responsibilities district officials could take off their plates, Moore said. After those conversations, district officials made several adjustments to try to lighten the load.
For example, kindergarten teachers told administrators that the Google Classroom platform didn’t work well for their students. They asked if they could switch to Seesaw, a platform for younger learners the district already used in pre-K classes. So the district made the change, he said.
“We’re doing everything we can to keep our teachers here in Fort Worth ISD,” Moore said.
Concerns about teacher morale and retention aren’t limited to traditional school districts. John Gasko, chief well-being and social and emotional learning officer at Uplift Education, said the charter school network has worried for years about the tight market for effective teachers in North Texas. But the pandemic has added concerns about teacher attrition into the equation, he said.
Uplift, which operates schools across North Texas, offers students three options for school this year: all virtual, all in-person or a combination of the two, in which students spend some days per week at school and some at home. Elementary school teachers teach either all online or all in person. Teachers at the upper levels teach both online and in person simultaneously.
The network has a mentoring program in which it partners younger teachers with more experienced colleagues. But the shift to online classes this year has meant many longer-tenured teachers must re-learn how to do their jobs along with their younger colleagues. So Uplift identified teachers who did well with remote learning and paired them with colleagues who need mentorship, Gasko said. The network also gives teachers tools to help manage job stress and help their students improve their emotional well-being, he said.
Online/in-person hybrid causes headaches
An eighth-grade Fort Worth ISD social studies teacher who spoke to the Star-Telegram on condition of anonymity said teaching in-person and online at the same time leaves her frustrated. Before the school year began, district officials distributed a survey to teachers asking if they’d prefer to teach online or in person. That left most teachers with the impression that they’d be able to choose, she said. But when the beginning of the school year approached, officials told teachers they’d all have to teach both, she said.
She’s also upset at the way her job responsibilities have expanded to include nearly all her waking hours. When the district moved its classes online, it allowed students to do school work and turn in assignments at any time of the day or night. But it also means she has to field emails from students and their parents late at night and early in the morning.
The teacher said she hasn’t seriously considered leaving the profession, but only because she isn’t in a position to do so. It will be another five years before she’s eligible to retire.
“If I could, I would,” she said. “I don’t feel like an effective teacher anymore.”
This story was originally published October 22, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
