Teaching can be stressful -- children's lives are at stake

This was written by Jim Parsons who is a professor at the University of Alberta. This was written as the Forward for the Alberta Teachers' Association's research update Reflections on Teaching: Teacher Efficacy and the Professional Capital of Alberta Teachers.

by Jim Parsons

I have been a teacher my entire life. I am proud to be a teacher and have often written about the fundamental nobility of the profession. That teachers engage children in loco parentis—acting with agency in the classroom to protect and help children build futures—suggests the power that society has granted teachers. Society believes that teachers are crucial. I agree. But, more important, teachers agree. Most teachers take up their work as a calling.

My experience has shown me, over and over, that teaching is not an easy profession. Rewarding? Yes! Easy? Well, not so much. Sometimes teachers feel overwhelmed by the work and the pressures of the job. These pressures force almost daily choices: Work or rest? Students or family? Self or others? Making these choices would be easy if teachers didn’t care, but, fortunately for everyone, they do care. Teachers are acting parents of the children they teach. Most teachers believe that they make a difference and are willing to do whatever it takes to make that difference. Some days teachers feel that they are living through the 1998 Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come in which the main character travels through hell to find and save his wife. It is probably not too over-the-top to suggest that teachers are willing to travel that same road with children. The research that follows makes that case clearly.

Yes, teaching can be that stressful. Children’s lives are at stake.

I am not making this up. Psychotherapist Carl Jung might well have had teachers in mind when he proposed the archetype of the wounded healer. Jung believed that, in relating to patients, an analyst can take on their pain, a phenomenon that can be both positive and negative. I know that this experience is part of the psyche of teachers. Teachers take on students’ wounds to gain the blessing: student learning. In his book The Wounded Healer, Catholic priest Henri Nouwen counselled men and women interested in serving their communities to begin by realizing that being wounded is a common human experience. Nouwen’s analysis—a suffering world, a suffering child and a suffering teacher—opens those who serve to being caring professionals. 

The research that follows offers a clear picture of how difficult teaching is and how radically the choices that teachers make can weigh on their bodies, minds and hearts. The following report is the collective story of almost 140 teachers: more than 90 from a large urban high school and just under 50 from all over Alberta. All volunteered to participate in this study, which asked them to identify high and low points in the year with respect to both their professional practice and their personal lives. Ultimately, data are the stories the research participants tell. 

Participants’ responses are stories about the work lives of teachers. These personal and professional stories highlight the collective difficulties and joys of their work—the highs and lows. They also help us understand the immensely difficult choices that teachers must make as they carry out their work. They are at once teaching their students and trying to survive. The data outline the shortcomings of their work, their own inabilities and their feelings about their successes and failures.

Teachers live in an environment that is constantly shifting: Will they have a job next year? Will the curriculum be redesigned or will their class size change just when they are becoming comfortable with the way things are? Will their colleagues be transferred? Will their school culture change? Knowing that they are not superheroes, will their energy wane? Will they receive support for their work? What might this support look like?

What follows is a report by teachers about what makes their job both difficult and rewarding. The findings from this study about the support that Alberta teachers need mirrors what researchers in

other places are reporting. Specifically, teachers in this study find great support in their colleagues and wish that they had more opportunities for collaboration. My own recent research on this topic (Exploring the Development of Teacher Efficacy Through Professional Learning Experiences, carried out with the assistance of Larry Beauchamp, Rob Klassen, Tracy Durksen and Leah Taylor) pointed to the same conclusion: teachers attain the highest level of professional growth by collaborating with colleagues.

Finally, this study offers a methodology for capturing teachers’ stories and insights. Any research study is more than data and findings; it is also about engaging with participants. In this study, teachers discuss their highs and lows and their ability to achieve a work–life balance. In this regard, the methodology is quite ingenious, for it encourages teachers to talk together about their own and their colleagues’ work lives. The study itself, in other words, is an instance of the kind of collaboration and community reflection that teachers find so powerful.

I have no doubt that the teachers and the school leaders who participated in this study know far more about themselves and their colleagues than they did when they began. I also believe that they have a clearer idea of what they might do to meet their own needs so that they have a better chance of fulfilling the needs of their students. I suggest that people interested in teachers’ work lives and in building the professional capital of teachers use the methodology described here as a year-end reflection activity.

The Children in the Numbers

This was written by Kurtis Hewson and Jim Parson. Hewson is currently a Faculty of Education Associate at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta and an award-winning teacher and school administrator. Parsons is a professor with the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta with four decades of experience teaching, writing and researching at the post-secondary level. This first appeared in Education Canada Magazine here.

by Kurtis Hewson and Jim Parsons

The face that launched a thousand ships.”

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”

“The personal is political.”

Through the ages, astute observers have understood the extra motivation created by personalization. Establishing a human connection evokes emotion and is a powerful catalyst for motivation that inspires and moves us to action. The same is true in schools.

Student achievement goals are often rooted in numbers; but numbers seldom motivate humans working with humans. They hardly ever motivate teachers. In fact, numbers can hide our true goal as teachers: children’s learning. For example, consider the following “typical” learning goals established in schools in relation to improving student achievement:

“Our school is focusing on increasing the percentage of Grade 2 students achieving ‘acceptable’ on the district’s reading assessment from 72 percent to 80 percent over the next three years.”

“This year, our goal is to improve student absence rates from an average of 2.1 days absent to 1.5 days absent.”

“Over the next two years, we plan to decrease the number of suspensions related to male misbehaviour from 112 to 50.”

On the surface, there is little wrong with any of these three goal statements. Each statement meets the SMART criteria connected to effective goal development. Each is Specific, Measurable, Attainable,Relevant and Time-bound.[1] Each can be further developed with related strategies to promote attainment. The problem is that common school goals like these focus on overall averages, percentages, or totals. And that is where they can lack power. By emphasizing overall averages, percentages, or totals, two basic problems emerge: 1) numbers, rather than children, become the focus; and 2) subgroups or individual students can be hidden within the overall averages.

Focus on students

Sharratt and Fullan remind us, “We are wired to feel things for people, not for numbers.”[2] A goal like improving overall student absence rates from an average of 2.1 to 1.5 absent days may not inspire much passion or commitment. It is hard for teachers to get excited about making a difference for children when the focus is on nebulous “school averages.”

What if the issue were framed in the following way:

Last year, our overall student absence rate was 2.1 days per student from Grades 3 to 6. When examining our current student population of 300 students, actually 200 students missed less than a day all year! Another 50 students missed 2 or fewer days. However, 30 students missed 5-10 days and 20 students missed more than 10 days. We have compiled a list for each grade level of the students with 5-10 days absent, which are coloured yellow, and the students with more than 10 days, which are coloured red. Let’s start to talk about what actions we can be putting in place to specifically address these yellow- and red-coded students. Which yellow students can we reduce down to 2 or less days absent? With appropriate interventions, which red students could become yellow?

Such personalized focus shifts teachers’ conversations from general school-wide strategies to goals for specific students. Interventions can be established that focus on specific students and subgroups of heightened concern, and ongoing monitoring can be established to focus on individual student progress.

Consider this literacy example:

In previous years, the Grade 3 team used multiple measures to determine students who were reading at grade level upon entering and exiting Grade 3. Last year, we succeeded in raising students’ overall entry to exit progress from 75 percent to 82 percent, although students fell short of our goal of 85 percent overall. This year, the grade-level team will focus on individuals rather than the overall average. The team has found that 22 students entering Grade 3 are not yet reading at grade level. They posted these students’ pictures whenever they met as a Grade 3 team; and, by mid-year, they already knew that Susan, Michael, Philip, Esther, Frank, Desmond, and Cecilia were well on their way to reading at grade level. That only leaves another 15 students to place special attention and focus on for the remainder of the year.

It is easy to see that the approaches taken in the two examplespersonalize and make learning goals about children, not numbers. We are not suggesting that schools eliminate the formation of goals, and we subscribe to the power of SMART goals as foundations for sound school improvement. However, attempting to raise an overall school average by 5 percentage points likely will fail to elicit the commitment needed to succeed. By contrast, when specific students are identified and collectively targeted, the overall averages, percentages, and totals will take care of themselves. Teachers will expend tireless efforts when they see a difference being made for one child.

First steps

When starting to focus on children rather than faceless averages, consider using pictures. It is powerful when teachers see the faces of those children most in need of everyone’s support. We are not suggesting public displays that inherently ostracize children and families! But in closed staff or team meetings, sharing children’s photographs on PowerPoints or posters personalizes the goal.

We have experienced a celebratory final staff meeting where, rather than showing a bar graph of yearly school progress from 75 percent to 78 percent reading proficiency overall, photographs of students who moved from at-risk to at grade level were shared. The emotion and celebration among teachers was inspiring, and they shared success stories with each other and found it fulfilling to see for whom exactly they had made a difference. The buzz in the room also definitely motivated teachers to continue to build upon these successes. There were still students who needed help!

The importance of disaggregation

Moving from overall to individual analysis more than just inspires and creates purpose. It pulls back the veil to display children (and sub-groups of students) who can be lost when focusing upon overall averages. Consider Alan Blankstein’s observation:

Data represent all groups within a school. Overall averages can hide persistent problems that do not reveal themselves until the data are disaggregated in order to describe each group that makes up part of the student population. A school can take pride in the fact that its mean Grade 8 reading score is at the 72nd percentile, but that figure may hide evidence that although 10% of the class reads at the 99th percentile, a troubling 15% are reading below the 40th percentile. Unless this school examines disaggregated data, the needs of 15% of its students may be overlooked.”[3]

We further suggest that the “lost” 15 percent in Blankstein’s example should be individually identified, regularly monitored, and supported through specific interventions or focused strategies. In addition, sometimes successful overall scores and averages can foster or promote a degree of comfort (at best) or educational apathy (at worst) within a school. Our experience suggests that it can be difficult to create a sense of urgency for that small sub-group of students that remains at-risk when heralding the success of a superior overall average.

A school where 91 percent of students are proficient in reading has achieved an outstanding accomplishment. We should take time to celebrate this school success. Then, let’s go back to work! There remains nine percent of the population (almost one child in ten) still not achieving at grade level. Those children may be frustrated, upset, confused, hurting, and blocked from growing towards personal goals. We are still falling short of our mission to ensure success for all our students – each child.

Numbers distance; faces motivate. By remembering that a single child’s learning success is our ultimate teaching goal, schools can ensure the development of strong emotional connections between educators and their students that carry a sense of urgency. The faces of children should be the goals of our teaching – it is these young faces who will launch our ships.