While virtually no industry was safe from effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, one profession was hit hard — and seems to still be dealing with fallout. Teachers across the U.S. have quit in droves, with at least 300,000 leaving the profession between March of 2020 and May of 2022. But even aside from the pandemic, teachers are facing burnout from parent attacks, teacher shortages, and legislation targeting education.
A new book explores the teacher crisis in America. "The Teachers: A Year Inside America's Most Vulnerable, Important Profession" by journalist Alexandra Robbins takes a deep dive at what teaching has been like for the last few years.
"The teaching profession is in trouble because teachers are fleeing schools, because of working conditions, and the way they have been treated," Robbins told KMOX. "And if we don't step up and listen to teachers and speak out for them, it's gonna be too late."
Robbins' book follows three teachers over the course of a year. She said she learned that the conditions for teachers are even worse than many people thought — even in districts with better funding. "Teachers, I can tell you, are not fine," she said. "They are not being treated the way they should be by districts, by administrators, by politicians."
While her book has a section on COVID-19, she doesn't focus on it, which she said is because the problems teachers face existed in education before — the pandemic only exacerbated them and made them more apparent to people.
Robbins talked to teachers who dealt with toxic workplace cliques, unsupportive principals, a school board discriminating against students in special education, and more. All these things have led to burnout in her subjects, a common occurrence among teachers.
"Teachers do have inadequate workplace support and resources, unmanageable workloads, and there's too much high stakes testing and pressure on that testing. And experts say that that's what causes teacher burnout," Robbins said. "Teacher burnout is a popular phrase — so popular that when burnout is listed in the Merriam Webster dictionary, the two featured contextual examples are both about teachers."
Robbins said that while her book is for parents and teachers, it's just as much for people on the outside so that they can really understand what teachers are going through.
"In order to fix our education system, we need to understand it," she said. "And we can't truly understand it unless we see it from the teacher's perspective."
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