Blog post #1

🍎Teacher Struggles and Burnout📚

Various aspects to do with the struggles of teaching are addressed by Justin Minkel in the article, "Teaching Never Gets Any Easier. But It Gets Better". Minkle focuses on the difficulties faced, reasons to not give up, and what can be done. However, in the documentary Teach, the struggles of teaching are also spoken about and demonstrated by four teachers that the film follows. In Teach, something called teacher burnout is discussed and illustrated as well. The struggles of teaching are something that comes with the job that will never go away but can be altered just as Minkel's article suggests. He first speaks about why teaching remains hard even after doing it for, however, many years. Minkel supports his idea about why the job is difficult using the example of being observed by a principal. He addressed this instance because not only does being observed cause stress for some teachers, but sometimes that principal just happens to walk in on the worst day (Minkel). Another part of Minkel's article focuses on is why teachers shouldn't give up or quit. He suggests many reasons not to give up; such as working hard with your students so you can also laugh hard with them. The opportunity to teach the former student's siblings down the road is another reason why Minkle suggests to not give up (Minkel). The idea that even when things get tough, teachers shouldn't quit relates to Teach on many levels. Shelby Harris, who is featured in this documentary is a seventh-grade math teacher who encounters many struggles with her class. The film begins with her students doing very poorly, and most have scores that don't meet the standards of their grade level. When she realizes that her class isn't gripping the material, she tries a new way of teaching, which is using Khan Academy (Shelby Harris). Keep in mind at this time. Shelby is struggling with herself while trying to figure out why her students are doing so poorly. Although this situation is affecting her on a personal level she doesn't let the stress take over  (Shelby Harris). Her classroom is soon transformed from a traditional learning environment to strictly a computer only classroom. Shelby will no longer stand up in front of the classroom and present information while the kids listen, but now they will actually learn using a computer program instead (Shelby Harris). She is relying on the change to Khan Academy to be successful and give her students a chance to grasp the information, especially since the year is progressing quickly. After some time passes and the excitement of the change to Khan Academy fades away, she notices her student's scores are not improving (Shelby Harris). At this point in time, most teachers would encounter what is called a teacher burnout. When an instructor faces continuous stress, they are bound to encounter a teacher burnout. The stressors experienced in the workplace that accumulate until the individual reaches the max capacity they can handle is what teacher burnout consists of (Herman et al.). The components of a burnout consist of emotional exhaustion, detachment within the self, and reduced degrees of self-efficacy (Herman et al.). Clearly, by the enormity of this problem, teachers may fear that the stressors will take over. Although Shelby could've faced teacher burnout when dealing with her class, she didn't because she remained in positive spirits. After realizing Khan Academy wasn't doing the trick for her students, she took time to learn the program completely and then gave this method another attempt. She organized advanced students with struggling students at the same table, learning the same lesson. The students who weren't struggling could coach the ones who were struggling easily. Shelby set the students up accordingly for the struggling students to gain help and support (Shelby Harris). Her method was finally successful, all her time, effort, and patience was evident at last when she received the test scores (Shelby Harris). In fact, many of her students who were far below their grade level actually improved enormously with only three months of enforcing her new method of teaching Khan Academy (Shelby Harris).  I feel if I were in Shelby's situation with my class, I would have high levels of stress accumulating, and I would possibly be at risk for teacher burnout. After seeing her handle it the way she did, I was very impressed by her ways of avoiding teacher burnout. In my opinion, to efficiently avoid teacher burnout, the individual must be confident in themselves and in the methods they are using for the students. The teacher also must have good stress managing skills and have much support from friends and family. Since stress and teacher burnout has been proved to affect the health of the students and teachers negatively, prevention is crucial (Herman et al.). Since I have been working with youth for the past eight years, I feel preventing teacher burnout could be easily done by everything I've seen. The children and students trust they can rely on their teacher. Therefore, the teacher must fulfill his or her career expectancies and ensure confidence in the students at all times. In my opinion, the teacher must take good care of them self to avoid teacher burn out. Meditation is a good outlet for stress reliving that could alleviate some of the instructor's stressors that could bring on teacher burn out. The teacher must avoid letting stress take over because their students are important. The student's success is imperative, and Shelby Harris demonstrated that perfectly by her natural ability to properly cope with stress in Teach (Shelby Harris). I feel that children are very observant, so if the teacher is declining, the youth will catch on quickly. Since students depend on the teacher, they will notice that he or she is struggling and the youth most likely will act out. Acting out could result in failure and poor test scores which is why prevention of teacher burnout should be enforced and advocated from today on!🏫