Teachers stress shouldn’t be ignored

Teachers are regularly overwhelmed by the unrealistic expectation of  the amount of work placed on them.

Teachers are regularly overwhelmed by the unrealistic expectation of the amount of work placed on them.

Teachers all over our country deal with more than just grading papers and giving assignments. Educators have to put up with the pressure put on them by administration and standards that are set which involve their students’ performance.

The belief that teachers are at school when students are there and leave when students leave is not true. A survey done by Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation found that teachers work 10 hours and 40 minutes on an average day. That’s a lot more than just the eight to three schedule of students.

Students might feel that the extra hours they have to spend on loads of school work the teachers put on them is the reason teachers have to work so many hours, especially if they have more challenging classes. But students forget that the teachers not only have school work to deal with, but they are also under a great deal of pressure from their bosses. District and State administration have daunting goals for their educators to try and reach when it comes to the amount of material they have to try and teach and the performance of their students.

The Guardian did a survey of teachers’ well-beings and found that 82% of teachers said their workload has become unmanageable. Many of the teachers feel this way because the federal and state governments have piled too much performance pressure on their schools.

This isn’t right for teachers who know how to teach material properly but aren’t able to because of the unrealistic performance standards that they have to try and reach. Because teachers can’t educate their students properly, the students are feeling the repercussion of rushed course work.

The Gallup’s State of America’s Schools Report did a survey of K-12 teachers in 2012. The survey found that the teachers who were stressed out and feeling overwhelmed affected the happiness of their students, and 45% of students reported to feel “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” from their schoolwork.

Not only is the stress put on educators affecting the students directly but it’s also affecting the teachers themselves. A recent report from the Alliance for Excellent Education found that about 13% of the nation’s 3.4 million teachers move schools or leave the profession every year. There are a large number of educators leaving a job where stability is the best for the kids learning.

We can’t keep ignoring our teachers who are in desperate need of the support from their communities. These are the people who are educating the next generation of kids who will lead the country someday. If we don’t help and support our educators than we do currently, we will start to see the affect in how our society functions with kids who were never educated properly.