Reasonable Expectations and Workload

The Charge

Elevate and alleviate teachers’ daily work, limiting bureaucratic and non-instructional tasks and allowing them to focus on student learning.

Research Findings:

• During the pandemic, teachers taught groups of students in-person and online, facilitated family communication in multiple languages, made visits and deliveries to students’ homes, and took phone calls at all hours around parents’ work schedules.
  • These efforts often went unnoticed in the broader school community.
• Upon the return to classrooms, teachers found themselves with scores of additional roles and responsibilities beyond the exhaustive list from prior to the pandemic.
  • They were required to clean and disinfect classrooms, maintain public health measures, and provide coverage for sick teachers’ classrooms during breaks, in addition to mediating both in-person and online teaching and finding new ways to teach with distancing protocols.
• So much had been added to teachers’ already full plates since the start of the pandemic, to the point that teachers described being burned out with some considering leaving the profession.
  • New responsibilities have not been accompanied with additional time, compensation, or recognition, and these weighed on the mental health of teachers.

Potential Action Steps:

• Initiate a social-media campaign that seeks to showcase educators’ efforts during pandemic-era learning. Tell the stories of the extraordinary efforts to ensure students continued to learn in the toughest of times.
• Conduct an audit of non-instructional tasks required of teachers. Determine which tasks can be done by other stakeholders. For those that require teachers, allocate time to complete these tasks in their compensated workday.