MindShift

‘I’m Only 1 Person’: Teachers Feel Torn Between Their Students And Their Own Kids

Fri, 18 Sep 2020 07:40:46 GMT

I catch Patricia Stamper with a Zoom meeting going in the background and a child at her knee asking for attention. Stamper works as a teacher’s assistant for special education students in the Washington, D.C., public schools.

These days, her virtual classroom is at home — and so is her toddler, who has a genetic disorder called Noonan syndrome, and her kindergartner, who receives speech therapy. Her husband works outside the home at a golf course.

Stamper says her older son can’t sit still for three to four hours a day of screen-based learning. The other day, while she was working, he started acting up, imitating his favorite YouTube star. Soon the teacher was texting her — her son was nearly kicked out of virtual class. “It’s hard to check him,” she says. “I’m trying to do my job and, you know, bounce back and forth, but I’m only one person.”

There are more than 4 million public, private and charter school teachers in the United States. The typical teacher is a woman in her early 40s. Over the summer, NPR and Ipsos surveyed a national sample of teachers, and we found that about half had children under 18 at home. Of those, 57% agreed with the statement: “I cannot properly do my job from home while also taking care of my children.”

And now that some students and teachers are returning to the classroom, the balance hasn’t necessarily gotten any easier.

Stamper with her husband, Pete, and two sons at their home in Washington, D.C. (Jared Soares for NPR)

As the school year began, NPR put out a call asking teachers who are also parents to tell us about their experiences. We heard back from nearly 100. They told us of losing colleagues to the coronavirus, staying up past midnight planning lessons and having nightmares about returning to school.

We heard these feelings echoed from all over the United States. In places like El Paso, Texas, where Andrea Aguirre teaches sixth-grade English and has two children, one with Tourette syndrome: “I have never worked harder in my life, the level of mental fatigue is tremendous and there is no downtime.”

Billie Bininger is an elementary school computer science teacher and mother of two in Lancaster, Ohio. “I have been working at my school full days, coming home and working until 12 to 3 in the morning for the past month,” she told us. “I worked about 16 hours just this past weekend. I’m exhausted and can’t sleep because I’m so anxious about all the things that still need to be done.”

And Geoff Bowman, a high school chemistry teacher in Hillsborough, N.C., with three elementary-age children, seemed to speak for many teachers when he summed up the dilemma: “I love my kids; I love my students. Both deserve my full attention, but ultimately I’m falling short for both.”

“I just want to die”

Bethany is a high school science teacher in New Jersey. Her husband teaches French at the same school, and they have three young sons, ages 8, 6 and 4. (We’re not using their last name to protect the family’s privacy.)

Like Bowman in North Carolina, Bethany was one of many teachers who told NPR they felt torn between their students’ needs and the needs of their own children.

Last spring, she said some of her students were working long hours at essential jobs, taking care of siblings and/or sharing devices. As a result, they would often turn in their work late into the evening, and she then would have to stay up to grade it for the next day.

One student stopped handing in work altogether. When she finally tracked him down by phone, she says, he started crying and told her he was suicidal.

At the same time, her youngest child, a preschooler, developed a mysterious chronic skin condition. One evening in April, she was sitting in the emergency room with him when she got a message on her phone. “One of my students was like, ‘I need your help.’ And I was like, ‘I just can’t right now.’ And she was like, ‘That’s ridiculous. I’m telling my guidance counselor.’ ”

She and her husband often found themselves working from 5 a.m. until midnight, responding to students and fitting their own children’s schooling in between.

Bethany says her middle child, then a kindergartner, would often be doing lessons until bedtime. He became lonely, anxious and depressed. Then one day, he stopped eating. She said it took a few weeks to fully realize.

“We were still working!” she explains. “So sometimes for dinnertime, we would plop them in front of the TV, or we would make them sit at the table with us while we were working.”

One night, suspicious, she looked through the garbage and found napkins full of spit-out food. By that time, her son had lost significant weight.

She says he improved after he started seeing a therapist online. And while his school is still remote this fall, he has joined a travel soccer team for an important social outlet. But, Bethany says through tears, she’ll never forget “watching my kid lay in bed all day and saying, ‘I just want to die.’ ”

Melanie Goldberg, who teaches English as a new language in Brooklyn and has an only child, is one of the few teacher-parents who told NPR that she has chosen to prioritize her students’ needs outright. Many of her students, she says, are recent immigrants and some are undocumented. She has spent hours on the phone helping them get set up with Internet service and deal with other immediate needs.

As for her own 9-year-old son, she says, “He reads well. He’s proficient in different subjects. His academics are not what I care about right now. I know that we will catch up later. Safety is important, our mental health is important and then my students.”

Patricia Stamper helps her eldest son with schoolwork at their home. (Jared Soares for NPR)

“Somebody gets the short end of the stick”

Educators told us they worry about their safety and their families’ safety. At the same time, they’re facing new and difficult professional challenges. Many said they are used to working hard, used to having to improvise with few resources, but the lack of clarity from leadership at all levels is hitting particularly hard.

Patricia Stamper says what she needs, in the end, is some direction from her school district: “Like, you let me know what you want me to do, and I’ll figure out how to do it.”

Simultaneously teaching online and in-person students is difficult. Schedules often don’t line up, with teachers in the classroom full time and children part time. Or different schools will have different days in session.

As a result, child care costs are eating up salaries — for those who have money to spare to begin with. “I’m going to work for health insurance,” said Mike Vial, who teaches language arts in a rural county near Detroit. “All my money is going to pay for child care.”

His two children were excluded from a “pod” child care share with friends, he said, because of the risk he faced going into the classroom.

Brandi Scraper teaches in Oklahoma and is a single mother with five children ranging in age from 8 to 17. Since she herself is teaching in the classroom, “I wanted to keep as many of my kids out of the classroom as possible to minimize our exposure,” she said. “I feel like they were the sacrifice.”

Scraper sent only her youngest, twins, into in-person school, and they found out they were exposed to someone with COVID-19 after the second day. She and her twins stayed home for two weeks. They later tested negative, she told us, and meanwhile she kept supporting her students from home through quarantine.

Shana White teaches computer science to middle schoolers in suburban Atlanta. Currently, she wears a mask and a face shield and sits behind plexiglass at the back of the classroom. She has to teach students simultaneously online and in person.

“It doesn’t work,” she says, “but that’s what they’re forcing us to do.”

The problem? “You can’t give proper attention to both groups equally. … Somebody gets the short end of the stick.”

White says her son and daughter are learning virtually while her husband works from home. She says it’s killing their love of school: “Every time in the morning when my son gets up, he goes, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to do virtual school again.’ And just hearing that from my 8-year-old, it breaks my heart.”

But she also doesn’t think it’s safe to be learning in person, especially for her son, who has asthma. Every day after coming home, she showers and changes clothes before coming near her family, to avoid contamination.

“I don’t feel like it’s safe to be in schools,” she says. “But we are a right-to-work state. As my job is requiring me to, I’m in here being as safe and cautious as I can.”

Patricia Stamper holds her younger son, 1, at their home. (Jared Soares for NPR)

“People are vilifying educators”

Adding to personal and professional struggles, teachers told us they’re also feeling affected by public frustration and complaints about teachers.

“People are vilifying educators,” says Heather Cline, who teaches high school Spanish in Seattle and is the mother of a 6-year-old who was adopted from Azerbaijan and is an English-language learner. “I’m beyond frustrated and overwhelmed, and I don’t feel as if my district is supporting us educators nearly enough.”

Melanie Goldberg in Brooklyn agrees: “Even though I have friends who know that I’m a teacher, I still end up hearing the negative teacher talk a lot.”

She says some more privileged families have a “client” mentality, expecting personalized service from their children’s teachers. “It’s uninformed, and it’s pretty mean, even though they know personally for me how much of a struggle it is or how unrealistic it would be for them to totally revamp their professional lives with no support.”

Jessica, whose last name we’re not using to protect her family’s privacy, summed up the uncertainty that teachers who are parents are feeling, twice over, right now. “The best way I can describe the entirety of this experience is just a giant mental seesaw.”

Jessica is a math and reading intervention teacher who lives on a farm in rural Minnesota. She says she herself and her older daughter are on the autism spectrum, while her younger daughter has a disorder with some psychiatric symptoms called PANDAS.

Jessica has been going back and forth with her district about whether she’ll be allowed an accommodation to teach from home — and going back and forth with herself about whether she should take one:

“One minute you’re like: Yup, we’re in person. I can do this. You know, it’s not ethical for me to, like, desert my students and be unwilling to do something that’s scary and makes me anxious because I’m selfish and I just don’t feel like it. So I’m going to suck it up and do it. … And the next minute, I see that we added seven cases in our county today, and I feel like, oh, my God, everybody’s going to die!”

A Growing Demand For Wilderness Education May Widen Learning Inequality

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 08:13:10 GMT

A high school senior kneels in the forest duff, grasping a handmade bow. He moves his arm back and forth, and a high-pitched squeaking sound ricochets through the woods.

Eight-year-old Asher Wool stands a few feet away. He explains what this teenager is up to.

“So, he’s rubbing the string against the spindle to make a coal that can make a fire,” Asher says.

No matches. No crumpled newspaper. The teenager has worked for years to develop the skill of building a friction fire here at Earthwork, a wilderness school located in western Massachusetts.

“We work with knives, we work with fire, we work with saws, we fell trees, we build shelters, we track animals,” says director Frank Grindrod, who founded Earthwork more than 20 years ago.

Asher spent three weeks at Earthwork camp this summer, with the kids all in masks and mostly keeping 6 feet apart. And even though he’ll be in school this fall — “We’re probably doing Zoom school,” he says — he’ll also be out in these woods one full day a week, participating in a program that was previously only available to home-schooled kids.

His mom, Andrea Wool, says with the demands of remote schooling, her son is going to need every minute in the woods he can get.

“It’s just a lot of time on a screen,” Wool says. “And Asher’s a wiggly kid. He likes to move.”

Golden age of outdoor education

Demand has surged for outdoor and wilderness programs, driven by parents desperate to get their kids off-screen and out of the house. Numerous New England wilderness schools report they could double or triple their already increased programming and still have waiting lists.

“I think we’re entering the golden age of outdoor education,” says Sam Stegeman, executive director of the Vermont Wilderness School. “Because of COVID, one of the silver linings is we’re finally getting huge numbers of American children outdoors during the school day.”

But who gets to participate in wilderness education? Like the much-hyped learning pod phenomenon, the rush to secure spots in wilderness home-school groups can easily become another example of the opportunity hoarding that leads to learning inequality.

David Brownstein is executive director of Wild Earth, a wilderness school in New York’s Hudson Valley. He says that for years he called his school accessible because of its generous financial aid program.

“But it really didn’t meet the needs of people who are like, ‘I don’t have money for these kinds of things at all. They’re not even on the menu of what’s possible for my family,'” Brownstein says.

Four years ago, Wild Earth began a collaboration serving the 2,200 public middle school students in the urban district of Kingston, N.Y. The instructors took the kids on forest field trips, and they met the same kids on the school playground twice a week during recess.

The collaboration is especially meaningful to Zachary Jones, a Wild Earth program team leader. Jones is Black and Asian — that’s rare in the world of wilderness education — and he was one of the few kids of color in the woods with Wild Earth when he started doing their programs 17 years ago, at age 9.

“Nature doesn’t care how much money, what your race is, all these things,” Jones says. “It doesn’t care how cool you are. It doesn’t care [about] your social status in school. It’s a level playing field.”

Mary Beth Bonville, assistant superintendent of Kingston schools, says the forest field trips were a revelation to many Kingston middle schoolers.

“We have students that have commented that they’ve never been in the woods before. They didn’t know certain insects; they didn’t understand how to build a fire.”

Bonville adds that there are numerous academic benefits to Kingston’s collaboration with Wild Earth.

“We’ve had teachers that have actually taken the programming from outside and brought it into their classroom,” she says.

But ultimately, Bonville says, the benefits to Kingston students come down to the social and emotional support kids receive from Wild Earth staff.

(From left) Program leaders Jessie Lotrecchiano and Zachary Jones and Executive Director David Brownstein of Wild Earth, a wilderness school in New York’s Hudson Valley. (Ben James for NPR)

However, the COVID-19 pandemic has put that social and emotional support for students on hold, at least for now. Kingston — like most urban districts across the country — is starting the year remotely. Field trips are canceled. Recess doesn’t exist. Instead, David Brownstein hopes Wild Earth will find other ways to meet kids’ needs for safe, structured outdoor play.

“We may end up in a parking lot running games after the school day,” Brownstein says. “And then, as soon as they’re done, we’re like, ‘Come on out, and let’s run around together.'”

“I got the flame!”

Back in western Massachusetts, Andrea Wool — who already worked at home before the pandemic — says she knows it’s a privilege to be able to pull her son Asher out of remote school for a weekly day in the woods at Earthwork.

“I have the flexibility and schedule to just be able to drive him out here,” Wool says. “Not everybody can do that.”

Asher himself is still working on fire-building. He kneels before a small bundle of tinder he’s placed on a rock, using a survival tool called a ferro rod and striker to make a spark and set his tinder aflame.

Once a spark connects to the tinder and starts to glow, Earthwork instructor Michael Haynack picks up the bundle. He coaches Asher on how to use a long, gentle breath to build the heat of the coal. Suddenly the whole bundle comes alight in Haynack’s hand.

“Finally!” Asher shouts.

“Nice,” says Haynack. “I’m sorry we dropped it pretty quick there.”

“It’s OK,” Asher says. “At least I got the flame!”

Asher’s pride is evident. A little fire to help him make it through the rest of his week at Zoom school.

We’re All New This Year: How Advice for Rookie Teachers Can Help Everyone During Virtual Learning

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 07:10:01 GMT

How can I teach music if the kids aren’t allowed to sing indoors? How will lag time affect group singing online? How will I make students feel seen and heard via Zoom? Those were some of the questions that elementary music teacher Angela Carpenter spent her summer trying to figure out. Though she would be entering her 15th year of teaching, it was like being new to the job. “No one has done this before. Even the teaching that we’re doing now is so vastly different than what we did in the spring,” she said, “because that was panic teaching.”

She’s not alone with that thought.

Furthermore, new teachers are in good company this fall. We are ALL "new teachers" this coming year … no one has really done this kind of teaching before!

— Angela Carpenter (@NotesByMrsC) August 11, 2020

“Everyone who’s having to learn all these new platforms and make bigger changes in their teaching than they’ve ever had to make in a single year is in some ways a rookie,” said Roxanna Elden, a former classroom teacher and author of the advice book for teachers See Me After Class.

Being a rookie comes with a set of challenges that Elden knows well. In 2015 she created The New Teacher Disillusionment Power Pack, a month-long email series to help educators make it through the toughest part of the year. Almost 20,000 teachers have signed up since then.

The basic rookie problem, she explained, is a combination of exhaustion, high sensitivity about making mistakes and fear of failing at an extremely important job. Those stressors often reach a boiling point in October or November — a time when new teachers may end up crying in their cars. Given the stress, uncertainty and unfamiliarity of just about everything teachers are experiencing right now, Elden wouldn’t be surprised to see a similar trajectory this fall. “The difference is that no one is in their car. They’re either off screen or on mute or in a different part of their house, (going) through that same emotional breakdown.”

In her email series, Elden coaches new teachers through the toughest part of the year by encouraging them to get more rest, develop a support network and accept imperfection. Here’s how similar advice could help all teachers as they embark on a potentially overwhelming school year during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reducing Exhaustion

Summer is typically a time for teachers to recharge. But this year, many people have been operating at “surge capacity,” and educators had to prepare for fall amid ever-changing expectations. Carpenter recalled talking with her colleagues at Lexington Public Schools in Massachusetts before school began and saying, “We’re so tired right now, how are we going to even manage?” One day, her department head told the whole team to take a full day off. No lesson plans, no emails, no texts. Just rest. Carpenter and her colleagues resisted the idea at first, but ultimately it made a difference. “It just took that one day to kind of snap me out of it. And then I felt better. Not 100 percent, but I felt like, OK, this isn’t going to be as awful.”

Opportunities to refuel can come in smaller chunks, too. “It’s important to take time to breathe,” said Jen Hawkins, host of the Beginning Teacher Wednesdays podcast. Hawkins is an assistant principal at Hortons Creek Elementary School in Cary, North Carolina, which started the year with virtual instruction in mid-August. She said the preparation time and energy required for online teaching is grueling, as is being attached to screens all day. To ground themselves, some teachers at her school have been walking outside during lunch or simply closing their computers and stepping away when possible.

Elden, too, said that managing energy levels is critical. “We hear the term self-care thrown around, but often you don’t realize how bad you need a break until you’re taking it out on the kids and then feeling terrible that you did.” In addition to reminding new teachers to get sufficient sleep, she encourages them to find one aspect of the classroom each week that they can “get on autopilot,” such as the morning routine. Veteran teachers have likely worked out a number of these systems in their physical classrooms but may need to find new ones for virtual or hybrid settings. Elden said to start by identifying a source of constant stress throughout the week. Then use the weekend to devise a solution, so that “at least you know that next week is going to go more smoothly.”

Creating a board of advisers

One difference between this year and Carpenter’s first year teaching is that she knows who to turn to for support. She and the other elementary music teachers in her district worked together this summer to propose a feasible remote schedule, and she said they will continue to collaborate as they figure out what works and what doesn’t this year.

Schools often pair new teachers with mentors for that kind of support. While that term might feel odd for a veteran teacher, Elden said that cultivating a “board of advisers” can be useful at any stage of your career. The board should include teachers of similar subjects, teachers of similar kids, someone who can be trusted to be discreet, and someone “who is not a teacher but who knows your strengths that you can call when you really just feel like you’re failing.” Another addition this year might be a colleague or relative to help with technology. In a USA Today/Ipsos survey conducted in May, a quarter of teachers 55 and older reported difficulty with using technology for distance learning.

Hawkins recommended that teachers’ support systems include people who help you grow, people who remind you to put kids first, and people to hold you accountable for staying grounded. “It is so important for us to name our people who are going to help support us … and if we don’t have those people, now is the time to find them.”

Accepting imperfection

Teaching is hard, and new teachers often worry that they are secretly failing and about to be exposed, according to Elden. Experienced teachers are more likely to know that they’re not the only ones struggling, but the adjustment to virtual or hybrid teaching may bring back some of those insecurities. “Being a veteran teacher, I’ve always felt like, ‘I got this. I’ve done this before. If I have a little bump in the road it’ll be fine because I know what to do,’” Carpenter said. Now, she anticipates needing to give herself grace when, for example, a virtual lesson tanks and kids tune out. “I just need to be OK with failing,” she said.

Part of new teachers’ stress comes not just from individual mistakes, but from worrying about “failing at a job they consider one of the most important in the world,” said Elden. Between concerns about COVID-19 learning loss and a sharper spotlight on racial inequities in the U.S., some teachers may be feeling that burden even more right now. Elden wants to remind them to focus on what they can control. “Your job description has temporarily changed,” she said. “Being a good teacher with moments of greatness and moments of adequateness is OK.”

Hawkins advocated a practice she does for herself. Each night in her planner she writes one thing she did well that day. The habit provides a boost in the moment, and when she looks back over a few weeks or months, she can see how small successes have accumulated into larger progress. Hawkins didn’t always have that clarity, though. Faced with doubts in her first year of teaching, she readied her resume for jobs in other fields. The lesson she’s learned since then — that growth comes from discomfort — is applicable to everyone during distance learning, she said. “Sometimes you have to just jump in and do it so you can get better.”

Carpenter hopes her own willingness to jump in and to accept her imperfections will allow student to do the same. For her first asynchronous lesson she created a slide that says, “This is all new for everyone … even for me!”