Uplift teachers as pillars of the community

While teachers are known for juggling increasingly difficult circumstances with magnificent grace, teaching is still undervalued.

An Ipsos/USA Today poll found that nearly three-quarters of Americans said that a teacher had a significant, positive impact on their life, and a majority believed teachers are not fairly compensated for their work. And their belief is borne out in the data, which shows that teachers in many parts of the country earn less than the family living wage. “The profession isn’t as respected as it used to be, when teachers were pillars of the community,” said Kimberlin Rivers, Vice President, Instruction at Weld North Education.

But the pandemic has introduced a shift in the public narrative around essential workers, and teachers are no exception. “During a crisis, assumptions start to fall apart a little bit and people start to question things they had previously accepted and taken for granted,” Queen’s University Belfast Professor Tony Gallagher, who tracked the shifting public perceptions of teachers during COVID, said. “There is a very strong sense of social solidarity at the moment; people recognising how we all depend on each other.”

We’ve always known that teachers have influence extending far beyond their stated role. The numerous roles teachers play for students and the community—mentor, coach, counselor, social worker—were brought into sharper focus this past year as the pandemic underscored many systemic issues in American education.

“When we talk about teachers and teaching, it’s not just the students they’re impacting,” Rivers said. “They’re engaging and impacting families and—by extension—whole communities.”

Advocate for a more supportive, flexible future for the profession

While professionals in other fields benefit from pandemic-induced workplace flexibility, teachers will likely return to a more rigid schedule as they head back into the classroom. But schools can and should learn from this experience and find ways to use technology to create efficiencies and flexibility for their teachers.

In a piece titled “Why Schools Should Embrace Flexibility and Innovation Beyond COVID-19,” the Urban Institute argued that making flexible school options permanent could benefit many students, including the significant portion of students who work while attending school.

The same argument could be made for teachers, who are already dealing with enormous amounts of stress and burnout. According to the 2019 PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, half of public-school teachers were considering quitting their jobs before COVID. And the stress of the pandemic has only intensified the crisis. Retirements are up, morale is down, and schools are scrambling to fill open positions as their teachers decide not to return to the classroom in the fall. If we want to keep teachers in the profession, we need to find ways to embrace flexibility and give teachers more, not fewer, options for when and how they connect with their students.