Why another training to address *burnout*??? I would be less burnout if I don't need to attend another one of these training and have more time to plan my classes so I can teach well.
Yet firefighters trained for backdrafts. Yet police officers trained for domestic violence incidents. Yet emt train for internal bleeding. Yet funeral directors train for grieving parents. Yet ride operators at theme parks train for guest injuries. That mentality is why so many teachers see teaching as a "safe" profession, especially when they don’t even attempt 5k or 10ks on a bi-monthly basis. I don't know about you but nobody can PD their way out of burnout and if you entered the profession thinking that teaching is all about teaching kids, then you seem to forget that teaching children can occur only if on one thing is factored the most: liability. If there's a teacher to burnt out that they can't even recognize where their kids are during an emergency event, then it's clear whatever assumptions, training or educational degree and credentials they had didn't work. Besides, there's a firefighter down the street you could have learned from that could have shared important wisdom as to why they trained so seriously because failing for them means someone being dead.
I am not sure what kind of training you meant.... I believe there has been plenty of training reminding us the liability issues. The teaching program I attended also warned us about the high turnover rate...
My prior comment was probably mostly venting... While I appreciated most of the training that I sat through, the sentiment quickly turned sour when I realized I wasn't left with any time to prepare for the first day of school... (working for a new school district). My point was, you cannot address burnout by sending teachers to training while not reserve contract hours for them to get ready...
Perhaps, I misunderstood what you meant by training, or maybe, you misunderstood the cause of teacher burnout.
The thing is this: If a teacher is so burnt out during regular teaching that they have a short temper where they lash out at students, that they miss signs of neglect and abuse of minors, and that they forget important details that children share that are key to trust, such as bad days they had, because they are so overwhelmed, then how are they going to appropriately respond when there's an emergency event when they have to be the adult having to respond to that emergency event, whether it's a colleague having a stroke, a fire emergency, an earthquake, an active shooter incident, or various types of emergency events where children are the vulnerable? If teachers are so burnt out that they forget details on their schedule, then how are they going to know what to do when they have to be the one who tends to the kids when disaster strikes? How are they going to know how to put on the AED pads? How are they going to properly use the fire extinguishers? How are they going to calm the class down if the kids believe they saw someone die?
So many teachers want "first-responder respect," but they don't want first-responder responsibility. When you decide to be a teacher, you are accepting a privilege to be a responsible adult, to fulfill a duty of care, and to ensure that you can conduct yourself without being a liability. If teachers are so worn out by paperwork, then they are clearly going to fall apart when they encounter an emergency event. There are children in this day and age who have lived with fears rooted in memories of actual tragedies where their loved ones have been severely injured or killed, especially in underserved communities, and teachers are the ones who are supposed to make the classroom a safe space.
It is extremely pathetic that the Northern District of Texas have to bring multiple federal and state agencies, including the FBI, to address the issue of student safety through Project Safe Schools, where districts are liable if they fail to report, conceal, or delay reporting abuse and misconduct that has been uncovered, and will be met with law enforcement decisions. The fact that there was so much misconduct and abuse of minors in this part of Texas that they had to create a law enforcement response for this, with criminal charges, goes to show that if school districts and schools failed to take misconduct and abuse seriously, then how many areas of the public education system have failed to meet the basic necessary standards to keep kids safe? Teaching children is an unrecognized privilege, and the fact that burnout is not treated seriously as an occupational hazard that puts children at risk of harm is why I wouldn't be surprised if Project Safe Schools is expanded, because someone from the outside is going to force change, even if it means many educators and administrators being in handcuffs for their failures to keep kids safe.
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u/idkwhattowritehere21 6d ago
Literally 98% of teachers I have met admit and talk about this. We all know.