A Recent Report Sparked Ire in the Field. One Teacher Explains Why (Opinion)

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Opinion Contributor, Education Week

Larry Ferlazzo is a former award-winning high school English and social studies teacher of more than two decades. He is currently a volunteer tutor to English-learner newcomers at a local school and to youth in juvenile hall.

A recent report on the pandemic’s impact on teaching and learning was published based on anonymous feedback from the leaders of five school districts.

I would characterize some of these anonymous comments as district leaders throwing teachers under the bus instead of taking responsibility themselves. The Wall Street Journal used the insulting term “teaching loss.”

Here’s another teacher’s take on the report:

Instead of Blaming Teachers, Listen to Us

Chanea Bond, M.Ed., (she/her) is a proud public school teacher who teaches various levels of high school English in Texas:

Earlier this month, several news organizations covered a report released by the RAND Corp. and the Center on Reinventing Public Education. The report is composed of observations from leaders of five anonymous school districts. Neither the report nor the articles reporting on it include concerns that teachers have about instruction or district guidance and leadership, so allow me to address some of those concerns here. Quotes are taken directly from the report.

“We spent a lot of money on retention bonuses and ‘please stay’ payments. You might as well burn that money because it didn’t bear out. People left anyway.”

Rather than blaming teachers for leaving, districts should ask themselves what circumstances have led to the profession becoming so unsustainable that even (finally) compensating teachers for carrying society through crisis after crisis is not enough to make us stay? The idea that money spent on teachers was not worth the tremendous amount of work we did from the spring of 2020 to now is a huge slap in the face and further acknowledgment of how little those district leaders know about what teachers did and continue to do.

“There are a lot more teachers just delivering content and kids being very disengaged.”

During the height of the pandemic, one message was loud and clear: Give students grace. In the face of all the uncertainty, teachers were encouraged, and even required, to be flexible and show as much leniency as possible. Teachers took on the labor of reimagining standards and expectations to ensure student success. This grace often came at the expense of our own time, energy, and training.

Now, those same students are one to two grades removed from their pandemic school years, and teachers are tasked with catching students up, again without resources and with little to no guidance from leadership. As a high school English teacher, I witness students unable to write complete sentences every day and I have no choice but to address those underdeveloped skills. While district leaders are clamoring to return to “normal,” our students are anything but. The grace that school leaders preached has dissipated, and the lingering impact of the last few school years has yet to be addressed in real and substantive ways.

Students’ reliance on their cellphones increased exponentially during the pandemic because it was often their only means of communication with the outside world. Now that students are back in classrooms, that reliance is a huge barrier to engagement. Teachers are competing against social media, a multibillion-dollar industry whose sole job is engagement, and we’re losing.

In the absence of any district phone policy, I developed a policy that works for my classroom with money from my own pocket. No teacher should have to spend their own money fixing problems that school districts are aware of and refuse to address. Our students are obsessed with their phones and district leaders are burying their heads in the sand instead of coming up with tangible, thoughtful, and equitable solutions to help teachers help students.

“Teacher appetite for engaging in professional learning outside of the school day [has not returned. Teachers] really just aren’t attending.”

In far too many school districts, professional development is a joke. Mandated district PD rarely applies to classroom practice, and, when it does, it is not consistently offered to all teachers. Every day, I witness teachers on social media asking for resources and tools to help students because districts refuse to invest in curriculum and training that actually matters.

District leaders, who are often more than several years removed from the classroom, are oblivious to the reality of our students’ needs and should spend time in classrooms instead of forcing teachers into “professional development” that doesn’t develop us professionally. Every teacher I know is craving genuine professional development and resources to help us make our work more meaningful. The fact that online marketplace Teachers Pay Teachers continues to be profitable is evidence enough of this truth.

Over 1,000 teachers died during the height of the pandemic. Most schools acknowledged these deaths with a meeting or an email and then proceeded with business as usual. Teacher leaders on my campus were given more work with no resources or compensation and zero acknowledgement from district leaders. Armed with the knowledge that our lives and work would be reduced to a single staff meeting, teachers started enforcing boundaries around our time outside of work. We are less willing to expend our energy to prop up a system that will replace us with little to no acknowledgement when we die and saddle our colleagues with the responsibility of more work “for the kids.”

The “conclusions and implications” section of the report asks a multitude of stakeholders, from federal policymakers to philanthropies, to invest in helping improve teachers’ skills and instruction. What is missing is a candid reflection on the roles district leaders continue to play in leaving teachers high and dry.

In the spring of 2020, any time I drove across the metropolitan area where I live and work, lawn signs and banners decorated schools big and small that read “heroes work here!” This sentiment was short-lived and now, according to leaders from five anonymous school districts, we’re barely considered competent professionals. If districts truly want to retain and recruit quality teachers, this report should serve as a reminder that it’s time to listen to the folks who work in front of students. Treat teachers like the degreed professionals we are, ask us what we need to help students be successful, and then make it happen, within reason.

“All hands on deck” must include the hands of district leaders, or there won’t be enough teachers for them to lead.

Thanks to Chanea for contributing her thoughts!

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.

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The opinions expressed in Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.