Focus on Retaining Educators During the Pandemic
Stress and burnout for educators and students is at an all-time high during the pandemic, as everyone struggles with the ever-changing learning requirements brought on by COVID-19.
But the shortage of educators (both teachers and support staff) was already at a crisis point before the virus changed our world last March – and the current challenges are only exacerbating the problem.
Media reports have highlighted the spike in mid-year retirements and departures by school employees who are being driven away by the stress – not to mention longstanding problems with comparably low pay and respect for the profession.
Read two stories from February’s MEA Voice out of mid-Michigan’s Mason Public Schools that highlight the problem – and suggest solutions:
JACKIE LYONS: ‘I walked away’
MEA member Jackie Lyons cried when she met with her principal to quit her first-grade teaching job last October.
“I said, ‘I don’t want to leave. I love working with these kids, and I love the school community, and I love my teaching partners and all of our school staff.’ Then I walked away and looked back and thought, I’m never going to have that again.”
After nine years of teaching mostly lower elementary-aged children in Mason, Lyons left her position when she became overwhelmed, began suffering health effects, and watched her young family struggling to cope.
SHANA BARNUM: ‘It’s heart-wrenching’
Shana Barnum is known as a principal with “one foot in the classroom” since she taught K-6 for 20 years before becoming an administrator in Mason in 2017. From that vantage point, Barnum is worried by what she sees.
She knows her staff is overtaxed and overstressed—just like educators across the state. Two early career “rock star” teachers from her school have quit under the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic, and others have hinted they’ve thought about doing the same.
An educator shortage already exists and now they’ve been asked to do more than ever before, “but not much has been taken off the plate,” Barnum said. That got her thinking. What could we do here and now to retain educators in Michigan amid a global health crisis?