The Demands of the Job

Creating lessons, attending PLC meetings, consoling a depressed student, subbing for a co-worker, filling out IEP paperwork, answering an angry parent email, fixing your printer, grading essays until dark. Oh, and actually teaching the students in your class plus finding time for yourself and your family.

These are the demands of the modern educator, whether urban or rural, big or small school; these are the work demands that slowly at first, then more quickly over time, drain the energy of educators, creating a domino of effects that can lead to turnover and attrition in hopes of salvaging one's health.

Over the past few posts on our blog, we have been using the analogy of the canary in the coal mine to help you take a different perspective on the issue of teacher turnover and attrition.

Moving forward, we want to focus on a different analogy for comprehending the nature of human energy: the human battery. We will use the battery analogy and how the types of demands can, over time, drain an educator's internal battery, leading to turnover and attrition.

As we discussed in our last post, the draining of an educator's battery stems from a biopsychosocial process in that the social aspect of working in schools and school communities influences educators' thoughts and emotions, which in turn influences their health. Just like car batteries that need constant recharging to work, so too do human batteries. However, health issues may occur if too many demands are placed on the educator without stopping to recharge. It is these demands that we explore in this post.

Educator Demands

As we have researched the field and interviewed numerous educators nationwide, three categories of demands emerged that cause the most distress to educators.

First, all teachers have a life outside of their work that creates demands on their time and energy. For instance, young teachers who are parents have to manage the childcare and healthcare for their own children. One teacher we talked to mentioned how she feared her child having a runny nose because her daycare wouldn't accept sick children, which meant she had to miss a day of teaching to stay home with her. Similarly, the personal health of educators can create a demand on time and energy, especially if the educator is trying to care for their own health issues or is having trouble sleeping, which is a main source of recharging. These health issues can slow a teacher down, but as one teacher told me, it doesn't matter if you are sick, you still have to prepare lessons for your students, creating another source of stress.

Second, the classroom is another category where most energy is drained from teachers' batteries. Primary among these demands is how students respond to the instruction and classroom environment. Much research has been done on how students' behavior can increase stress upon a teacher, and, similarly, how a lack of engagement and caring of students can also create excess stress on teachers. Likewise, the diversity of student needs and figuring out ways to meet them without the right materials or support interferes with a teacher's belief in their abilities. This demand on teachers has become especially prevalent since the pandemic and the return to school. We also know that the increased use of technology and new curricula without the right supports can limit a teacher's sense of effectiveness, leading to increased stress.

Third, the workplace itself is another primary category that can drain the battery of educators. The constant push toward helping all students meet higher standards and constant change requires increased energy, often unavailable in an educator's busy day. Increasing parent conflicts rather than support and the need to fill in for missing teachers due to a lack of substitutes leaves little recovery time during the day, again causing increased stress levels. The lack of time has been reported as a fundamental issue for most educators today. Finally, and most importantly, the support of school leaders is often the missing critical element for teachers in deciding to stay or go, but many leaders have also become over-stressed and may fail to provide the necessary emotional support for teachers.

How the Battery Gets Drained

From the three categories of demands, it is easy to see what a complex and challenging job teaching has become. Any combination of these demands over time can easily lead to stress, but maintained over weeks and months can lead to extreme emotional labor and complete battery draining. Just like with any battery, if it is not recharged, it is almost impossible to recover, and a new one needs to be installed to function. Cars and people alike cannot run if the battery is drained.

Unfortunately, too many of our educators today are at that stage with no relief in sight, so they choose to leave versus looking for a way to recharge their battery before it's too late. So what can be done? Explore this blog post, where we begin to address the other side of the equation: job resources to prevent turnover and attrition.