Teachers at Akins have been feeling overwhelmed and overworked, being pressured to deliver curriculum in a certain way, and battling the anxiety that comes with teaching while COVID cases are surging.

Not only has this affected teachers, but it has also affected students and their quality of education.

This school year has brought a lot of changes and challenges. There was an expectation from the district and the community to completely “return to normal” compared to the previous couple of years of remote learning, which had its own unique pressures on teachers, students and parents.

However, it’s been a difficult transition considering that several academic departments are short-staffed, resulting in several classrooms led by substitute teachers and instruction delivered via online modules. The stress of the national teacher shortage the country is experiencing is also creating additional strain on the teachers, who have taken on additional workloads.

New Pressures on Teachers

Since December, secondary-level teachers have been worried about a district proposal, which would eliminate one of their two conference periods, which is time they use to plan, grade and meet with colleagues and parents. Instead, they would be forced to teach an additional class period next year with less time to do all of the necessary non-instruction tasks required of teachers.

This proposed change was often cited as a reason for additional stress by 27 Akins teachers who responded to an online survey by The Eagle’s Eye, sharing how impactful this proposal would be for the way they teach and organize their teaching curriculum. An Akins teacher said in a survey response that the proposal has them seriously considering leaving teaching in Austin ISD.

“If I was considering staying in teaching, taking away a planning period would make me switch districts in a heartbeat. I’ve done that before – it is horrible,” they wrote.

These kinds of factors are some of the reasons teachers have said they feel overwhelmed this year. According to the survey conducted by The Eagle’s Eye, 92.6% of Akins teachers feel more stressed this year compared to previous ones.

English teacher Ryan Thomas shared how decisions from the district have not helped to ease the already existing struggles of the pandemic.

“Last year, we were in an emergency situation and it was easy to extend grace to district and state leadership, even when they were not making the best decisions,” he said. “This year, the same leadership has continued to make decisions that are ignorant at best and cynically focused on perception over actual results at worst. Instead of being given resources, support, and understanding, teachers and students are being given mandates and told to figure it out as best we can. I feel unappreciated and disrespected by district leadership.”

This shared feeling from teachers has been impacting students’ educational experience. Several teachers have left since the beginning of the school year, leaving students in this turmoil of not knowing what will happen with their classes and credits, or even if they will have a permanent teacher assigned before the year ends.

Not being able to give enough resources and teachers to complete the curriculum has clear effects on students because teachers find it difficult to provide the support students need to get caught up with the learning loss of the last school year.

Such has left a noticeable effect for teachers in their classrooms. They have to adjust to the new expectations from the district while finding the balance within their classrooms to be able to offer the level of education that every student needs. One teacher in the survey wrote that the gaps in knowledge between students is “massive.”

“I have students who can’t multiply and students who are ready for more challenging problems in the same class,” they wrote. “All the extra data asked to be tracked and documented is impossible to complete on top of regular teaching duties.”

The teacher shared how it is not only that the district is giving new requirements and expectations that they have to follow, but that teachers have to face the challenge of finding the extra time and effort to give all students the support they need.

“It’s difficult to catch students who need to be retaught 7th, 8th-grade math while also providing rigorous coursework for STAAR,” they wrote. “I teach a STAAR tested subject to freshmen who at the beginning of the semester didn’t have teachers in multiple of their classes.”

Another factor to mention is teachers who have to take on the lead of multiple classes without getting compensated for it. One teacher wrote that this has caused extreme stress.

“My stress levels are so high this year! We’ve had so many teachers that have left at the beginning of the year or mid-year,” they wrote. “Those of us in leadership roles have to pick up the slack and grade for those classes with ghost teachers. At one point this year I was grading for 14 classes and it nearly did me in! That’s 8 extra classes and I did not get paid for it.”

Natalie Fontenot, a United States History teacher said she loves teaching, but it feels like every year it gets harder to manage the workload.
“Teachers already are asked to come in before school, stay after school, work in the summer and complete professional development outside of the school day,” she wrote on the survey. “One year I did give up a planning period to teach an extra class, but I was paid for it. If I have a planning period taken away, I don’t know how I’ll be able to teach more than one (course).”

Teachers face more expectations, more workload, and no extra pay for it, which lowers students’ educational quality, thus making it harder to catch up with the learning loss.

The COVID Factor

Teachers also said in The Eagle’s Eye survey that they feel unappreciated and unsupported with how the district is handling COVID. One teacher wrote that it is hard to come to work when they don’t feel valued by the district they work for.

“The district took away our COVID leave this year. Even H-E-B gives COVID leave to their employees,” they wrote. “My son had surgery earlier in the year, so I used up most of my time then. I don’t have very many days left and I worry each day that I will have to take off if I get COVID.”

Several teachers said they have worried at some point about becoming sick with COVID or the school needing to resume online classes because of the rapid spread of the Omicron variant.

Not all teachers said that the current school year felt much worse than previous school years in terms of stress. Some wrote that they believe the educational experience this year is better than last year.

“I really love teaching, and I really love my beautiful kiddos,” they wrote. “Love the people in my department, and in my hall, and the administration is very teacher friendly. Support staff is great too. I’ve worked in a few schools, and Akins is special in its true and real concern for the well-being of our kiddos and of each other.”

However, teachers find it difficult to keep the peace and find the support they need. Most teachers seem afraid to speak about the problems existing at school and on district level, explaining why most prefer to remain in anonymity.

On the other hand, this can also be taken as an opportunity to become closer as a community. An Akins teacher shared,
“I have not had the support I need. Oddly, this has brought everyone closer together,” they wrote. “I feel more sympathy for my students, and they feel more sympathy for me, but we’re actively fighting against a system that seems to be designed against our success. Even when I am okay at the workplace, we have rising prices, stagnating wages, and a whole pandemic to try and defend ourselves against.” they said.

The Toll on Mental Health

The same way students’ mental health has been affected throughout the pandemic, teachers have been dealing with changes in their teaching experience that makes it challenging to keep up with their job, and some have already decided to leave teaching at Akins.

“It was probably the hardest decision that I’ve ever had to make,” Ryan Thomas said. “Mostly because I feel responsible to my students. But the reason that I ended up deciding to do it is because I just couldn’t see myself finishing the year and maintaining my own mental health. I think I could do it. I could power through but I would feel a lot of stress and anxiety. I already feel that way,” he said.

Teachers said their appreciation for their students keeps them wanting to teach, but they are struggling because the way they feel about their job affects how they provide education for students.

“There are days where I wake up and just thinking about coming to work makes me feel physically ill and it really sucks to feel that way about a job that in some ways I still love and that I used to love fully,” Thomas said. “But it doesn’t change that that feeling is real. And a big part of it isn’t even the actual work itself. But it’s more about the attitude that our society has toward education. I think many people feel that we can just pretend the pandemic never happened and isn’t still ongoing. And we can just wave a magic wand as teachers and make everything normal and right again. And if we can’t, we’re somehow bad teachers letting our students down.”

Thomas said he wants his students to know that he still cares about students even though he has decided to leave teaching.

“I want them to know that I still care about them, that I still love them, that I’m not leaving because of them,” he said. “If anything, I’m leaving because it hurts me too much to see what the system does to them every day.”

Heba Dalu contributed to this story.