By Amanda Ameral | UConn Journalism
“Hell on earth” is the way Leslie Blatteau described teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic.
While Blatteau, a 15-year teaching veteran and President of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, has remained in the profession, many of her colleagues have not.
Sheena Graham, 2019 Connecticut Teacher of the Year, who taught music at Harding High School and Central High School in Bridgeport, chose a different fate and retired early in January 2022.
After 40 fulfilling years in a selfless profession, Graham realized that it was finally time to prioritize herself, “I was forced to look at myself and say, you know, you have other dreams, too.”
Every year, more and more teachers across the state are stepping down from teaching. Their reasons vary: under-appreciation, underpay, lack of resources and support, culture wars, and burnout, said Blatteau.
The Connecticut Department of Education identified that in the 2022–2023 school year, the ratio of students to staff in areas such as special education, foreign language, school psychology, and speech-language pathology is disproportionately high.
The issue of teacher shortage is even more extreme in districts that are already challenged, such as Bridgeport, where Frances Rabinowitz, Executive Director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, was a district Superintendent, and where Graham taught for almost 40 years.
Patrice McCarthy, Executive Director of the Connecticut Association Board of Education says that while teacher shortages are not new, they were magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic. “The pandemic caused people to reprioritize and say ‘ok, I can retire now, so I think I will.”
Graham said she hoped to continue teaching for another 5–10 years, but the burnout she was experiencing was preventing her from doing the job she loved.
“Teaching your subject matter isn’t the issue, your love for children isn’t the issue, its other issues that teachers deal with 24/7 that is giving teachers burnout,” Graham said.
The pandemic increased students’ emotional needs, putting an increased burden on teachers.
“Teachers want to teach, but we’re feeling like there aren’t enough social workers, there aren’t enough school psychologists, and then we’re having to absorb a lot of that trauma and experiencing that vicarious trauma ourselves. And that can lead to burnout and exhaustion,” Blatteau said.
Graham also understands that emotional toll.
“I had been pushing so hard for so long and everything in you says, ‘you’ve got to get the kids to a certain point’, or ‘you’ve got to make sure that emotionally they’re okay.’ And what I found, and I’m not the only one, is that at no time are we making sure we’re okay.”
The scarcity of staff is not just consequential for teachers but also creates a less-than-ideal environment for students, experts say.
“It is very very serious. Class sizes are larger, teachers are taking on additional classes, none of which is good for kids. Lack of continuity in instruction is very hard,” Rabinowitz explained.
“There is a revolving door of adults coming and going, and that is not helpful for young people. Our students are impacted because they are getting a chemistry credit, but there’s no chemistry teacher.
Students are getting a Spanish credit, but there’s no Spanish teacher,” Blatteau said. “There’s not the deep teaching and learning that should be happening. So our students are being shortchanged.”
Graham said that throughout her career, she would often have to dip into her own bank account for school supplies, which as a single mother, took a great toll on her finances.
“There were times when I would leave work and come home to a house that didn’t have lights,” Graham added.
Teachers feel that not only are they underpaid, but they are also under-appreciated and under-respected, Rabinowitz said.
“I do think that the respect for the profession has not been as evident in the last 10 years as it was prior. The level of respect for teachers that we see in the United States is not the level of respect that we see in some other countries where the profession is held in the same regard as medical doctors,” Rabinowitz said.
For Graham, this disrespect culminated in the 2021–2022 school year when just two days before school started, Graham was informed by her students, not the school administration, that she would not have a classroom for that school year, as her choir classroom was going to be replaced by a cohort room.
“My students shouldn’t have been the ones to inform me of that news,” Graham said. This lack of respect towards educators has also fueled culture wars.
Guilford Public Schools has dealt with its fair share of culture wars as in 2021, the district became a target of an anti-public school sentiment at the hands of right-wing politicians who accused the district of teaching Critical Race Theory, said Guilford Public Schools Superintendent Paul Freeman.
Freeman maintained that while Guilford recognizes the importance of, and teaches topics such as equity, social justice, and critical thinking, they do not Teach Critical Race Theory, which is a complex theory looking at America’s troubled past which is primarily taught in law schools.
“There have been complaints about books in our library, there have been suggestions that we shouldn’t shelve books that deal with LGBTQ themes, we have had suggestions in town that we shouldn’t bring in staff training that helps teachers to be more sensitive and more supportive of transgender students,” Freeman said.
Freeman added that these criticisms only serve to disenfranchise public schools and discourage young teachers from entering the profession, furthering the already existing shortage.
“When there are teachers who are looking for positions, and they google Guilford and they see some of the vitriol that is in the media or that gets reported in the press at times, I don’t think that helps us.”
Blatteau also recognizes the backward role that this harmful rhetoric has in recruiting teachers.
“We dedicate our expertise and our compassion, our hearts and our minds to teaching kids. And then, we get told that we’re trying to indoctrinate kids or we’re or we’re trying to brainwash kids. And it just couldn’t be further from the truth,” Blatteau said.
Graham noticed this hostile relationship toward teachers throughout her career as well. “I don’t know anybody that would allow me to walk into an operating room and tell a doctor what I think he should do,” she said. “But yet anybody can walk into a school system or a board of education meeting and tell teachers what they should do.”
Rabinowitz said that another issue in recruiting young teachers is the lifestyle changes encouraged by the pandemic, which attract young people to careers in which they could work from home.
“We have to look at Generation Z and the opportunities that they have right now; some of which involve working from home, and not wanting to be so tied to the same place, same time, every day, 5 days a week. This creates a conflict because obviously, our profession is a very hands-on, in-person profession,” Rabinowitz said.
Graham remains enthusiastic about education and as a member of the Association for Retired Teachers, and the National Education Association Retired community, she is working on behalf of educators to increase pay and resources in underfunded districts like Bridgeport.
“I stayed in Bridgeport, but I could have crossed over city lines in any direction and made at least $10,000 more a year. And in some cases, 25,000 more a year,” Graham said.
This is a common trend among large urban districts. To reverse this issue in New Haven, Blatteau has worked to negotiate a contract, granting teachers a 15% pay increase over three years, which was overwhelmingly approved in the fall.
McCarthy argued that pay alone is not going to solve the problem. “If teachers are feeling overwhelmed, another $5,000 isn’t going to make them feel any less overwhelmed,” she said.
Another way to reduce teacher burnout is for the State to implement lower class sizes across the board, Blatteau argued, as larger cities like New Haven have disproportionately larger class sizes and a lower property tax base to address this issue with.
The State could reduce extraneous paperwork requirements that many teachers, especially Special Education teachers are struggling with in response to a new electronic paperwork system that is mandated by the state, Blatteau said.
“We have found that the state has not been responsive to our collective concerns about how dysfunctional this system is. It’s taking people’s time and energy away from our students. Teachers become teachers because we want to work with students. We don’t want to be sitting at a computer doing paperwork all day,” Blatteau said.
Blatteau also wants to eliminate any financial barriers that may be preventing young people from going into teaching. Blatteau is in favor of a national Government Issued- type of bill that would allow people who want to become teachers to undertake that responsibility, without having to take on any debt to do so.
“There are programs that help paraprofessionals who may have a college degree but don’t have teaching certification. These programs will cover the cost of their tuition, enabling them to work, and complete coursework that allows them to become certified,” McCarthy said.
Rabinowitz is in support of another initiative that will streamline the teacher certification process by making the certification content areas more relevant to today, by giving teachers more on-the-job training and less philosophical training.
“We may trade off some of the theoretical parts of the certification process. They may not have the philosophy of education, or the history of education, in the greatest of depth that they have right now, but perhaps that’s less relevant than having them get hands-on experience in a classroom under a master teacher,” Rabinowitz explained.
Rabinowitz emphasizes that the motivation behind changing the certification process is not to make it easier, but rather more relevant to today’s climate.
Though Blatteau recognized that there is more to be done to hold elected officials accountable at the local, state, and national levels to make teaching a priority, Blatteau remained optimistic about the future of education and is proud of the teachers, past and present, pushing for changes. “There are many signs of hope and of improvement on the horizon,” she said.