Focusing on safety can help schools mitigate teacher stress

This unpredictability has landed greatly on teachers and contributed to teacher stress. For a number of reasons, the tasks to which they returned in fall 2021 are more tough than what they dealt with in the pre-COVID world.

Jennifer L. Steele, Associate Professor for the School of Education, American UniversityJennifer L. Steele is an Associate Professor for the School of Education at American University. A previous primary and high school teacher, she studies policies that advance equity in P-16 education and the labor market.

Second, teachers fret that a rapidly changing COVID scenario indicates they will need to shift students back to hybrid or entirely virtual mentor models if trainees or personnel begin getting ill. In the 2021 RAND study, teachers reported that hybrid mentor models, in which they needed to all at once teach in-person and online, were the most difficult teaching approach.

A specifying function of the COVID-19 pandemic is the haze of uncertainty in which we now live. And now that many U.S. schools have re-opened in person, will they stay open, and can they keep COVID-19 at bay?

At a time in which vaccines stay unapproved for kids under 12, and in which numerous older children remain unvaccinated, teachers fret about trainees health and their own. They acknowledge that social distancing is at odds with many student-centered mentor techniques, and they do not wish to invest their days as mask enforcers, but they also desire to stay safe. In a nationally representative study of teachers carried out by RAND earlier this year, 16 percent of teachers ranked issue for their own health as their top source of occupational stress, and 17 percent stated their leading concern was for the health of enjoyed ones at home with high COVID risk.

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