A recent study revealed that only 12% of teachers are “very satisfied” with their jobs. That number has dropped 27 points in the past decade.

It is staggering to think that 88% of teachers are not “very satisfied.”

The symptoms of this discontent are pervasive, but the root causes go beyond the typical explanations such as lack of pay, long hours.

I have been thinking a lot about this decline, but I have also been thinking about the ways in which we can take proactive steps to make things better. What has influenced my thinking is The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter’s profound book about the way in which we choose short-term comfort that ultimately leads to long-term, pronounced discomfort.

I am experiencing something similar in my teaching right now. I love the classroom. I thrive on the give-and-take that comes from sharing great pieces of literature with students. I am good at building relationships. Yet, each of these things have become harder to build and maintain than they once were. I am not alone. This has been echoed by teachers throughout the country in the workshops I teach and online forums in which I participate.

I am also noticing that the modern world has ushered in all types of conveniences that, on a superficial inspection, should make things easier for me. Yet, reality belies something different.

This, ultimately, is a healthy challenge for me. It is pushing me out of my comfort zone and allowing me to deeply examine my practices in my classroom.

Here are three core beliefs that are contributing to my discomfort, and the proactive steps I am taking to counteract them.

#1 THE SWITCH TO DIGITAL

THE ISSUE

As my classroom has switched from the tangible learning environment of notebooks and pens, papers and projects, to a digital one with Chromebooks and dashboards, spreadsheets and Docs, I see barriers increasing the distance between my students and me.

AN EXAMPLE

My marking period ended on Friday. One of my students emailed me a slew of late assignments at 2:37 am, hoping, practically begging, for credit. His email wasn’t the only notification I received from Google Classroom that day, but his came at the most ungodly hour.

This small experience has merit. Staying up late, this student chose discomfort over comfort. He could have gone to bed at a reasonable hour and forsaken the credit. He could have embraced apathy and taken all zeros. In some ways, this is admirable. Yet, this experience also reveals something a bit more sinister.

Social courage is required to approach a teacher and make a plea for late work. Learning to advocate for yourself has been, and will always be, a crucial stepping stone to maturity. Now, students can sterilize themselves from this discomfort completely. As the opportunity for students to mature has diminished, so have my chances to mentor. I can’t have a back-and-forth conversation that allows me to understand a student’s situation better, getting to know the reasons for late work, their assessment of quality of the work, and the chance to convince them of the opportunity to improve upon the experience next time. All that is gone with email, especially at 2:37 am.

Probing this experience deeper, a series of unfortunate questions linger that, for me, create an existential dread about the whole situation:

• In receiving an email at 2:37 am, to what extent am I guilty of participating in a system that is destroying student health?
• What is the likelihood that these assignments were shared by another students and copied completely?
• Is my job to be a part of plagiarism police? What will it cost me in time to investigate the authenticity of these assignments? Can I afford that time?
• If I find that the assignments are plagiarized or have benefited from AI, will I receive administrative support in dealing with it?
• If I accept the assignments, am I enabling student behavior that is likely to repeat?
• If I don’t accept the assignments, am I an unsympathetic teacher that has no compassion for the situations my students face?
• How can I grade these assignments, plus all the others that will come in, fairly before the grading window closes?
• Has the coldness of digital work come at the cost of a warmer classroom environment?

These questions arose from one email. One email had the power to subtly shake my foundation, a quick tremor that sends the seismometer needle scribbling up and down the page. Multiply that by lots of emails over the course of a year. Add one year on top of another in a teacher’s career. Think about the accumulating effect.

PROACTIVE STEP

My school has already crossed the chasm to a digital classroom. While I play by their rules, I can still stay true to mine. Intrinsic in every assignment is an opportunity to mentor students, provide rich emotional growth, and promote authentic learning experiences. What does that look like in the digital age?

Here’s what I can still do:

• understand that many of my students spent an inordinate time on screens outside of school, and that is proving to have detrimental effects to their overall health. I don’t need to increase that load by making class or homework screen-centered.
• make as many pen + paper assignments as possible to decrease the risk of cheating
• design assignments that are my own and cannot be found easily online
• outsmart AI (if I can), by having students write and answer authentically rather than generically (see my Pride and Prejudice journals as an example).
• have a clear and unwavering policy about late work so I am not inundated with assignments at the end of a marking period
• only accept late work in person so that I can mentor students in that moment

#2 TEACHING HAS BECOME TRANSACTIONAL

THE ISSUE

As we enter a brave new world of standards-based and data-driven education, teaching has become transactional and has lost its soul.

AN EXAMPLE

My last five professional developments have looked like this:

• how to set up Google Classroom
• how to show videos using Discovery Education
• a quick glance at our results on last year’s state exam
• a review of the New York State ELA standards
• vertically articulating our curriculum

Each of these sessions has a time and place. But when viewed holistically, as the only things I have been served, they present something troubling. When grades, numbers, and scores are the center of the school experience, true learning never occurs. But when learning is put at the center of the experience, grades and scores take care of themselves. The message that is implicitly conveyed in this steady diet of PD is that my students and I are on the periphery. Abstractions dominate the conversation. Standards are abstractions because they require a teacher to convert them into tangible moments of understanding. Data points are abstractions because they need to be connected to better methods of instruction to be truly useful. Dashboards and online platforms are abstractions as well. They forsake the three-dimensional nature of a teacher, students, and the synergy that exists when they are working in tandem for the flat 2-D experience of instructional videos and review questions.

The promotion and elevation of all these platforms is showing me that teaching is being reduced to a science, neglecting the art. Everything is quantifiable. Everything is a data point that can be tied back to a standard. Ultimately, this sends the message that compliance is safer than creativity; teaching is more of a transaction.

Is it any wonder that students are anxious and stressed? More than ever, I see my students caring about assignments — bowing down before the deity of Google Classroom — and showing less of a regard for learning. Students have always focused on grades, but over the last five years there has been a stark turn toward the commodification of the classroom. Prior to this, grades were revealed periodically, through progress reports and report cards. They were in the background. As students and parents have gained pervasive access to their scores, their anxiety and dissatisfaction has risen. Now numbers fluctuate in real time like a stock-market ticker, and for some students that has led to an unhealthy obsession with scores.

PROACTIVE STEP

There are a few key principles that I can strive for to make my classroom less a commodity and more of a nurturing learning environment.

They are:

• I can be the driver of my own professional development, using social media to surround myself with inspiring teachers that share amazing ideas from their classrooms
• Not everything has to be about a grade. I can reduce the stress in my classroom by minimizing the severity of assignments while promoting the enjoyment of the learning experience.
• I can use online learning platforms and resources as supplements to my teaching, but they should never replace my teaching.
• I can view standards, not as commodities that can be fulfilled by a series of questions in a database, but as incomplete entities that need me to make them whole

#3 ENGAGEMENT IS A FRUSTRATING BATTLE

THE ISSUE

I am competing against highly addictive forms of entertainment in a battle for students attention. Sometimes my best efforts are not good enough.

AN EXAMPLE

When I taught Death of a Salesman last year to my mainstream 11th graders, I heard sighs, saw eye rolls, and noticed a drop in engagement. My students would not read the play on their own. They were not interested in watching professional actors perform the play. The only thing that seemed to work was having the students read the parts aloud and act it out. But that only engaged a handful of students that were willing to read. Others, passively followed along.

I was disappointed because the plot and the themes of the drama did not draw them in. The only thing that did engage some of them was the chance to step outside themselves and inhabit a character for 42 minutes.

Isn’t that the joy of literature, though? The chance to broaden perspectives and exist in other realms by evaluating other perspectives and experiences?

Even though my students aren’t fathers, I wanted them to see Willy Loman’s misguided hopes as a cautionary tale. Even if they aren’t in business, I wanted them to grapple with career ethics before they spend decades sloughing through the workforce. Even though they are not doting mothers, I wanted them to empathize with Linda’s desire to hold the family together. If I am honest with myself, I don’t know if I achieved this. Certainly not to the extent that I had hoped. The play felt like a forced march at the end as the novelty of student performances waned and apathy set in.

To be fair, if I want my students to evaluate different perspectives, I must be understanding of theirs. For example, why take the time to grapple with the issues of an American dramatic classic when you can relax in the amusement of the latest Mr. Beast video? Why allow your brain to process the inter-family dynamics that drive characters to the brink when you can be soothed by the voice of your favorite artist or band? Why care about academic success, when trust in education is in sharp decline? Even broader, why believe in something when anger is all the rage?

It is getting harder to get students to buy in because the distractions are more addictive, pervasive, and immediate.

Despite all this, I still believe that not all hope is lost.

PROACTIVE STEP

I’ve often found inspiration in Evan Puschak’s interpretation of the famous painting, Nighthawks, which was composed in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor bombing. Recognizing the huddled characters in the painting, with faces of “loneliness and ennui,” Puschak offers a slightly more optimistic interpretation of the scene, providing the rhetorical question: “What is there to do in the face of great disquiet and doubt, but work and live on.”

The three most important things I can do are:

• Make the focus of my professional life the delivery of good lessons on a daily basis without feeling the pressure to make each class an over-the-top show or create a three-ring circus performance. This is a sure path to disappointment and burnout.
• Engage in self reflection on a consistent basis, evaluating what is working in my classroom and what is not.
• Do good work, take pride in it, and mentally step away from the classroom once I leave the building

Writing this post took longer than I expected and it also exhausted more energy than I supposed. It took a lot out of me. My fear throughout it was that it would come across as too negative, and portray me as the old curmudgeon struggling to adapt to the modern world of teaching. At the same time, I felt it important to examine and articulate these forces that are invading teacher, because often we are sold on all the benefits without and mind to its impact or consequences.

I encourage you to use the comments section below to give voice to your own experiences and share the the forces that are impacting your teaching.