Is This Burnout or Is It Friday Already?
Creativity and Quality Hampered by Increased Loads
Barbara S. Andrews, of Toledo, Ohio, posted a note on the
FLTEACH listserv the other day, putting into words a feeling
with which many teachers may identify. In her e-mail agreeing
to have her comments published on ESL MiniConference Online,
Ms. Andrews explained, "I wrote it after a horrible
day--Friday--when everything that could go wrong did go wrong, so
it's on the negative side, but hopefully things will improve next
week!!!"
I feel so discouraged about the lack of time for planning, and I only
have one prep every day! Frankly, we are given so many useless tasks
to do by administrators that I seem to struggle more every year just
to get the bare minimum done.
I am thinking of abandoning some of the "extra" things I have been
doing over the years, such as sending weekly printouts of students in
danger of failing to their parents. I am not sure it is doing much
good anyway!
I was thinking of trying to do a distance-learning project next year
in collaboration with one of the core teachers, but when do I find
the time to do it? A friend of mine who is an expert on the subject
says it takes 40 hours of preparation to do just one hour of distance
learning. Our school just acquired all of this expensive
distance-learning equipment and is practically begging us to use it,
but at the same time they are demanding more and more paperwork from
us.
We have TONS of technology in our building now--which they are after
us all the time to use--and yet half the time when I plan projects or
activities involving technology, the server is down or the Internet
isn't working. Now I'm considered by some to be a technology NUT, but
this is just not acceptable. Yesterday the server was off and on
because they were doing some maintenance or something at the high
school. Now why couldn't they do that in the summer when school was
out instead of at the end of the year when so many of us are trying
to wrap up projects???
When administrators wanted to triple our workload for next year, I
was in total shock. How can they think this won't affect the quality
of teaching? Fortunately, we have staved off that plan for another
year, but frankly, I am just flabbergasted that administrators are so
oblivious to the time issue. It is obvious that they have no idea how
much time I am already devoting to schoolwork at home, nor do they
care.
Comment by Barbara S. Andrews
2002 ESL MiniConference Online
Foreign Language Teacher
Toledo, Ohio