Passion and burn out of a teacher

If teachers have the passion, they would strive to grab students‘ attention and produce a fruitful lesson regardless of the noise.

Curriculum

Philadelphia manual training schools curriculum (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The curriculum describes what students are expected to learn and offers the promise of a similar education for all. For the teacher the most important factor is to get his pupils to get as much knowledge as possible and teach them to do something with what they have to learn that year. How the teachers want to bring over the material should be up to the teacher and not be dictatorially set by a board who wants to see in all the schools the same home works and the same tests.

Substance of a teacher

Teacher (Photo credit: tim ellis)

Every good teacher does not want to keep to a once made worksheet and give every year the same material in the same manner and the same order. A good teacher looks around him and sees what is going on in the world and tries to integrate the happenings in his course.

Every teacher should offer his students learning opportunities that capture their interests and help them make the transition to life after graduation.

Most often it shall not be the payment which shall attract somebody to become a teacher – those choosing for having a good earning and many holidays are the wrong teachers.

The first goal must be to bring something over to the next generation. Willing to share more than the basics makes the good teacher. And to be able to share enough to continue in to the next generation, he knows that continues study shall be important and that he continually shall follow research and consultation, and shall keep an open mind to the developments.

A good teacher is that one that every year again considers every new class as unique and treats it as if it was the first time new material had to be explored and conquered. Each individual should be respected and stimulated to learn and to cross the borders of his average. It is the task of the teacher to give positive remarks and stimulation, more than bad remarks or braking a person down. Building up should be the main goal.
Having every pupil understand that we believe in them, and that we will honour their brilliance and work hard to nurture them.  Letting them know that as a teacher we are concerned about their future and that we want to co-create a bright future for the world with them.  This message we should share each day in our relationships, our structures, our expectations.

Working hours

One of the accusations often leveled against teachers is that they only work just a few hours a day and have more vacation days than most other job. But the serious teachers takes a lot of time out of the class room to prepare the courses he is going to give. The good teacher is the one who updates the material continuously, and prepares his class for the pupils he is having that year and advances like those pupils are able to advance, helping them all equally to reach the goal to know even more than they should by the curriculum. Teacher and school have to be keeping with the times

Only keeping to the material which has to be know at the end of the schoolyear to succeed the end exams is not the good system.

The teacher wanting to get his pupils to know much more, shall have to spend much more time than the class time to do all his preparations and to correct the works of the pupils.

English: A special education teacher assists one of her students. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A 2001 study found that the average teacher works 50 hours a week, because their work doesn’t end when the bell rings. When I taught, I also had to prepare the accompanying music, I spend an average 56 hours a week for school, inclusive the ridiculous amount of extra paperwork and evaluation sheets. Grading takes hours a day, not to mention any school extracurricular activities teachers may lead, like clubs, sports teams, or theatre groups. There are long, and often too many, meetings outside of school hours, and someone has to be there if they assign a kid detention. Not to mention time spent making lesson plans so the whole school day runs smoothly, often not for one school, but for more schools, because they teach in more than one school to get a full time job. But for every school they are also always expected to be present at the extra muros activities, feasts etc..

Many teachers teach summer school or have to do some extra work in order to supplement their income, to get their children to be able to have proper education as well.

A Huge Influence on the Child

A large-scale Australian study found that a good teacher-student relationship meant better grades, even more so than good parental or peer relationships, especially during middle and high school. Since the Detroux affaire a teacher-student relation seems to be taboo. And we see that in many schools this is really missing, but it takes also away the drive of many pupils and teachers away.

Teacher talking to student at LSI (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The teacher should form the foundation of the pupil his growing up and his preparation for being a creative person in the future. Therefore the good teacher should give as many stimulation as possible that a pupil goes to experiment and tries out new things.

It is wrong of certain organisations, like OVSG, not to allow other things than those written or presented in their syllabus. Even when pupils present some which the teacher or board does not like so much, because it is not their taste, they should always examine it for the value and quality it has, and not for the common taste of that particular time.

Who to blame

The board of directors and the OVSG make the easiest choice to agree with the parents that it is the teacher’s fault when a pupil does not succeed.

When it comes to bad grades, it would be better to examine what the pupil really did to get to the end of the school year, and how his relationship was with his parents and the situation in the household.  A study found that 68% of parents deserve “heavy blame” for failing students, while only 35% said teachers. While this was personal opinion and not based on proven fact, it shows that most people understand failing schools are not the sole fault of the teachers.

Organisation

Organizing classrooms has become more difficult in recent years because of funding restraints, and also of the lack of space and the deterioration of the spaces used for already many years.  Schools try to fill classes with the maximum number of students allowed, but do not mind putting even more pupils into the class so they can save on ‘teachers hours’. Instead of also giving enough attention to special-needs children all schildren just seem to have to follow the general line, required by the curriculum. And the ones who can not follow, seem to have bad luck. Several schools want their teachers not to waste time on such cases and to ignore them as much as they can. But they have to stay in the school because when they leave it would be so much money less for the school.

Instead of demanding certain norms to be able to become allowed to be in the school and to be able to stay in the school, cyphers on the evaluation-papers are more important and schools want to see those better marks into the newspapers. Therefore the quality of the given material has come down in the last few years, which frustrated a lot of teachers. No wonder that so many got a burn-out when nobody wants to listen to them and when the children are not distributed in a way that’s appropriate for learning and doesn’t overburden teachers.

Burning out and leaving the teaching profession

Studies have shown that the main contributor to young teachers burning out and leaving the profession is pushy parents. In Belgium lots of older teachers are worked out by the newer directions and the OVSG. The many young teachers, of whom some already leave the classroom after three months, have soon felt how disrespectful many pupils treat their classmates and their superiors. Having no set rules in many schools and lack of discipline makes it so hard and often useless to continue ‘the battle’ to get a whole class working as one ‘civilised’ community.

When new teachers come into the classroom ready to change the lives of their students, they are often shell-shocked by the number of complaints and sometimes outright abuse that they receive from those students’ parents. Many new teachers feel pressure to be perfect right away, and perfect always means making sure the child of that particular parent is happy and getting good grades. Multiply this by 25 or 30 parents (or more) in a school year and you get the mass exodus from teaching that Belgium is now faced with.

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Read also:

1. 5 Things to Remember About Teachers for Back to School
2. Wat betreft *10 school geboden*
3. Geboden voor de leerkracht
4. 15 Famous People Who Used to Teach a.o.: Alexander Graham Bell, Robert Frost, Lyndon Johnson, John Adams, J.K. Rowling, Art Garfunkel

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