Pilot Series with Kelley Young Part 1 - Remastered Original First Episode of Taught

Frustrated by the outdated models and systemic inefficiencies of our education system? You're not alone. Join Kelley and I as we share personal stories of disillusionment and discovery of what education is to us. We invite fellow educators to join this honest dialogue about the challenges we face in the classroom.

Driven by her experiences growing up with a brother with Down syndrome, Kelley's path led her to special education and advocacy roles. Her career has taken her from a sixth-grade general education teacher in the United States to a faculty member in Canada, where she now prepares education assistants to support students with disabilities. This episode highlights the evolving demands on these roles and the broader pressures educators face on both sides of the border. We discuss how the limitations of current educational models fail to meet diverse student needs and the critical need for systemic reform.

Chapters

• 0:02 Disillusionment and Burnout in Education
• 13:22 Inclusion and Challenges in Education
• 20:59 Challenges and Burnout in Education
• 29:06 Special Education Teacher Burnout Perspectives
• 35:14 Impact of Burnout on Education
• 48:31 Raising Voices on Educator Burnout

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

The model that we have has not changed at all. School systems are designed to create factory workers. It's a box, fit in it and then do the thing. Now we're being expected to do a whole bunch of different things for a whole bunch of different learners, and that's not working in the system that we have, but the expectation to do it is there.

Speaker 2: 0:42

A few years ago, I started writing a fictitious story based on my time as an educator. It is called Taught, and the story was partially inspired out of anger and frustration fueled by burnout. Okay, actually, it was more than partially inspired by anger and frustration. But Taught has also become a vehicle for me to tell what I thought at the time and in some ways, continue to think was and is the real story of teaching. I now realize that my perspective is not everyone's perspective, but there are some pieces of taught that resonated with many educators. This podcast is an extension of that story and I, a former teacher, will interview other educators, asking them to share how they really feel about the current state of education. Why are so many teachers burnt out? Why are so many like me, leaving the field? We likely won't solve any problems or come up with any solutions, but we can create a community of voices that maybe begin the conversation around how educators can take back teaching. I'm Melissa LaFleur. Welcome to Taught the podcast. Welcome to the first episode of Taught the podcast. Before my first guest joins us today, I'd like to give a little background about how Taught the story and podcast came to be.

Speaker 2: 2:21

I was an educator for 15 years and I taught in two states, three districts and four grade levels. I also had a district position for one year and after all that, for the life of me, I could not figure out what in the hell we were actually doing in education. I love kids and believe very strongly that knowledge really is power, and you get to choose how to use or not use your power. Slash knowledge, but the education system as a whole has the daunting task of making a knowledge foundation accessible to everyone. So I dedicated at least 10 years of my life to trying to do that, based on the latest research and initiatives, in whatever district I was working in. The last five years of my career were spent in an existential crisis, because it seemed like there was a lot of talking and a lot of knee-jerk reactions that led to more initiatives, but I can't say that much changed in terms of outcomes in my 15 years as a teacher. Now don't get me wrong. I've met some fantastic educators on my journey and I've taught some stuff myself, but the system as a whole never really functioned the way my gut and ideals told me it should, and it definitely didn't function the way the system itself says it does. So I started writing taught, and it was very therapeutic for me because it allowed me to, for the first time in my career, say what I really thought and felt about being a teacher. Then I started letting my friends read it and I found out I'm not the only one that has lived her career in a state of delusion.

Speaker 2: 4:06

A few years ago, I had an administrator tell me, in front of several of my colleagues, that I needed to re-watch Freedom Writers, since most of my career I have taught English language arts. This was about the lowest blow I could receive, publicly to boot. But here's the thing Not many of us are out here, hillary swanking it. I can't even think of one educator I know that is. We're surviving. And if we're all expected to be products of an inspirational 90s movie about education, well, there's a lot of shame for all of us in that, and it's coming from all directions. That's no way to live when almost every educator I have ever met is showing up and giving their best every day. Absolutely no shame in that game. So this podcast is about opening the forum for all of us to state our truths. Opening the forum for all of us to state our truths. We might disagree and we might have views that hurt the public expectation that we are all martyrs to the public education system and all of the children of the world, and that's okay. I tried to find a good quote here to summarize how change is uncomfortable, but I couldn't find one said by someone I had actually heard of, so I'll just leave it at this. I've never had a thought-provoking conversation that didn't make me uncomfortable. Let's have that conversation and get uncomfortable. I wish I knew.

Speaker 2: 5:51

I'd like to give a little background before you listen to today's episode. There were some extenuating circumstances going on whenever I recorded it. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times, to quote Dickens, and it was also early December 2022, so a little over a year ago, I was in Brazil attempting to cope with my first school year where I was not teaching, and I was also dealing with some pretty intense transition syndrome. On top of that, my family was preparing to move to Portugal in February and I was recovering from a pretty intense bout of COVID. However, I was determined to start this podcast and my friend Kelly had cleared her schedule to meet with me, so I felt like we really needed to do this. My audio for this interview is not good and I feel like I should be able to say I was in Brazil and have my listeners understand. But in case you don't, I will say that Brazil is a beautiful country with a lot of unpredictable situations, and we will leave that at that.

Speaker 2: 6:59

Also, my voice is crackly and a bit hoarse because COVID was not nice to me and I don't remember a lot about what happened for the two weeks that I was in bed with it, except that I had a lovely cough that left my throat a wreck for a couple of weeks after. Ironically, as I record this today, I also am recovering from a cold. I have not been sick for over a year until I decided to start this podcast project up again. Anyway, back then, the great part was that Kelly and I had an awesome conversation, a conversation that happened in several different segments, one of which is now lost forever and I have no idea what happened to it. We had several different segments because we lost our connection on Zoom more times than I care to talk about. She and I also talk over each other a lot in this episode and the next two. This does not make for a great podcast. If all of that wasn't enough, the acoustics in my in-laws' kitchen made me sound like I was recording in an empty cafeteria. All in all, I felt that the whole attempt was an epic fail on my part all the way around. When I listened to the recorded audio, I called Kelly, thanked her for her time. However, I informed her I would not be moving forward with the project.

Speaker 2: 8:24

So in the meantime, we did move to Portugal, and the transition syndrome was lesser this time, but if anyone tells you it's easy to move to another country and or culture, they're either lying or oblivious. The stress is real, but after a few months, life got easier and I learned a little Portuguese and I made some friends. One year later, I'm still waiting on my documents to be completed. That's a different podcast, but I am settled. I haven't missed my teaching career, which makes me a little sad and ashamed. I mean, this is my second year not teaching. It took me this whole time, though, to remember what things in my life brought me joy and to get used to having a life that didn't demand all of me every waking moment of every day. I also have had to do some very intense exercise to get my body back to a reasonably usable condition. But I've done the work. I did it all and I've learned to live in a new way. It's a way I quite like. I think the fact that my life has been calm and relaxed and that I've learned to slow down and enjoy the present here in Portugal is what made this next part such a slap in the face.

Speaker 2: 9:44

On January 5th, I read a Facebook post and found out that a former colleague of mine had passed away. She also had been planning to move to Portugal to live a slower-paced life. She was 57 years old. I could not believe it. A mere three days later, at the age of 60, yet another former colleague in a different school passed away. She was 60 years old, sitting here in Portugal, semi-retired. I thought of how these two amazing educators deserved to be where I was. They had both given their hearts and souls to teaching and wouldn't have had it any other way, but they had both assumed there would be a finish line where the day-to-day issues that plague education would no longer plague them.

Speaker 2: 10:34

I'm not saying that these two women died because they were educators, but as burnout and problems continue to increase in the field, health issues for educators also do, and at some point, we need to start talking about all of this. For that reason, I pulled the old audio footage recorded in December of 2022 and decided to follow through with the podcast project that I started, and remember the lost segment I mentioned earlier. Well, it contained all the research and some quotes from articles on teacher burnout and teacher attrition. I think I've edited out most of the references to these, but if you hear one or two, or an article or a quote, that's why. So, even though these first three episodes are rough and I mean they're rough the content is really important, and in future episodes, we will discuss the health issues that are associated with burnout.

Speaker 2: 11:33

For all of these reasons, today's episode is dedicated to those two teachers and all the other teachers out there that are fighting the good fight right now the other teachers out there that are fighting the good fight right now, and I hope the content can help you, the listener, look past its really rough beginnings. Thanks for listening. So this is the first ever episode of Taught the Podcast, and I'm Melissa LaFleur and this is my good friend, kelly. We have known each other, I realized, over 20 years, because we met at Ottawa University, because you were going to KU to get your SPED degree and I was going to get my education degree and you had to have an education degree also. So you were like going to both schools, one to get an education degree and one to get the SPED degree.

Speaker 2: 12:29

And I remember us sitting in shout out to Amy Hogan, educational philosophy class, and I don't remember what you said, but it was something snarky and I was like I have to sit next to her, like for the rest of the semester. So, and I don't think that we've stopped talking, and definitely not stopped talking about education since then. That's true, yeah, yeah. So you do have a really big history with special education that actually even started before you were in school. So tell us a little bit about that history.

Speaker 1: 13:07

Yeah, well, thanks for having me as your first guest. It's a huge honor and I'm excited, but also nervous to be here, so looking forward to this conversation and seeing where things are going to go, which direction it's going to take. Well, so I my journey started, interestingly enough, out of frustration with the special education system and the lack of support that had been provided for my brother, who has Down syndrome. Our journey as a family with him was one that was full of you know it was, I think it was. It was different for me as a sibling than for my parents. I know that it was challenging and they had to go through some you know emotional processes when they, when my brother was born, but for me it was just so positive, successful, a celebration all the time as he achieved his milestones at his own time.

Speaker 1: 14:07

Everything about how a family works is inclusion. Douglas Bicklin from Syracuse University said if you want to see how inclusion works, just look at a family. We've got this. It was shocking to me when he entered the school system and that did not continue. It was like somebody just pulled the rug out from underneath our family's feet with everything that had been going and moving and progressing, and it just kind of continued like that. To be honest, I'm not saying that there weren't good people in his life at certain stages, from kindergarten to grade three, but it was pretty shocking to have him go to the same school that I had been to and have such a completely different experience.

Speaker 2: 14:48

And I want to interrupt for just a second. This was the public school system in the United States.

Speaker 1: 14:54

Public school system in the United States.

Speaker 1: 14:56

Yes, and also my brother's, 11 years younger than I, so there's a pretty big age gap, a bit pretty big age gap.

Speaker 1: 15:11

So I was acutely aware of what he was going through and very involved in everything as a little advocate, anyway.

Speaker 1: 15:14

That really motivated me to want to do something, to be, you know, be a part of the change of the system, or something that I believed really strongly in of the system, or something that I believed really strongly in inclusion in public schools and in our communities, so that we can really support people with disabilities in celebrating their gifts and seeing all of the amazing things that they have to offer to society and to contribute just as all the rest of us do.

Speaker 1: 15:42

So I was interested in pursuing special education kind of came to that at some point along my journey in college. When I made the decision to get a master's degree in special education, no Child Left Behind had changed what the qualifications would look like, and it suddenly became a requirement for anybody who is interested in pursuing special education or teaching special education to first have a regular education teaching certificate and my undergraduate degree, which was in psychology and speech and hearing sciences, neither of which are education, left me without having that necessary requirement, me without having that necessary requirement and that's why I was doing both at the same time was to fill a very new government requirement to do both.

Speaker 2: 16:32

I no longer have.

Speaker 1: 16:40

Okay, I mean, it's just trying to keep up with what's going on, the political flavor of the month of the year, an intense amount of work, money, stress, to get into a field that was desperate for people then and is desperate for people now. That being said, it matched the philosophy that I had, so I was willing to do it. I understood that I wouldn't be able to support the inclusion of students with disabilities as well if I didn't have that background as a general educator. Um, what's unreasonable about that is asking people to to pay more, spend more time in school, um, and get more credentials to to work in a hard to fill position without any additional benefits.

Speaker 2: 17:27

When most of the time, those special education positions also don't pay more money. It's more it costs you more to go to school to get the degree and most of them don't pay more. But your first job wasn't actually in special education, was it? I mean teaching job.

Speaker 1: 17:42

Yep, that's right. So I had been like an education assistant in a preschool. That was an inclusive environment. That was kind of one of my first jobs in the education realm. But that was not in public education, that was through a special program.

Speaker 1: 17:58

And then when I started teaching, I started teaching gen ed grade six, which was blew my mind because all of my personal experience had been supporting students with disabilities and I'm so grateful to have had that opportunity to teach straight grade six.

Speaker 1: 18:14

I loved it. I had such a fantastic time teaching and it was really, really beneficial in every way to my supporting students with disabilities in the future in inclusive settings. So I absolutely see the need for this overlap of teaching experience. Now I've gone on to teach in a variety of schools and a variety of roles, from, you know, general educator to teaching students with high incidence disabilities, to teaching students with some of the most significant support needs in inclusive settings, in separate settings and in consultative roles where I'm traveling to support teams in working with children with autism in various schools. So it's really been a gift to have this kind of different lens and perspective from family member to professional, as a general education teacher, special education teacher, district level positions and things always look different depending on which seat at the table you have, so having some perspective is helpful.

Speaker 2: 19:21

Very true. So currently, what is your?

Speaker 1: 19:24

role. So currently I am continuing to teach part-time as a special education teacher at a local elementary school, in addition to being faculty at a local college. That is part of the education program for education assistance in local public and private schools. Yeah, so that's been a recent move for me.

Speaker 2: 19:47

This is in Canada, correct. That's right. And do your education assistants there primarily work with students with disabilities? That's pretty much how it is in the United States. That's why I'm asking the question.

Speaker 1: 20:03

Oh yes, oh yes. And I think the type of students that education assistants support has really changed over the years. The level and intensity of the needs of the students has grown tremendously. So I can even see, just you know, whereas education assistants might be prepared to support students with, say, learning disabilities or things of that nature in the past, those are just not the types of students who are receiving support anymore. We have students that are.

Speaker 2: 20:52

Those are just not the types of students who are receiving support anymore. We have students that are. They have very significant behavior challenges or a lot of significant health needs, and that's what's getting the attention and the focus now and the rest kind of flies under the under the radars of the reality of the situation. I'm going to be interviewing another friend. I'm calling on all of my friends to do this podcast because, like people in their right mind would be like no.

Speaker 1: 21:04

So you've got friends in low places.

Speaker 2: 21:07

Actually, I found I had a lot of friends who work in special education or related fields and I thought, you know, there must be a reason. As a gen ed teacher, I'm drawn to these people. There must be a reason. As a gen ed teacher, I'm drawn to these people and a lot of the stories that I have in my book taught and as you know, you've read it I don't paint support staff in a lovely way and it's because they don't typically get treated in lovely ways and that needs to be acknowledged. But anyway, I digress.

Speaker 2: 21:42

I have another friend who is a school psych and she'll be coming on later, and one of the things that she said to me in a later podcast.

Speaker 2: 21:46

One of the things she said to me here recently was one of the special education teachers in their school. The makeup of the class or the caseload that this teacher had was unlike anything that we've seen, except for the year before, you know. So that, like the last couple of years, it's just been really crazy. And it's exactly what you said the level of need, because she questions how we are qualifying. Do we have this group of students that is getting larger, that maybe the education system has not created a good space for them, I guess, an appropriate space I don't want to put a good or bad label on it but an appropriate space for them where they don't really fall under the guidelines of special education but they don't fall under the guidelines of a gen ed student that can have the same expectations and consequences that, because of all kinds of varying needs that you can have for just a your typical gen ed student.

Speaker 1: 23:03

For sure there's a lot of complications. It's all about universal design for learning and what's being put in place at the classroom level to support the majority of students and adjusting those supports. I mean, what we're looking at for thinking about response to intervention is that 80 to 85 percent of the classroom needs should be met through what the classroom teacher is delivering and then, if that's not happening, that classroom teachers are adjusting their style and the supports that they have in place within the classroom. I would say you know teachers aren't doing, or are not able to do that for a variety of reasons. It's different, I think, in the States than it is in Canada. In the States, a huge amount of pressure on meeting standards and preparing for tests. I wouldn't say I feel that here, but I just don't think teachers have the access to supports and training and to feel confident and fluent in being able to implement that type of flexible learning systems.

Speaker 1: 24:07

It's a huge change in what we're expected and what we're needing to do. That actually doesn't fit into the model that we have. The model that we have has not changed at all. School. School systems are designed to create factory workers. It's a box, fit in it and then do the thing. Now we're being expected to do a whole bunch of different things for a whole bunch of different learners, and that's not working in the system that we have. But the expectation to do it is there, the need to do it is there.

Speaker 2: 24:36

Yeah, I 100% agree. Being a gen ed teacher myself, I felt like I had a lot of tools in my toolkit the last couple of years that I taught. I felt like that toolkit was just not adequate to meet the needs of what was coming to me in the classroom and, like I said it very much, it was not. These kids need to be in special education as much as it was. We're not really sure how we handle these learning needs and these behavior needs. A lot of it was behavior.

Speaker 1: 25:13

Yeah, I think a lot of times people just don't know what to do or how to do it. I'll say I'm pretty confident in my level of understanding about different strategies to use and way to use those supports in effective ways with a variety of learners, with different challenges, and still I can't do it in my practice. And that to me is like a whole nother level of absolute frustration. Now we have somebody who's very motivated to make this work I believe in inclusion with my whole being and still I'm not able to do the things that I actually know how to do to support my students in classrooms because of the systems in place that don't allow for that to happen.

Speaker 2: 25:50

So there's so many angles and reasons why things are not working reasons why things are not working Well, and you've mentioned how we've got some differences here between the US systems and kind of how we operate, and I 100% agree that we are very focused on tests. I don't think that that is by any educator's choice, so I will throw that out there. But it is the system that we live in, it's what it's the framework we have to work with. But I'm interested. I could not find teacher attrition statistics for Canada. I special education teacher attrition. I could find teacher attrition like how many you like, what percentage of teachers were leaving and those kinds of things. And I know that we have to be somewhat cautious in what we say. We don't want to be negative about our school districts. I don't want to be negative about the school districts that I've worked with, but I'm wondering if that's something that you can talk about about why I could not find that statistic.

Speaker 1: 26:58

But I'm wondering, if that's something that you can talk about about, why I could not find that statistic. I would expect, you know not that obviously I have limited experience, but just when moving schools to schools in a consultative role that it would be about the same. I mean, even though there are some things that are very different between the two systems, the overall vibe, the challenges are very similar. Vibe, the challenges are very similar. Now, I haven't taught and I don't have much. I don't have any experience anywhere else in Canada besides British Columbia, so I can only speak to what, how things work here.

Speaker 1: 27:29

But in British Columbia the teachers union believes and the rule is that a teacher is a teacher, is a teacher. There's no separation between a special education teacher, a general education teacher, somebody who's teaching ESL. There are no separate credentials. It's an option to add on maybe a specialization for you know your own benefit, but it will not result in increased pay, increased priority in placement, necessarily. But that does vary depending on district. Each district has different applications and interpretations of those union rules, but as a whole, the teacher's a teacher's a teacher.

Speaker 2: 28:12

That is fascinating Something I would love to delve further into, but I do want to keep us on track. So statistics are saying that the special education burnout did not get worse because of the pandemic, and I want to know what your thoughts on that are. Did do you think that burnout got worse? Do you think burnout is a problem in special education?

Speaker 1: 28:38

um, Well, like I said, it's not. There's no difference between while people are in a certain role in a certain school. Here you would move around. You could move around very fluidly from one year to the next special education, general education. In terms of burnout, that would cause somebody to leave the system as a whole.

Speaker 1: 29:11

That being said, without a doubt, the highest turnover rate of any teachers in the system is in special education. Most of the time, those jobs are filled by people who are doing them because there was nothing else left, left because they're a new teacher and they don't have enough seniority. Most of the most of the jobs in special education are are are filled by young teachers who don't intend to stay in those roles. Once they have enough seniority to to move on, or when there's budget cuts or layoffs, those are the first teachers to go and so even for that reason, even if they intend to stay, they're let go.

Speaker 1: 29:53

Is it worse because of the pandemic? That question I'm really not sure about. I think stress for everyone in every way is at an all-time high. There's a lot of things that the pandemic hasn't really changed about education or special education, but it has brought things to light. It was already happening and it's just kind of more visible and more acute, invisible and more acute. So have I felt more burned out by my role and it feels like related to pandemic.

Speaker 1: 30:32

Yeah, I mean, I'd say my tolerance for, like all of life has gone down as most other peoples right Throughout this challenging time, but it's the same shit that was happening before continued to happen. It's just that more people know about it because now their kids are at their house and they can see what's going on or not going on. You know, teachers have taken on a massive amount of stress in trying to make sure that kids are educated, supportive, staying safe throughout these challenging times. They were doing that before and you know, within schools. So, yeah, I really don't think it's that different, but hopefully people are more aware.

Speaker 2: 31:15

Yeah, I kind of feel the same. I feel that teacher burnout stayed the same. I don't feel like the pandemic necessarily made that worse. I think it did make all of us more stressed though. Yeah, what a disappointment the pandemic was in so many ways. But for me, I remember thinking when we went into lockdown this is it. We are finally going to see some systemic changes. We've got opportunities to do new things, Think outside the box. And boy, if we didn't spend this whole time trying to figure out how to make online education just like the worst components of in-class education. And then we're like, oh, let's just bring everybody back to class and do it the way we've always done it, at least in the US. I do want to be clear that we're working in two different systems, but I think some of the issues are very similar.

Speaker 1: 32:13

The difference is we weren't closed down for that long. Up here In BC, specifically, the government made it a real priority to keep kids in schools. That was the biggest priority, a bigger priority than people being able to visit friends and family, for example. We were really limited on the amount of time or the number of people that could get together, but there was a very, very short time that schools were not in session and even during that time, schools had to remain open and available for child care purposes for families who needed it, either because of their socioeconomic or family dynamic safety situations or because they were essential workers. That to me. I was proud to be a Canadian to see that, that focus on putting the safety of our community and students first and recognizing the role that school plays in terms of that, that a big part of school is not about academics or education.

Speaker 2: 33:35

It's about safety, it's about food, shelter, it's about social interaction. But yeah, I've had to really acknowledge that within the infrastructure of a country, how much the school system, how vital that role is, I had no idea. So that was a good learning moment for me. I'm going to take us back to what I said we would talk about today. You and I spend a lot of time talking about the issues within the system and it a lot of times does come back to special education and how it's being implemented, how it's being viewed by educators and the public at large and definitely policymakers.

Speaker 2: 34:19

And then, in my research for this, I found this beautiful little research paper done by some people in the special education department at the University of Georgia and it was about special education teacher burnout. It was published in 2002. And the first thing that caught my eye was they were using statistics. I almost didn't even read the article because I'm like the statistic came from the 1990s. Why would you be putting this stuff out there? And then I realized the paper was published in 2002. And then I realized, holy crap, this was an issue 20 years ago. And then you have to acknowledge the fact that it was a problem in the 90s? And are you familiar with the Iris Center, I think is the name of the organization?

Speaker 2: 35:19

Yeah, so this is funded by the US government Department of Education and it's specifically resources and things to help educators in special education, and they have some modules in there, some training modules, and one of them is on retention for school districts how do we retain special education teachers and in there they say it's a problem, and that was in 2019, I believe those modules were developed and they give a lot of the same stuff that's in this article. So then I question why haven't we done any of this? So I'll tell you the recommendation that was made by these lovely professors at the University of Georgia 20 years ago, and then let's just discuss a little bit about what we think. Now, for anybody that might listen to this, which is going to be my friends and Kelly's friends my friends and Kelly's friends we are not here to be self-professed experts At least I'm not. Maybe Kelly wants to be one, but I'm not but we are just going to discuss our thoughts and opinions based on no evidence other than our experience.

Speaker 2: 36:41

I love that, all right. So the first recommendation drum roll. Smaller class sizes and smaller caseloads are recommended to school districts to increase retention for special education teachers. Is that happening in BC? Absolutely not Not happening in any of us either.

Speaker 1: 37:04

This is about money and, yeah, we just had a renegotiated contract here and once again we're able to get improved benefits and a higher salary and we're not able to have success negotiating class size and composition. This seems to be an ongoing, pretty close to non-negotiable, because it would cost more, I think is the biggest issue you know. Maybe there's, I don't know, I don't know. We know this is a critical factor, we've known it and they just we just don't get any movement on this. The caseloads are huge, classrooms are too big to accommodate the level of need, and so we add more educational assistance to the mix, keep putting on the band-aids, don't increase the number of qualified teaching staff and hope for the best. And it's not working, never has worked, continues not to work.

Speaker 2: 38:15

So same in the United States. We, you know, last year so one year of the pandemic I was one of the online teachers and then the next year, which would have been last year, I was back in the classroom and I remember the special education teacher was new that year and I'm hopeful that she also will be coming on to do my show and she couldn't believe that she kept getting more students added to her caseload. And you know we have in Washington we call it trigger, which means this is how much your contract says that you're going to get. But if you have to take on more students, you get these choices, these choices of paraeducator time or money. So most of the teachers actually take the money. Hey, you get 10 minutes of support staff help on Tuesdays at three o'clock and Wednesdays at 8am. I mean, it's just ridiculous the time that you would get because and last year I don't know again, it was the same in BC we didn't have enough support staff to cover the IEP minutes that we already had. So we had kiddos that had IEPs, that had minutes that needed to be covered and we didn't have enough manpower to cover it and yet we were taking new students on her caseload on her caseload.

Speaker 2: 40:10

So it was a huge problem and I do think it was about money, but also it was that nobody wanted to work in education. And again, that's a little bit about money too, throwing money at this. Clearly, at least in the US, I feel like teachers are being heard for a change. We all know there's a problem, but the problem. Don't get me wrong, we'll take more money always, but that's not the big problem. It's exactly what you said. The same for us too. You can give me more money, but that does not give me extra arms and another head and I can't clone myself.

Speaker 1: 40:43

I think we have to be careful about generalizing people's experiences based on our own. But from my perspective, I would say the pay was a significant factor for me when I lived in Kansas and was teaching in Kansas. Teacher pay was significantly lower there, but I was also young and just starting out and it didn't matter. Since, you know, moving to Washington and now BC, and you know, each time we negotiate contracts we get a pay increase. Great, yeah, that's great. Always be happy to have a bit more money. Is that going to keep me in this job specifically? Absolutely not. It is not enough.

Speaker 1: 41:25

I don't know what amount of money you would have to pay me to account for the level of stress and anxiety and overwhelm that I feel from the lack of support that's actually within the system to just be able to do my job well. That is a statement made by a person in a privileged position. So, when it comes down to it, you need to make money, you're going to do what you need to do, but that doesn't mean that you're going to do it well, and I have made this decision to spend the majority of my time now at the college, which is a very significant pay cut, and I'm doing that because it's an area where I feel like I can make a positive difference and I have lost that feeling of being able to do that in the public schools and that, to me, is worth a lot more than money.

Speaker 2: 42:15

I would agree. Well, as you know, I left and it was exactly that. I was making the most money I've ever made in my life, and in a couple of years I probably would have you know, I would have been really making good money, better money, and it was not worth it. My health suffered, my family definitely suffered and I was not happy, and an unhappy me was not a good teacher. I think that I, you know, at the end, middle of end of June, end of June was the end of the school year for me, and we're now in Brazil and are getting ready to move on to Portugal, we're living with Lucas's parents and I have never been happier. I'm homeless and jobless, but I just feel my soul's at peace. And so I have some good time to reflect and I can see that I was not a good teacher. I taught some stuff, I cared about some kids, I built some relationships, but I definitely was not the teacher that I was like year two of my teaching career.

Speaker 1: 43:38

Well, who is?

Speaker 1: 43:39

Well, I mean I, that level of investment was just completely gone for me, and it's not sustainable for anybody and it's ridiculous and inappropriate that we expect that you have to do that. You have to be that to actually be good at your job, because there's not enough of anybody to go around without doing that. So I think I mean I feel exactly the same way I could. I look back at the stuff that I did in my first couple of years of teaching and it's never been that good again. I don't think that that's the view that our colleagues have of us. I think it's for people like us that are so invested and take everything to heart, we burn out, and some of it's personality, it's, it's us. And also I just want to be clear on the reasons for burnout and that you know I was sitting in an assembly just last week and it was just it was so.

Speaker 1: 44:39

It was so beautiful. The kids were engaged, the teachers were having fun, there was laughing, there was learning, there was so much positivity and I was like my God, this is why I'm here, this is why I love this. You have these moments where it's just like nothing is better than that, where you can just feel amazing things happening, but there's so much other stuff that has nothing to do with the kids, nothing to do with the families. It's just systemic weight of a broken system that breaks you down over and over again and it gets harder and harder to kind of balance that out and to recover from that.

Speaker 2: 45:21

For me but different people have different experiences with that, I think- that that is very true because I definitely have other colleagues and friends in education who are fighting the good fight and don't feel the need to leave, and I think that for me it had become. It really felt like it was a life-saving choice for me Heartbreaking because I am passionate about education, I'm passionate about kids and learning, but definitely right for me and I think that's good. I think that's good to bring up that this is not the right move for everybody to exit or find a different area outside the classroom. We have to have classroom teachers. Side note for today's episode Kelly has, since this interview, given up her position in the public school system. She is now a full-time professor at the university. She was working at part-time when we did this interview. She now has time to raise the two young children that she already had and get a little piece of her life back to give more to them. Kelly and I were only getting started in this episode. If you enjoyed listening to what she had to say about special education, check out episodes two and three, where Kelly gives her perspective on what is necessary to change some of the more challenging aspects of education, as well as giving her candid perspective on some of her personal struggles as an educator.

Speaker 2: 47:03

I want to take a moment here to mention my friend, amy Schamberg. For anyone listening who may be interested in resources for themselves or others in the area of burnout, the term self-care has become yet another expectation put on educators' plates. We all know we need to be taking time for ourselves to recharge our batteries, but finding that time doing the things that make us feel taken care of, can seem like one more chore added to the never-ending list. However, nationally board-certified health and wellness coach and former school psychologist, amy Schamberg, has an alternative to the make time for a yoga class philosophy of self-care. According to Amy, real self-care doesn't require finding time, spending money or adding more to an already full plate. She has developed a resource to give anyone suffering from burnout an alternative to the self-care rhetoric we have been hearing. It is called self-care by Subtraction and focuses on examining what we can safely and effectively remove from our hectic lives to give ourselves back the precious gift of time. Self-care by Subtraction is a free downloadable resource that can be found on Amy's website, amyschamburgwellness. At amyschamburgcom. Schamburg is S-C-H-A-M-B-E-R-G. See the notes for today's episode for a link to Amy's website.

Speaker 2: 48:31

If you liked this podcast or know someone who might please share it as much and as often as you can. Perhaps you or someone you know will be inspired to talk about teacher burnout. If you would like to get your voice on my podcast, contact me. Coach, speaker and author Rashid Ogunlaru said it may take many voices for people to hear the same message. Please join me in being one of the many voices rising up to get the message out around educator burnout. This is Melissa LaFleur. Thank you for listening to Taught the podcast. I wish I knew.