Pilot Series with Kelley Young Part 2 - Remastered Original Second Episode of Taught

Respect and collaboration take center stage as we explore what special education teachers truly desire beyond just a paycheck. The stark isolation and lack of collaboration time that these educators face is a silent burden that continues to grow. We'll discuss how systemic issues force special education teachers into roles outside their specialty, leaving students with disabilities without the support they deserve. Together, we aim to challenge the societal undervaluation of special education and push for a deeper understanding and change in how we approach teaching and supporting these vital educators.

Chapters

• 0:10 Special Education Teacher Burnout and Support
• 9:41 Support and Collaboration in Special Education
• 18:32 Challenges in Special Education Resource Allocation
• 27:38 Teacher Retention and Burnout in Education

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

the system. It's made very clear that special education is not a priority to our schools and to our society. For example, we're undergoing a massive, massive teacher shortage currently here and we do not have enough teachers on call or substitute teachers to replace teachers who are sick. We have more teachers who are taking time off for sickness than at any point throughout the actual pandemic. Now that we're pretending COVID is over and finished, more people than ever are sick and gone. And when classrooms go without coverage, guess who covers those classrooms? It's the special education teachers. And when special education teachers are covering classrooms, guess who's not getting any services or supports right? It's the students with disabilities.

Speaker 2: 0:56

It's completely inequitable across the board 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 burnout? 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 TAUught the podcast. I guess that endurance is bliss. Take me back to before the dawn. Welcome to the first episode of Taught the podcast.

Speaker 2: 2:50

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. 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: 4:43

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. 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.

Speaker 2: 5:22

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. 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.

Speaker 2: 5:53

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. This is the second part in a three-part series on special education teacher burnout. My friend Kelly, a former special education teacher and consultant, and I are discussing an article written in 2002 outlining fixes for special educator burnout. Yes, it was an issue over 20 years ago too. Kelly and I just finished up discussing smaller caseloads in episode one and this episode starts up where we left off. It really is about money, why we don't have those smaller caseloads and smaller classes. The next support on the list from 2002, more support and interaction from colleagues, administrators and special education coordinators within the same school is recommended to assist in reducing stress and burnout for special education teachers.

Speaker 1: 7:27

Yeah, not happening.

Speaker 2: 7:29

Why? Why does?

Speaker 1: 7:30

it not happen. I'm going to say for this one money and I'm going to say it a theme.

Speaker 1: 7:38

Yeah, because it is easier to tack on a little extra salary onto each teacher along the way than it is to pay for a whole nother teacher and also to increase, say, the size of the number of classroom spaces needed. So, even though we're saying we're getting increases in pay, that in no way equates to the amount of money that they would have to provide to actually allow for more staff and more space for that staff to function. But this one also, I think, goes to the level of qualifications of people and people who know what they're doing to be able to be in those positions of support and to do so effectively those positions of support and to do so effectively.

Speaker 2: 8:27

I would agree with that. I really got caught up on this one with the interaction more support and interaction from colleagues, administrators and special education coordinators, and I thought about you know my book when I wrote it about the interactions that gen ed teachers typically have with special education teachers, and I can only go on my experience but it seems like the interactions we generally have with our special education teachers is we're coming to you and asking you for something or blaming, saying you know, this kid has this thing going on. Why aren't you doing this? Or we're trying to correct the plans that are being implemented by our special education staff, by our special education staff. I've been in quite a few buildings and I do not feel like these special education teachers and support staff that work with them are typically the most respected individuals in the building. Yeah, yep, and I'm not the only one that thinks this. I found more research that bases this when special education teachers were asked and this was that module from Iris that I read through when they're asked what they want more than pay, they want to be respected for what they do, and they were pretty specific about it. It wasn't just hey, respect me, I'm a special education teacher. It was.

Speaker 2: 10:08

My job is to come in, have a student that has an IEP with some diagnosis on here, that then I contribute with helping design the instruction and instructional plan for contribute with helping design the instruction and instructional plan. For we all meet, we all agree on it, we all sign it. You do your part and this is my part outlined in the IEP. And, yes, I want to work with you as a team. But we are a team.

Speaker 2: 10:38

It is not me, this is not my student, you know, and if you have a problem, it's not okay to come to me and act like it's my problem that I haven't done my job and I am way paraphrasing and putting words in the mouths of the people who took the survey that they gave. But that to me was kind of the gist of it and I wondered because you know this is again from 2002, but it doesn't say specifically why they put that in there. But I thought it was interesting more support and interaction from colleagues, because the gen ed teachers are the special education teachers colleagues as well in most buildings. It's not like you usually have a bunch of other special education colleagues in there.

Speaker 1: 11:31

Right it's, it's can be pretty isolating, um, to be, you know, it's like being the only grade six teacher in the school. Everybody's doing their own grade level curriculum. Sometimes that's what it can feel like, um, and yeah, you get it spread pretty thin across grade levels. And not having that kind of students with disabilities or special needs is having collaboration time and co-planning. So time time is essential. I felt like I had significantly more time in the US than here. Teachers here have 110 minutes of planning per week 110 minutes and none of that the time you say it it still hits me like in the face.

Speaker 2: 12:40

I'm like 110 minutes Wow, unbelievable.

Speaker 1: 12:44

And that's also not contracted to be before or after school. So technically, if you come in one minute before the school bell rings in the morning or stay one minute after that, that's your own time. So because that's not built in to the school day, it cannot be required for teachers to do and with the exception of, say, a staff meeting or you know, fulfilling your your duty to to lead an IEP meeting as a special education teacher, a staff meeting or you know fulfilling your duty to lead an IEP meeting as a special education that sort of things you know but it's really really limited in terms of plan time or collaboration time. What can you do to support students together if you got not one minute to talk about or plan or discuss how you're going to do that?

Speaker 1: 13:28

Right minute to talk about or plan or discuss how you're going to do that Right, and then it's all on the individuals to make the choice to to make that happen outside of their official work day. I don't know that. You know in terms of like the dynamics within within, within within and between colleagues in different schools special education, general education what that looks like, but I can tell you, as a system, it's made very clear that special education is not a priority to our schools and to our society. For example, we're undergoing a massive teacher shortage currently here and we do not have enough teachers on call or substitute teachers to replace teachers who are sick. We have more teachers who are taking time off for sickness than at any point throughout the actual pandemic. Now that we're pretending COVID is over and finished, more people than ever are sick and gone. And when classrooms go without coverage, guess who covers those classrooms? It's the special education teachers. And when classrooms go without coverage, guess who covers those classrooms? It's the special education teachers. And when special education teachers are covering classrooms, guess who's not getting any services or supports right? It's the students with disabilities. It's completely inequitable across the board and it goes on for weeks.

Speaker 1: 14:46

Sometimes I can speak from experience where the kids with the most significant needs. Are they getting EA support? Yes, are they getting specialized teacher support? None, do parents know this is happening? I don't know and I'm not supposed to talk about it is really how it falls. But it sends a pretty clear message what our priorities are and I get it. You know we're told up here. Look, we got to keep the school open, we've got to keep things running, we got to cover classrooms. But what does it mean when our students with the highest support needs are constantly the ones to go without support?

Speaker 1: 15:21

Yeah, and a lot of times those students have the least power and voice, in my opinion, and so often do their families because of the overrepresentation of people in challenging socioeconomic positions, or maybe are not able to advocate for themselves for a number of reasons. Once again, they've got the short end of the stick and they are a lot of times, our most at-risk students.

Speaker 2: 15:56

I mean you know schools oftentimes say we need to find those groups of at-risk kiddos and do early intervention. In my opinion, most of our special education students you don't get more at-risk than that and a lot of them come with very unique health issues as well. And when we're looking at ACEs those adverse childhood events we know that those affect their health and a lot of times that population has an off the charts number of ACEs as well. So, okay, those are going to be other episodes. I'm going to go back to our list. So we've, we've. I have a feeling it's going to be money, and time is going to be the reason that these things haven't happened. But I also feel like on that one there is a, at least in the United States. I feel like we still have some social issues that we need to grapple with, for why we don't respect people in the field of special education more than we do, why they don't have there's a word that I'm looking for, but I can't find here.

Speaker 1: 17:08

Yeah, it's called discrimination. And it's against people with disabilities and differences. We don't value their contribution to society, so we don't value the people that are put into a position to support them.

Speaker 2: 17:19

Next one is observing other special education teachers for professional development purposes is recommended to decrease stress and burnout. I do feel like in the last 20-ish years we I don't know how effective they are, but we had like these partnership programs in Washington in the districts that I worked at in Washington, where you had like a work partnership with someone where you would go I think it was once a month and you know observe what they did and then they would come the next month and observe what you did. You guys have anything like that going on.

Speaker 1: 18:08

There are opportunities which would vary by district. So some supports for collaboration either with somebody at the district level, or some mentoring with another teacher, maybe in a similar position in a different school, but all of that would just kind of vary by district. And then also it would, of course, all be optional. So if people want to take advantage of those opportunities, they can. However, I can say that even when things of that nature are in place, because of the stress and the situation of the job, to take time away, it takes time away from students to do those things. It takes time away from students to do those things. So, yes, you know it's professional development, you're growing, but you also then are missing out on yet another day of working with your students and supporting your students. You're already missing days to cover for other teachers.

Speaker 2: 19:03

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:06

So how many days should we be missing? I think just so much more needs to be done on the teacher prep end in terms of what we're sending teachers out already prepared to do and what the level of qualifications should be prior to people getting those positions. And then, of course, opportunities for ongoing learning is important. That being said, there's a lot of not good practices happening out there, so the opportunity to go observe other people doing not very good stuff is not helpful, and we see this all the time on practicums. Right, we've experienced this Is that, yeah, you're going to go out there and you're going to see a whole bunch of stuff, and some of it's going to be great and a lot of it's going to be shit. And you're going to have to figure out what you're going to take with you and what you're not. And we need more, not just more, opportunities to see other people teaching.

Speaker 2: 19:58

We need to see good teachers teaching and doing the right thing, and there is a big body of research that for every portion of education that we need to be seeing good teachers teaching or good administrators administrating whatever it is you do. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I have nothing to add to that, because I do believe that the teachers that had the partner programs felt exactly like you do. Of course, we didn't have anything like that in gen ed. We don't observe each other because we're all competitive and no one's coming into my room unless I got a dog and pony show to put on for you so that I can show you I'm the best teacher in the building, and that's unhealthy and a topic for another time. But I think that the teachers, the special education staff that participated in those partner sharing programs, felt that they could have used that time in other areas that were much higher priority. Hmm, so again, it comes down to time, resources and money, and school districts are allocating resources in different areas. It would be interesting and I didn't know that this was where the conversation was going to go, but it would be interesting to know what funding looks like and how it is allocated, Because, as we're going through this list right now, I'm thinking these are not challenging things to do and in fact it's not even that challenging to put the money and time and resources in there. Every building has two special education teachers for each position.

Speaker 2: 21:53

How much money can that possibly cost compared to things that my school district did? So, for example, last year I came in and I had a huge TV it's the biggest TV I've ever definitely ever had in a classroom and never had one that big in my home and it had the capability of being able to be used like your computer screen. I mean it could do everything. And there was one little piece for the TV that you had to have in order to get your computer stuff up there and be able to use it for all of the things that you needed to use it for. And they didn't have enough people in tech to insert the little chip and so we all had to keep these boxes on our these. I can't even imagine how much each of these TVs cost and every classroom in the district got one these boxes. My box was still sitting there at the end of the school year. They never came and installed the little chip, so I was never able to use it like it was supposed to be able.

Speaker 1: 23:11

I was able to get a. I think it's called a dongle, and it's a word that also makes me laugh, and this is why we're good friends because that is just a ridiculous word.

Speaker 2: 23:18

It really is. It sounds like something you should call someone rather than use on your computer, but I did use mine on my computer to attach it to the USB port to the TV. And then I could you know, just like 15 years ago, we did slide my screen over onto the TV. So I used the same technology that I used 15 years ago to put my you know computer screen on the TV. I just feel like that money could have been used more successfully last year by putting additional staff in the dang buildings.

Speaker 1: 24:00

I have a lot to say about that. One is I guarantee those TVs were much less expensive than a person. Right, it can be multiple thousands of dollars and it's still not going to cover the cost of a salary and health benefits for a teacher, so it's significantly less. So it looks good to add a TV. It's much cheaper than adding a person.

Speaker 1: 24:31

Also, the issue with money being spent on resources and then those resources not actually being utilized and just kind of the mind boggling dysfunction of the system is good enough for government work. I mean, this is a government job and there's very not enough oversight, not enough competition accountability, not enough oversight, not enough competition accountability. This is an unfortunate reality in each government-funded role that I have seen. I'm not quite sure what to do about that, but when there's no accountability, you know cat's away. So there's that.

Speaker 1: 25:09

I fully support this increased use of technology in classrooms and I think it's a fantastic way to spend money and perhaps a better way in some cases than increasing the number of human bodies, because technology is absolutely essential to universal design for learning and would allow teachers who are using it effectively to meet the needs of a variety of learners and to increase the level of engagement without necessarily adding another body which may or may not contribute to the quality of education being provided. I think it's kind of a misnomer that it's not just about adding more people. What kind of people are we adding? What do they actually have to offer?

Speaker 2: 25:55

But I am going to give you some pushback on the adding the technology, because this is not the first time in my experience that I have been provided a piece of technology that I then was not able to use all school year.

Speaker 2: 26:11

So that group of students lost the ability to have access to that for an entire school year, and then they moved on to the next school year, um and I. So one of the things that really bothered me about this article from 2002 is that in 20 years that's a lot of, because we didn't even cover half the list, but we're going to have to find a stopping place here for this session.

Speaker 1: 26:41

Oh, I'm not even close to getting started.

Speaker 2: 26:44

I think that these conversations help all of us be a little more understanding of our colleagues and the system that we're working in, as well as giving us the opportunity to give a shout out to those people and say we see you, we know your plight, because I do think that gen ed teachers kind of get the PR, so to speak. The PR, so to speak. You know, we did go through the pandemic and it's a lot of. You know, teachers were on the front lines and but it wasn't just us, it was the whole system. The whole system was on the front line, whether we wanted to be or not, and I think these conversations are good to showcase that it's not just general education classroom teachers that are out there fighting the fight.

Speaker 2: 27:38

You also mentioned how general education teachers kind of get into this rut of. This is my classroom, this is the way I do things, this is my schedule and again have been that teacher. However, I've also been a middle school teacher and I will say that that we're talking primarily. When we're talking about these issues that we've talked about today, we're looking at it from the lens of elementary.

Speaker 1: 28:09

That's right, that's been my experience elementary.

Speaker 2: 28:15

That's right. That's been my experience. Well, my experience as a middle school teacher is, and that's just a whole different ball of wax. I'm going to have to have a SPED teacher who's done middle school come on here and give us some insight on that lovely, lovely world as well, because we actually dealt a lot with that at the middle school. The car us as colleagues did, you know, english language arts. We felt like what we did was the most important thing in the building and everybody should have to adjust for that, because reading test scores had to come up. Math department felt like everything that they did, I mean, had to come up. Math department felt like everything that they did, I mean every. In middle school you do have those isolated pockets of specialty beyond just special education. So I would be that's again something interesting to look at to see if special educate middle school special education teachers feel that maybe the collaboration is better.

Speaker 1: 29:18

I have experienced in a consultative role from a special education teacher's perspective, working at those grade levels significantly more challenging Teachers just are unwilling to bend from their perspective that reading and writing is the most important thing or math is the most.

Speaker 1: 29:40

It becomes more focused on the content right and less focused on this, this whole person approach which, um, there's, you know, there's, there's, there are good arguments why different things are more important and need more of an emphasis at different times, different types of expression and participation.

Speaker 1: 30:19

Elementary school teachers definitely get the trophy for the most willing to make those considerations. It just becomes so much more difficult. So I do, yeah, I can, I could see that there could be more collaboration and support within those, within those little cohorts. But what does that mean across the board and kind of conciliation amongst all of the different areas of expertise. Also, when we, you know, as kids get older with special needs and I'm thinking, you know, most of my time is supporting students with low incidence disabilities or students that would be on more of a life skills curriculum as they go into the high school years, it tends to be more secluded, more isolated. Hopefully that means not secluded and isolated but moving out into community-based activities. Sometimes that's the case and sometimes not, but less time in the regular education stream tends to be the theme.

Speaker 2: 31:15

That is very true. So we are going to have to find a stopping place for today. I'm not saying we have to stop right now, but I did tell you that I think it would be good to just kind of let you take this conversation wherever you would like for it to go.

Speaker 1: 31:33

No, we're wanting to talk specifically about teacher retention.

Speaker 2: 31:36

We do and we want to talk about burnout because, you know, I see these news articles and it's like what are we doing to keep teachers? Teachers are leaving in droves. Yes, teachers are burnout. Yes, teachers are leaving the field, but statistics say maybe not in droves, whatever that may be, but there's not teachers to replace them. At least in the United States, a lot of our education programs are seeing some pretty big hits and declines. We don't have teachers wanting to enter the field. So, like a big thing now are these, these fairs, these hiring fairs that get put together because it's just really hard to find if you're just putting a job, you know, out there. They're not getting the applicants that they need and of the applicants, they're not getting the qualified applicants. Districts aren't getting the qualified applicants that they want. So teacher retention, then attrition, turns into a little bit about that too. What are what are districts doing to to keep teachers?

Speaker 1: 32:49

Well, if people, if somebody comes to you and asks like I'm thinking about being a teacher to you and ask like I'm thinking about being a teacher.

Speaker 2: 32:59

What do you think? Yeah, I mean so my niece. I have a niece who's going through an education program right now and she's really excited about it, and I never talked to her about it because I remember being that person that was so excited. I also remember going to one of my first beginning of the year in services and I was just so excited and they were talking about this and talking about that and we had to play these games and we had to do these activities and one of the teachers sitting there was like God, I'll be glad when this is done. And I said, really, I love it.

Speaker 2: 33:39

And you could tell he was just like get away from my table. And he said that's because you're new and I don't want to be that negative voice for my niece, but I get your point. I would not encourage anyone to go into the field. If I were going to encourage someone to go into the field, it would be somebody young though, because I found it extremely difficult to have a balance between my personal life and my career and it felt like I was failing like the world if I did not put my everything into the classroom.

Speaker 1: 34:20

I felt like I was just letting everyone down and I was incapable of doing it, of doing the job yeah, yep, I, I agree, and I feel the same, and so, and that's you know, teaching attracts a certain type of person to the field, like we're all here because we want to, we want to help people, we want to make a difference, and so when you feel like you're not helping or you're not making a difference or there's barriers in the way of that, then that is extremely frustrating and defeating and makes it sometimes difficult to see or acknowledge the good work that is being done, because you want you, you know, constantly driving for perfection, which isn't even a thing that can exist.

Speaker 1: 35:01

When you're talking about the complexities of working with people, um, but, yeah, you know, even me entering this field out of a place of frustration, I went into it all excitement and enthusiasm and feeling very confident in my ability to be a changemaker, and I've tried to go at things from a variety of different angles.

Speaker 1: 35:23

I'm taking a new angle right now, and in each role there's some really great elements and aspects of it, and then some of the things that it's just, you know, again the same kind of struggles with systemic challenges that make it really difficult to try to keep on keeping on for me, and I have also come to the place where it can be very, very difficult to engage in conversations about anything related to my work at certain points along my journey. You know this kind of ebbed and flows with, but definitely I have to be very cautious about what I say and who I say it to, because of the level of negativity and frustration I have about the system, which is not helpful to people who want to get in there and make a difference. And we need those people, right? That's awesome, amazing. Keep them coming. But yeah, if people you know ask me should I go into education, I'm not quite sure how to respond to that.

Speaker 2: 36:36

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: 37:21

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, amyschamburgwellnessatamyschamburgcom. 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: 38:49

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. When we play our roles and ignore the problems I wish I knew.