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Tuesday Talks!
Join me for weekly discussions about ALL things education...from preschool through high school! As a mom, Speech Language Pathologist, and educator, I share my personal experiences related to each week's topic in relatable and informative ways.
My message about education is powerful: Reflecting on what is and making waves to cause change!
Tuesday Talks!
AI Can’t Fix This: Stories From the Classroom
Send us your thoughts about this week's episode!
With the notion that teachers are using AI to make everything "easier", why are teachers are leaving the education field at an alarming rate? From burnout to lack of support, and overwhelming workloads, this episode captures teacher stories from the first few weeks of school revealing kindergartners running from playgrounds, students using profanity in class, and physical altercations - all with minimal administrative response.
We're talking about specific reasons why teachers are leaving the classroom and vowing never to return:
• Lack of administrative support when dealing with student behavior issues
• Rigid time constraints with no breaks, even for basic needs
• Overwhelming workload including grading, lesson planning, and implementing new curricula
• Class sizes that are too large to effectively manage student learning
• Student behavior problems that escalate without proper intervention
• Administrators who blame teachers rather than offering support
• Lack of professional development that actually addresses classroom challenges
• Pregnant teacher left alone for 10 minutes during a physical altercation between students
Parents can support teachers by remembering a few key things:
Be kind and respectful in communications, remember that teachers are human beings with full lives, send kids to school ready to learn, avoid contentious conversations before school, and stay engaged with teachers about positive developments.
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Tuesday Talks is hosted by Dr. Tiffany. She has been a Speech/Language Pathologist for 20 years. She's also a speaker and educational consultant. Dr. Tiffany hosts webinars and in-person workshops for teachers and parents.
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Welcome to Tuesday Talks, your educational podcast, helping parents become strong advocates for their kids and teachers to make big impacts in the classroom. Here we go, hey, hey, welcome. Welcome to another amazing Tuesday talks. If you haven't already like, subscribe, share, download all the stuff that I always say every week, we have another great episode on tap for tonight.
Speaker 1:And really this is just me sharing my frustration. I am frustrated. I am frustrated and I'm going to tell you why. It is because, with school starting back, everybody's super excited. It's going to be a great school year. Your kids either just starting school or they're returning to a higher grade. Everything's great. Teachers are excited, anticipating great things to happen for the upcoming school year. Everybody's optimistic and I have just heard from too many teacher friends that are amazing humans, amazing teachers that this first few weeks back has not been living up to the hype, because kids are coming to school not prepared to learn, parents aren't engaged, admin's not supportive.
Speaker 1:The workload is over the top. It just has made me so frustrated because I know at least five amazing women who were former educators that left the profession well before retirement age because of the very things that we have talked about on Tuesday Talks in the past as it relates to teacher burnout. You know teachers are leaving the workforce in droves, right In droves. This is nothing new, we know this. But back in season one of Tuesday Talks, val and I talked about teacher burnout in a three-part series. I'm sure you watched, but if you haven't, go back and check out those three episodes. But teachers are leaving the education field at an alarming rate and school systems are struggling to pull in new teachers. Not as many are going on through Teachers College or for higher education to become a teacher, and so college programs are struggling to keep their numbers up. And in that three-part episode, or three-part series, we talked about then in season one the three main reasons why teachers have said I'm out, can't take it.
Speaker 1:Moving on to something else, there's a lack of administrative support from principals, assistant principals, as it relates to student discipline, providing useful professional development courses. The second reason was the time constraints. Their day as teachers is so rigid, down to the minute, in the way that their day is scheduled, planning periods are consumed by to-dos or meetings. They have no time to collaborate with grade level teachers or even specials teachers to figure out how to make things better, how to keep things going well. And then, lastly, it was that workload like all the grading, the unpaid after hour works any little breaks in their schedule do not constitute like them kicking their feet up on a desk at all. They are often completing many other tasks that take up that break, some of them on lunch duty during their own lunch period I talked about on Tuesday Talks before, as a speech therapist walk in the halls to go get my group for speech therapy and a teacher poking her head out.
Speaker 1:Ms Williams, can you come just be in my class for two minutes? I just have to go to the bathroom. These are human beings without the ability to go use the bathroom when they need to because the school has no extra bodies. They are staffing down to the wire. So if a class doesn't have a specific number of kids to hit that mark we'll talk about this in upcoming episodes but schools get money per pupil, per student. So if you don't have enough in that class to offset the salary of the teacher in that class, then you start shifting things up.
Speaker 1:I've seen teachers to either be shifted to a new grade level right before school starts because the class size didn't meet the minimum that was needed for them to be able to support a teacher having just 20 kids in the class or maybe just 17, because that's a wild idea. Right, we needed to have at least 25 bodies in this classroom, which we all know. Class size matters and it impacts the impact. It impacts the impact of teachers in the classroom. It impacts student engagement, behavior, all the things We've been talking about this, and that is why I'm so frustrated, because it's just the same stuff every year. And so to hear these stories from my teacher friends and I also put a call out on social media for teachers to give me feedback on how it's going. They all said the same thing. Number one student behavior. Number two, that support from admin. And number three, the workload is enormous.
Speaker 1:Not only are you, as a teacher, getting to know these new students in your classroom, you're also tasked with possibly implementing a brand new curriculum, because somebody up at the big office said, yeah, let's change this insert subjects curriculum. And now teachers are tasked with learning all of that over the summer, which I've heard a lot of conjecture about. Oh, teachers shouldn't complain, you have the whole summer off, not true? Not true in all cases. So, with all of the talk about how teachers are using AI to help with writing lesson plans and grade papers, come up with activities, and I've heard some criticism about that and it just got me to thinking. Like AI cannot fix what is happening day to day in a classroom is happening day to day in a classroom. So if teachers want to use AI to grade papers, write lesson plans, develop class activities, I'm all for it because that takes those tasks off of your list so that you can now focus on other super important things happening in your classroom, ie student behavior, student engagement.
Speaker 1:We've talked on here on Tuesday Talks and past episodes about how teachers have to collect so many grades per semester and how that impacts grading. We're not going to dive into that today, but if you have to collect a certain number of grades, that means you have to give out assignments that need to be graded. Grading takes time. Grading takes time. So teachers using AI to help out I'm all for it. Do it, use it, because trust and believe this saved time that AI is given teachers is going to be used in a different way Again.
Speaker 1:They are not kicking back with their feet up on the desk, they're moving on to the next thing, and so some of the teacher stories that I got from my social media posts last week asking teachers how it was going, it both tugged at my heartstrings and also shocked me. There were so many stories of great things happening. A kid said I'm so glad you're my teacher giving hugs, especially the younger ones. A feeling tap into some of their own interests and so teachers are like. I found a way to hook this group in, this student in, and now I feel like they're on board. I'm hopeful for the remainder of the school year.
Speaker 1:But the stories that shocked me. I can't say I've never heard of these types of instances before. Some of them I've even witnessed in my career as an SLP in the schools. But one teacher, who is a seasoned teacher, shared that just in the first week of school she teaches kindergarten. The first week of school this teacher had her class out for PE. One little boy decided to bolt from the playground bolt Everybody's lining up and she said I looked at him, he looked at me, he had this little grimace and then he just took off and so she is sprinting after this kid, having told another teacher on the playground please watch my class. So now this other teacher has her own class to watch and this teacher's class to watch while she chases this kid down to bring him back into the building, making sure he stays safe.
Speaker 1:And the first thing the administration said to this teacher after they're back into the classroom is did you lose track of them? Did you lose track of the kid? How insulting is it for that to be the first assumption. Did you lose track of him? First of all, there's almost 30 kids in this class, so to keep my eyes on all 30 is a challenge. Number one that's just good old fashioned common sense. Number two Good old fashioned common sense. Number two insulted this teacher was because, not to console me, to say are you OK? I see the student is fine. Do you need me to watch your class for a bit while you collect yourself? No, no, no. The first words were Did you lose track of him? Him, I was livid when I read that.
Speaker 1:Talk about not giving the benefit of the doubt and essentially victim blaming, because the teacher is the victim in this situation. Right, like you had a kid, lock eyes with you and then take off running and she was like that was done on purpose. He did it on purpose and she's sprinting. After a five-year-old, those kids are fast. If you've never chased one who's really trying to just get away, you'll soon realize they are fast. So that was just within the first week of school. Also, she had another kid in the class yelling F-bombs. While the class is working on a whole group activity, he's just yelling out the F word, f, you, f.
Speaker 1:This complete classroom disruption reaches out to admin. Admin gives minimal support. Bring the kid to the office, chat with them, send them right back to class and what do you think happened? The same behavior again. All the while there's a new reading curriculum being put in place. So this teacher said that she's feeling the pressure of implementing this curriculum, which has required others to come in and observe to make sure that you're doing what the curriculum says you're supposed to be doing when you're supposed to be doing, aka micromanaging. So she has the pressure of these people coming in to observe her. She's got a kid yelling F-bombs and she's trying to recover from the psychological trauma of chasing a five-year-old down the sidewalk outside of the school and hoping that she doesn't get injured. And the kid doesn't get injured Mind-blowing, all right.
Speaker 1:So she highlighted in what she shared with me that she does have good kids in her classroom that are there and ready to learn. It is hard to nurture that. When there is a kid in class yelling at us bombs, it makes sense, right, that tracks. Another teacher reached out and said this was her first year teaching EBD. So that's emotional behavioral disorder. So these students are self-contained in the classroom. They have a lot of emotional challenges, behavior challenges. And so she said when kids crash out and kick the walls, the doors, whatever she asked, is it normal to take them out and then bring them right back to class? And she said I feel like I'm babysitting at this point.
Speaker 1:Babysitting Now, I've heard that term from a lot of teacher friends over the past years. I'm essentially babysitting. I am trying to make the best of a not so great classroom situation with lack of support from admin, and I honestly think that admin doesn't know what to do. That's what I think, because these kids are different, these kids are different, they are different and so that same you know we talked about in the burnout teacher burnout series professional development is not really geared towards things that teachers want to hear about, learn about. It's some high level thing that some district level person said oh, this would be great, but it's not directly impacting what they do day to day in the classroom.
Speaker 1:I don't think that admin, unless they have a background in special education, is even equipped to know what to do with some of these kids. So, just like we talked about in a couple episodes about grandparents parenting their grandkids and the grandma who told the school where I was working don't call me anymore, don't call me about my grandson's behavior when he's at school, he's your problem and she stopped answering the phone calls. So, admin, you're at a loss. Like what do you do? Teacher, you're at a loss. You call admin. Hey, kicking walls, kicking doors. I need somebody to come down and they get them, talk to them in the hall and send them right back to class and then the behavior happens Again. Now you set the precedent that I can act like this in class, whether you have an IEP or you don't. There still need to be consequences for actions. I'm not saying suspension or restraint, anything like that, but there have to be consequences. Also, there should be a counseling piece in here somewhere. But no, you just take them out of class, chat with them, send them back to class. You set the precedent that I can do these things as a kid and nothing's going to happen. I just get to come back to class.
Speaker 1:Another teacher said that when asking for their workload to be reduced by eliminating lesson plans for a specific subject area, the teacher was told by the principal you have to get that done on your own time if you don't have time during the school day. And if you can't, then maybe this is not the profession for you. So imagine a teacher who's asking for a little reprieve. Can I not do a lesson plan for this specific area? I'm assuming this teacher works at secondary level where she's teaching multiple class subjects and you're told no, either get them done during the school day, get it done on your own time, or maybe this isn't the profession for you. How degrading, right Like? Think about that. You're being told. If you can't get it done, everybody else is doing it. If you can't get it done, then it's a you problem. Essentially is what this administrator said it's a you problem. Essentially is what this administrator said it's a you problem.
Speaker 1:Now you can see why I'm frustrated. I have not been a classroom teacher. I have said that many times on here. I have worked for decades in public schools elementary, middle and high school level as a speech therapist, and I have sat in on teacher planning times, I've sat in on IEP meetings, I've gone to staff meetings and I hear all of the stories, the good and the bad, and I know the struggle has to be real, because I thought to myself as an SOP starting out my career in the school. Why do teachers do it like? This is? This is crazy. As great as it is, it can be equally as challenging, and so that is what has just had me so frustrated in listening to these stories, because you have people filled with compassion and care and genuine you know this genuine feeling to want to help kids. And then you run into all of this pushback, whether it's from administration, the workload or just people in general, who have never been in a school for a considerable amount of time, judging the fact that you complain about an aspect of your job as a teacher, and I just want to say right now, teachers, you have my full support.
Speaker 1:Now, one thing I do pride myself on is the power of both, and I can both be in support of teachers and also recognize when teachers aren't stepping up to the plate. I can do the same with parents. I've talked about parent strategies on here as it relates to being more involved in their kids' education. I can be both in support of parents and understanding what they're going through and also be like, hey, you're not doing your part here. Hey, you came in hot when you really shouldn't have because you had no basis to do that. So the power both ends. I pride myself on that. I can be the advocate and I can also hold people accountable. But these stories just really really took me over the edge, because these are great teachers two of them I knew great teachers that are just already up to their eyeballs. And it's the beginning of the school year. You're supposed to ease into this. No, right off the bat. This is popping off within the first few weeks of school.
Speaker 1:One of the last teachers who responded to the social media survey that I put out said, after calling admin support for support with a student, an issue escalated in class, resulting in a student being punched in the face. Resulting in a student being punched in the face. The teacher said I'm angry that it took over 10 minutes for anyone to respond to multiple requests for help and a known bully who had physically had a physical altercation in the past was allowed to return to class to get their belongings after assaulting the student and the teacher was left to handle it alone, despite being heavily pregnant and in a high risk situation. So you have a pregnant teacher I think they said they were like 30 weeks, maybe 32 weeks pregnant. You call your admin for support. It takes over 10 minutes for anyone to respond. In that 10 minutes this situation escalated to a student being punched in the face. The student who punched the kid in the face leaves class with admin and then is told to go back to class to get your belongings.
Speaker 1:That could have turned into a whole nother situation, another situation. I've never been punched in the face, but I would imagine that if I had been, if I got the chance to see the person who did it, I would want to retaliate right. So that situation could have totally escalated into something else, with the admin allowing this kid to come back unaccompanied to get their belongings out of class. How easy could it have been for admin to say, hey, so-and-so adult, can you go in class and get this student's belongings? What probably happened was again.
Speaker 1:Remember I said schools are staffed down to the wire so they probably didn't have anybody to ask, because they staff everybody up to their max threshold and so you don't have anybody who has a few extra minutes to go get a kid's belongings from class or can go do something else. That goes back to the whole point of workload being one of the reasons that teachers leave the field, but I felt so bad for this teacher who is in a high-risk pregnancy situation, left alone to handle this issue in class, admin taking forever, whether they were already handling something and couldn't get there for 10 minutes. Maybe they didn't realize the severity of the situation. Whatever the case may be, if a teacher calls admin for support, there should be a short amount of time before that support arrives, and if you don't have the bodies available to respond quickly to a situation like this, then that's a deeper topic that needs to be explored, because teachers need support, because teachers need support when they have issue going on in the classroom. The way to make a teacher feel supported is to get somebody down there right away to help deescalate or handle the situation, and so imagine, if this was your first few weeks on the job, how this sets you up mentally for your outlook on the rest of the school year. That is such a challenge.
Speaker 1:And that's why I'm so angry, because I personally know teachers former teachers, who left the field and they were amazing at what they did and you couldn't pay them enough to go back into education. To go back into education. And isn't that sad? Isn't that sad when, I'm sure, if you've been in a school as a teacher, admin, counselor, speech therapist, whatever you can probably name like at least three teachers who you like, you shouldn't be working here. You obviously aren't enjoying it. And those people are the ones that came in to replace the teachers who were like I can't do this, I got to leave. And so schools are essentially scraping the bottom of the barrel in some cases and you get what you get and it's not helpful for anyone, it's not helpful for the school culture, it's not helpful for admin, it's not helpful for the kids. Everybody loses.
Speaker 1:So I could go on and on and on with more stories that were shared with me, but just know, while there were just as many amazing stories about positive lessons learned from students, heartwarming stories that teachers share with me, and just amazingly profound student encounters just in this first week, these are not the reasons why teachers are leaving the profession in droves. It is the challenging situations that are causing teachers to be like I can't do this, I can't do this anymore. I've worked in a school where a teacher was hit by a student in a self-contained classroom, nose broken. Who wants to come to work and get their nose broken unless you are part of the UFC? That's not what school is supposed to be like, and so most of the kids in these teacher stories likely came from backgrounds with some type of trauma complicated home lives, disengaged parents, something you know. There's a story behind every action, right, whether it's not to say it's justifying what the students did, but there's a story behind it.
Speaker 1:It and I'm going to be diving into trauma-informed teaching in an upcoming episode but it is a real thing that I think should be implemented more in schools, and you can't just throw a workbook at somebody or do a one-day professional development and then not provide any ongoing support at a high level or in a classroom. But trauma-informed teaching can be really challenging to implement because there's already so much on a teacher's plate. So if public education, in my opinion, really wanted to make a path to trauma-informed teaching something to be implemented at its highest level, they would really move away from traditional schooling and teaching, but I digress because that's a much bigger subject. It's hard to engage in the lives of a handful of students in a way that trauma-informed teaching asks you to. When you are face-to-face with 30 plus students in a classroom every day, it's very challenging's very challenging, but that's a topic to be explored at a deeper level another time.
Speaker 1:This really is a wake-up call, I think, for anyone who may be looking through rose-colored glasses for the start of the school year. There is no magic wand to wave and make everything better. If there was, I'm sure a lot of people would have their magic wands out. But we don't want good teachers to continue leaving the classroom. There has to be a way to stop the proverbial bleeding. We cannot afford to have good teachers constantly leaving and to have other educators enter the field that don't really have their heart vested in it and really are just there because it's a solid job, always hiring solid job.
Speaker 1:So what I thought about was from my parents' side, what could parents do? You know, teachers, on Tuesday Talks we have explored ways that teachers can advocate for themselves as an individual, as a grade level to their union. All the things that take a lot of time to have some change come around. But I encourage teachers, new or veteran, don't suffer in silence, continue to speak up. But for parents, I feel like we can do a lot to just help alleviate some of the pressure, responsibility or stress on teachers day to day. And you can only control what you do with your kid. You can't control what any other parent does with their kid.
Speaker 1:So think about it in this way and talk about it in your friend group, your parent group, your mom group, whatever Post about it on your social media. Just share what you're doing and I think these are some of the things that you could do being kind and respectful to teachers and, just by the way, this list I'm going to share with you. This isn't like rocket science. This isn't mind blowing things. These are compassionate ways to approach your child, being ready for learning once they get to school, but being kind and respectful to teachers.
Speaker 1:They are human beings. They have lives just as full as yours, whether they have kids of their own or they don't. They are human beings. They deserve the same type of kindness and respect that we would want from them. So do that when you're interacting with them, you're sending an email even if you're pissed off about something. Even if you're really concerned about something, start the email off with hey, I hope you had a great day. Hey, I hope your weekend was well Something to show that you recognize they are a human being and not just this statue that appears every day for six and a half hours to teach your kid. So start there, being kind and respectful, remembering that they're humans.
Speaker 1:Keep in mind all of the things we talked about many of them here today that teachers deal with on a daily basis, that go above and beyond teaching. That is not what they went to school to learn to do. It's not, it just isn't. It is something that teaching has evolved into, but this is not what they went to school to deal with, to put up with at all. So remember that they have so much more going on than maybe just the little slice that you see. So when you want to come in hot about something, just remember that that one issue is in a long list of things that this teacher is dealing with for that day, that week, that grading period, whatever the case may be. So just keep that in mind, and I think that keeping that in mind will help you calibrate your approach to the teacher.
Speaker 1:Also, make sure your kid is primed and ready to go for school. Don't add to the problem by not parenting your kid. Get them ready for school. One thing that I do with my kid even if the morning routine has been a struggle, I try not to have a contentious conversation with him before he goes to school. Why? Because now he's already in the mood before he ever walked in the front door. So imagine if the teacher now says something to him that rubs him the wrong way. Now we just stack in attitude on top of attitude. It's not going to be a great day. So think about that as you want to talk about things, maybe talk about an afterschool.
Speaker 1:Maybe make sure that your kid is ready to go by I don't know, a laughable conversation in the car or as they're heading out the door to get on the bus, something to just lighten the mood, so that they're going to school in this heightened state of happiness and not, you know, sadness or irritability, anything like that. So stay engaged with your teacher is the last point that I'll make. Stay engaged with them. Don't be the parent that only chimes in and perks up when something's going wrong. Send them an email about something that went right. Hey, that math homework you sent home. You all must have really covered that well in class, because my kid came home and was able to zip right through it, was able to explain to me how to do the problem. This book that you all have been reading in class great selection because it's really sparking some good conversation at home, Something, something because I'm telling you, we know teachers are leaving the field in droves.
Speaker 1:Every little bit of positive interaction, encouragement, support from us as parents, it makes a difference. It's just a little, a little pat on the back. It makes a difference. So think about other ways that you can alleviate some of that stress, pressure, anxiety from teachers, knowing all the things that just in these first few weeks of school that some teachers have had to deal with. Just see what you can do to make it a little bit better. Remember, you can only control you. You can't force other people, but I encourage you to share and maybe that'll spark some ideas in some other parent's mind to think, oh okay, let me try that as well. So I hope that you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to continue to follow. Check out episodes on YouTube, facebook, linkedin, apple Podcasts, spotify. Share it with friends, like, subscribe all that social media stuff and I will see you next week with a brand new episode. Have a good one. Bye. Be sure to share this episode and join me next week for a brand new Tuesday Talks. See ya.