Face the Facts: Addressing teacher burnout and student behavioral issues

The school year is off to a rocky start in many districts across the state.

The Connecticut Education Association (CEA) said teacher burnout and an increase in student behavioral issues are just some of the challenges they are facing.

The chaos in Bridgeport schools is just one of the things that teachers are talking about.

There's a list of issues schools have been dealing with this year, including things like what feels like a constant stream of social media threats.

CEA President Kate Dias shares some of the solutions they’re proposing, as well as some of the bright spots that have emerged.

Mike Hydeck: First, let's start with what we saw in Bridgeport, CEA members protesting. What's their biggest concern there?

Kate Dias: Honestly, it's about transparency and communication and fundamentally, leadership of the district. There were far too many zigs and zags at the start of the school year, creating a lot of instability and unpredictability, lack of resources and really not knowing what to expect from leadership of the district.

Mike Hydeck: One of the teachers said they actually changed curriculum at the last minute for some of them.

Kate Dias: Oh, absolutely. They showed up on the first day of school and it was new curriculum, removal of some materials, additions of others, little to no training on some of those things. It really is an injustice to the children of Bridgeport.

Mike Hydeck: It leads you to believe that maybe the manager has never taught in a classroom before, because if you change the curriculum right beforehand, it seems like that would be hard for teachers. All right, so we reported on a survey. I think you guys actually conducted the survey citing teachers with burnout. Behavioral issues with students has been an issue. Are there solutions in the works here? Or is this really just about staffing? You don't have enough people.

Kate Dias: I think it's complementary of many things. Staffing is absolutely one of those things. We have more than 1,200 vacancies in the state of Connecticut. Still, that's not getting better, so we have to address those issues, because staffing makes a huge difference in terms of dealing with student behaviors and management in general. But I do think there's questions about what are the supports we're putting in place? What are the earliest possible interventions with regard to special situations with our children, making sure that the earlier we can get in and mitigate those issues, the better.

Mike Hydeck: Whether it's anxiety or curriculum.

Kate Dias: Yeah, absolutely. I also think things as basic is how much assessment we're doing creates stressors on young children, and we need to look at and own kind of those pieces of the puzzle as well.

Mike Hydeck: There was a yearly thing that comes up, look, we're testing too much. We're testing too much. Is there any movement on that? Do you talk to the governor? Who do you talk to on something like that?

Kate Dias: Well, we've started the process with an assessment audit. We've asked the state department, the legislators voted on and implemented this. And really that's to understand what are we doing right now? Because you can't really just subtract without understanding the purpose and function of the assessments. We don't want to get a complete abandonment of assessment. That's not helpful either. But what we do want to do is maintain the things that are important, valuable and, you know, influential in our system, and get rid of the noise, the stuff that's really just creating stress and anxiety and creating unnecessary pressure on curriculum.

Mike Hydeck: So let's talk about some of the positives. There was a recent report that came out that scores are at least inching up in New Haven, which is good. How is that happening? Can it be replicated, and how do we keep it going?

Kate Dias: Yeah, absolutely. There are wins happening across the state of Connecticut, and a lot of that has to do with bringing children back into school. I think it works together with the fact that we're driving down chronic absenteeism.

Mike Hydeck: That was a big effort in New Haven. They were knocking on doors. Same in Hartford. It's actually making an impact, you think?

Kate Dias: Absolutely. You can't teach the children that aren't present, and so getting them in, making sure whatever barriers to education exist, we're breaking those down, working with our families. I think where we've done that well, we've seen scores turn. Scores aren't the only factor that we care about, but it certainly is one metric that we look to see if we're making progress. But I do think attendance has been key. I also think where we've edited and looked at and said what is important for us to cover in our curriculum, where we've listened to teachers and we've said, 'Help us.' What makes sense? That's where we're seeing success occur.

Mike Hydeck: You're honing it and focusing it a little more so the kids can really lock in on it.

Kate Dias: Yeah, and knowing what are the strategies that work for this group of children. Where we build teacher autonomy, we build success.

Mike Hydeck: So another thing that I thought was really interesting. This week you were part of, or at least it was announced that you were part of a plan for charting the future. The Connecticut Business and Industry Association got a lot of stakeholders together and said, 'Look, we need to try to figure this out on how we make our plan for the next decade.' Their idea is, look, we need kids more job ready when they come out. How does CEA view that? And tell us about the partnership that you guys have put together.

Kate Dias: So we were on the ground floor with CBIA establishing the foundation that looked at sort of the economic future of Connecticut, and what we heard over and over again was the reliance on the public education system to make that vision a reality. And so we really kind of engaged at the front end and said, 'We want to be partners in this.' We believe that the changes that we want to evolve within public education are good for our students, are exciting for our educators to engage with and really start to produce students that are ready for the world in front of them. But that's going to take re-envisioning an alignment of how we measure the success of our school districts aligned to the values of our state as we're articulating them. And we can do that work, but we're going to have to get creative and really kind of bring all these different stakeholders together and say, 'what do we need, and how do we make it happen?'

Mike Hydeck: Well, when the rubber meets the road, if EB needs welders, or somebody else needs nurses. Whatever you need, you have to change the curriculum, too. That's going to be a longitudinal process, right? Teaching teachers how to teach the new stuff.

Kate Dias: Oh, absolutely. And I think some of it doesn't have to be as specific as that even. I think what we need to also think about is how we're pivoting to some of those experiential learning opportunities. How are we engaging our students and bringing them into some of those fields of study by exposing them to what the world of work could look like for them. What does a medical career look like? What does working at EB look like? And really kind of broadening our landscape for our students, but that's going to be a balancing act of, we have massive graduation requirements. Those may need to be edited. We assess our schools based on SAT scores predominantly. That may need to be edited and really to reflect this change of values, to say our students need to be ready for the really great world of Connecticut. And how do we do that?