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Teachers stressed by escalating demands: report

By: Nick Martin

Posted: 05/27/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Barely one Manitoba teacher in four has a manageable workload and more than half have seen their workload increase year-to-year, according to a task force report.

Teachers are working more than 50 hours a week, the province is swamping them with new programs, some students require as much time as three or four average students, teachers feel pressured to take on extracurricular work and they do report cards at home on the weekend.

The report on teacher burnout to be presented to the Manitoba Teachers' Society convention this morning found that 73 per cent of public school teachers feel job stress has negatively affected their job performance.

A surprise to the teaching profession?

"Not at all. We've known for many years -- there were no surprises," MTS president Pat Isaak said. What the report does is "pull all the strands together," said Isaak.

Bill 13 guaranteed appropriate educational programming for special needs programming, but it didn't come with all the resources and supports that classroom teachers need, the report found.

Teachers believe in an inclusive classroom, Isaak emphasized.

But teachers feel guilty that having so many special kids in too large a classroom means the kids who most need the teacher's attention don't get it, Isaak said.

The province deals with special needs by putting more and more educational assistants into classrooms, she said.

"What we need are smaller classrooms.

"Teachers feel incredibly guilty that some of their neediest students are spending more time with the EA than with the teacher," Isaak said.

The number of students identified with special needs has almost doubled since 2000-2001. And then there are the children with behaviour issues.

When kids have behaviour problems, teachers "don't have the time to delve into whether there's a learning disability, and the behaviour is masking the learning disability."

The unofficial so-called no-fail policy, of keeping kids with their peer group regardless of academic performance, exacerbates the teacher's workload, Isaak said.

When she taught Grade 9 math, students had math levels from grades 4 to 11, she said. When a child is promoted regardless of learning level, "What support is there for that student, once the decision is made?"

There were almost four times as many students with English as an additional language in 2006 than in 1997, and immigration policies are pushing those numbers higher.

Isaak pointed out the province keeps coming up with wonderful ideas the teacher has to squeeze into a finite day.

The province mandates increased physical activity, nutrition policies, green classrooms, technology literacy -- all on top of what teachers already have to squeeze into a 5.5-hour day.

"They're all good ideas -- implementing those ideas, no matter how wonderful they are, is a lot of work," she said.

Teachers say they need at least 60 minutes of preparation time during the school day, but half of them get less than 40 minutes a day.

"There are places where teachers get absolutely no prep time during the day," Isaak said.

All of them face work at home at night, she added.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 27, 2010 A9

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