The new life of a teacher coping with hybrid form of teaching is spent juggling between managing a group in a classroom and minimising forms of contagion whilst ensuring that remote learners are given as many dedicated learning opportunities as possible. This balancing act tends to lead to 13 hour days and leaves many teachers close to burnout. This NYTimes article highlights how “educators described the immense challenges, and exhaustion, they have faced trying to provide normal schooling for students in pandemic conditions that are anything but normal”. In many cases this combined form of teaching (as the class is split into these two forms of teaching) has resulted in double the workload and inevitably double the stress and exhaustion with “many teachers…putting students’ pandemic needs above their own well-being”. The result of this situation over a sustained period is not good for the children, the parents and least of all the teachers themselves. This will only lead to early retirements with the possibility of decimating the teaching population overnight, adding more challenges to the state systems that try to provide education for the future. Governments everywhere need to plan to address some of these issues before it’s too late.
nytimes.com/2020/11/30/us/teachers-remote-learning-burnout.html