Curriculum Leadership Institute

Pathways to School Improvement

educational leadership

Addressing the Social-Emotional Needs of Teachers

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Teacher looks frustrated and exhausted at desk with his hands on his face
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Teaching through the pandemic is more stressful, time-consuming, and emotionally-draining than any other time in recent history. The stressors of teaching kids in person, virtually, and often a combination of the two, are far beyond the many stressors that teachers have experienced. What has become abundantly clear, is that for today’s educators, the conditions and scenarios in which they are working, cannot sustain if we want to avoid mass burnout. 

Since the start of the pandemic, there has been a push to make sure we are meeting the basic needs of our students. As we know, if their basic needs are not met, the chances of students being successful at achieving academic targets are slim. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is used to determine how to better meet the needs of students. This same hierarchy should also be used to better meet the needs of our teachers. Within your Curriculum Coordinating Council (CCC), or curriculum governing committee, make this topic a priority at your next meeting. Here are some ways to address this issue:

Do the research As is common practice when discussing issues within the CCC, find articles that clearly communicate the topic like this one on teacher morale from Edweek. Upon reading, ask committee members to share out what resonates with them. Ask them to reflect upon the strategies listed, determine if their school is already doing them, or if any of the strategies could work there.

Introduce Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and each level of the hierarchy. Relate each need to teachers and how their needs are not being met due to the pandemic. For example, a physiological need that may not be met right now is food. As stress levels rise and time is short, teachers may be rushing to get out of the house in the morning and may not prioritize packing a healthy lunch. Another physiological need that may be lacking is sleep or rest. Additional responsibilities at work usually take away from personal downtime and might make it more difficult for teachers to get adequate rest.

Brainstorm solutions Ask CCC members to come up with ways that the district could help meet teachers’ basic needs. Put a poster-sized piece of paper for each level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs at different tables around the room. Divide the paper into columns. The first column would identify the specific need, the second column to list what the district is already doing, and the third column is used to record what more can be done. For example:

Encourage members to be as creative as possible and not to worry about the costs. If a solution does cost money, ask them to add a dollar symbol to that one. 

Prioritize solutions Use a facilitation activity, like “Spent a Dot,” to determine priorities. Give members of the committee six or so dot stickers, or sticky notes, whatever you have on hand. Ask them to walk to each paper and review the ideas offered during the brainstorming session, and “spend a dot,” or add a dot sticker to the ideas that they think should take priority while planning next steps. After the activity, it should be clear which ideas, or solutions, to move forward.

Plan next steps Good intentions and discussions will always remain just those, unless, a plan is created and followed through. For each of the priority solutions, plan what needs to be done, who will be responsible for seeing it through, and when it needs to happen. It may be helpful to create a subcommittee for following through with the plan as some solutions might take more time and effort than others. To ensure that the next steps happen, make sure to revisit this topic at the following CCC meeting, and create ways for teachers to offer their feedback. 

Continue to monitor the social-emotional health of your teachers throughout the remainder of the year and be sure to communicate your efforts to better meet their basic needs. The last thing anyone wants is for a third of the teaching staff to resign because they can’t continue teaching under the conditions of this past year or so. Your teachers will appreciate that you care and that the district is looking out for their well-being.

Maintain Learning Expectations No Matter the Setting

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African-American mother supervises her teenaged son as he studies on his computer

The “start of school” has come and gone, and school district officials have made some of the hardest decisions they have ever made. Decisions that require re-evaluation nearly every day. The building preparation, bus preparation, and schedule concerns have all been addressed to the degree that gets the school year going. Now, it’s time to focus on teaching and learning. Ensuring that all students, whether entirely on-site, fully online, in a hybrid setting, or even homeschooled, reach a level of learning such that they are prepared for their future, as unsure as that may be.

Districts have long had curriculum, instruction, and assessment conversations. They have made decisions as a district regarding their local curriculum and expectations for student performance.  Those conversations and decisions are critical within a district to ensure equal opportunity for students and smooth transitions from grade-level-to-grade-level and course-to-course. The professional staff has, in turn, had detailed conversations about the importance of those decisions and any ramifications for instruction and assessment.  Those decisions, though, have probably only been communicated generally to parents. 

In a typical school year or school environment, as a district, you are covered! Let’s get started!  However, there is NOTHING normal about this school year. Students are attending school in a myriad of ways. For the decisions made by professional staff to be implemented for all the varieties of ways that students “attend” school, communication must be carefully planned and executed. Without good communication, unintended results might occur. Those unintended results might include:

  • inequity issues among students,
  • missed building blocks within the learning process,
  • an unclear vision of what is “good enough” for student success,
  • and students may work very hard but misunderstand expectations. Therefore, when they re-enter the in-person setting, they may feel their hard work was wasted.

For the most part, parents are engaged with helping their children succeed as students; investing in their children’s success is a high priority. However, parents have jobs, multiple children, past experiences with school, and rarely do they have professional training or experience as educators. Some of the decisions that the district made will make complete sense to their staff, but not necessarily to the people charged with monitoring and implementing the remote portion of a student’s instruction. 

Often, it isn’t the “what” that non-educators can’t understand, it’s “why?”  Having not been present for discussions among professional staff, decisions are communicated as, “Here’s what we are going to do,” not as, “Here’s what we are going to do, this is why we are doing it, and these are the expectations for your child because of what we’re doing.” In other words, the expectation has been to communicate decisions to stakeholders and parents without necessarily explaining “why” that decision was made.

This school year, with so many variables for how students are being educated, why is just as important to parents as what. Knowing why a particular decision was made could go a long way toward alleviating unintended consequences. It may also help parents determine appropriate steps to help a struggling student without losing sight of the expectation. The time spent designing this communication might pay big dividends when students come back together in a more “normal” setting.