Teachers do not give more: 57% say they feel extreme wear and tear due to the crisis

For Carolina Quinones, the last five months have been the most exhausting of his career. She is a teacher at Colegio Brother’s School, Florida, and he says that the virtualization of education, with its changes and precariousness, has been devastating.

“I have to spend too many hours in front of a screen, be it planning, holding classes, attending the Teachers Council, having extra-curricular meetings and answering emails and messages from proxies ”, he says.

And that work does not end when his working hours end, because then he has to answer calls from proxies from 7:00 p.m. or on weekends, when “they ask me about the activities or what the promotion will be like next year,” he says.

To a greater or lesser extent, that has been the reality of the 248 thousand teachers that the country, which today suffer a dramatic exhaustion. This was reflected in a survey carried out by Fundación Chile, through its consultant Circular HR, which measured the level of fatigue and commitment (engagement) in 2,657 teachers, after five months of virtual work.

The result is alarming: 57% of teachers have extreme burnout, with a feeling of chronic fatigue, and another 20% are in danger of falling into the same. Fatigue is much greater than in other labor sectors, where total exhaustion reaches 28% of workers. If this survey is extrapolated to the national reality, it is concluded that extreme burnout affects 141 thousand teachers.

The study shows that, at this time of year, only 6% of teachers feel total commitment and passion for their work. In addition, most teachers say that their school has not provided them with tools to develop distance education, although 65% believe that it does have the skills to do so.

Hernán Araneda, Human Development Manager of Fundación Chile, explains that the exhaustion of teachers is due to the radical change in their field. “Doctors today have more problems, but it is a job they already know. For teachers, everything changed quickly and today they have a hybrid methodology, where anything goes: they can teach by mail, by phone or by Zoom, depending on the student’s conditions ”, he explains.

Thus, the teaching became another “front line” profession, but without optimal conditions, so Araneda recommends providing them with more support resources, “that allow them to have more control over the work of their students” and thus not be discouraged.

An aid for this, he details, was the suspension of the Teacher Evaluation. But it also works the assumption that this year neither 80% nor 50% of the learning will be taught, but that only a third will be taught and health and socio-emotional support will be privileged. “This year, it matters less how much you learn and more about health. You have to lower expectations, “he says.

The study shows that only 25% of teachers see that their pupils have the necessary conditions to study at home, and although the majority say that they fulfill their tasks, an important part believes that they do not have the support of an adult at home.

Professor Quiñones confirms this concern. “Not all schoolchildren have the same resources, I say this from my own experience, since I work in a municipal school. And in the case of the smaller courses, the methodologies have had to be changed repeatedly to capture their motivation and attention in the classes, ”he says.

Raimundo Larraín, head of General Education of the Mineduc, says that there is special emphasis on caring for the well-being of teachers, which is why “we put at their disposal a blog, which is actively used by more than 30 thousand teachers in the country, and which addresses four keys to develop well-being independently ”.

And he adds that “likewise, more than 100,000 teachers have participated in seminars that delve into strategies to cope with these moments, with good practices and evidence. For us, it is essential that communities address the well-being of their teachers with all the flexibility and autonomy that has been provided for the school system in a pandemic ”.

The problem of exhaustion is mixed with the fear of the coronavirus, which is even greater than the fear of losing the lessons of the year. This is revealed by another survey, conducted by Ipsos and Education 2020, which measured the perception of 5,660 teachers, parents, schoolchildren and directors about an eventual return to classes.

The measurement shows that 85% of parents prefer to maintain remote education the rest of the year, regardless of contagion, and that 81% say they would not send their children to classes until there is a vaccination. On the opposite side, 16% do want classes as soon as possible.

Among schoolchildren, the view is more optimistic: 54% disagree with missing the school year. In addition, 25% say they have learned a lot or a lot at home. On the contrary, 20% say that they have not learned anything.