Northern teachers overworked: study
Teachers' association workload report shows hardships of teaching in the North
Candace Thomson
Northern News Services
Published Friday, March 28 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
It's common knowledge that teaching isn't easy, but a recent study shows it's an even greater task in the North.
The Northwest Territories Teachers' Association (NWTTA) released a study on teacher workload that had 50 teachers from across the North, including Nunavut and the Yukon, write down their hourly activities for a week.
"What's startling is the number of hours that teachers are putting in and if you multiply that by the number of weeks that they're working, they're putting in quite a bit of time," said Gayla Meredith, NWTTA president.
According to the study, teachers in the NWT work an average of 53 hours per week, 273 days per year, which is comparable to teacher workload nationally. However, the comments from teachers who took part in the study show that Northern teachers have more on their plate in terms of meeting the needs of their students.
The majority of the workload is spent on instructional or supportive work, where teachers are spending 15 hours of overtime per week with struggling students to bring them up to speed and meet curriculum demands.
Aside from extra hours, the report states the big picture is that teachers are often having to meet students' basic needs in the form of breakfast programs, emotional support, and working through abuse and addictions. The added responsibility leads to increased stress and burnout for Northern teachers.
According to the report, "schools are not islands in and of themselves, but rather a reflection of societies' realities - both its challenges and strengths. Many of (students') needs are beyond the school's capacity to address. Additional expertise and support are required if schools are to be successful."
Meredith said support could come in the form of wrap-around services, where departments such as the Department of Health and Social Services work with the schools to meet individual student needs.
"Schools are just a reality of the environment and the communities, they bring both the strengths and the challenges right into the schools and I think we do need to look at how we can add more support in that manner," said Meredith.
"Teachers are the experts, as far as teaching the students. They've been trained to be a professional in education, but I'm not sure the resources are best used if they're also running breakfast programs and that kind of thing."
Frame Lake MLA and former teacher Wendy Bisaro has seen how the demands are increasing for teachers, and brought up the study in the final week of the legislative assembly, calling for greater support for teachers.
"We have such a greater range of abilities of students, and teachers are required to take on far greater social issues than they had before," said Bisaro. "Now the expectation is the school will handle it. It's that sort of constant adding of things to a teacher's workload that has happened over a number of years."
The situation for teachers can't be changed without reducing the hours, providing more services and paying better attention to the expectations on educators - all things impossible without educational reform, the report states.
In the NWT, the Department of Education, Culture and Employment has announced its Education Renewal Initiative (ERI), which is slated to change education in the territory.
"When they announced their ERI we were pleased because we're excited to have someone open Pandora's Box so we can look at things that need to change," Meredith said. "We wanted to contribute to the discussions with actual data, supplied with evidence."
Rita Mueller, deputy minister of ECE, said the department was involved in the workload study from the beginning and has representatives of the NWTTA at the table as they plan to roll out the ERI.
"Without question is teacher wellness important to the department? Absolutely. Was it identified as something we need to ensure when the action plans come out? Absolutely," Mueller told Yellowknifer.
Meredith said she just wants to see something change and is happy they now have the evidence to put forward to that change, though she cautioned finding a solution isn't going to be easy.
"What we're looking at is something that's very complex, not as simple as moving numbers around on a spreadsheet," she said. "We're dealing with people and with students and their needs. Teachers can no longer do more and more - I think we're at our maximum."
