13 Months Into Pandemic Schooling, NYC Teachers Yearn For Stability

When Curtis High School teacher Ife Damon first experienced an unexpected student showing up in her remote class as a prank, she realized this was new territory not covered in teacher training.

“The very first time it happened, it completely caught us off guard,” said Damon, who teaches English Language Arts and special education at the Staten Island school. “That's just one example when you have to be flexible in the moment.”

Since COVID-19 upended just about everything last March, New York City’s educators have had to navigate the challenges of pivoting the country’s largest school system to online classes and remote learning, while dealing with the stresses of the pandemic in their own lives.

Now, as yet another upheaval to carefully-made schedules and plans looms with the return of more students to classrooms on April 26th, several teachers interviewed by Gothamist said they were seeking stability. Some said they didn’t know if they would continue in the profession after the rockiness of the past 13 months. Others said the pandemic actually inspired them to commit more to their students, or forced them to embrace new technology and strategies.

“Most of the teachers that I'm in conversation with are very frustrated, they're exhausted,” said Dr. Detra Price-Dennis, an associate professor of education at Teachers College who has held listening sessions with public school teachers nearly every week since the start of the pandemic in America.

“And the things that we know lead to teachers leaving the industry, regardless of COVID, are things like working conditions, you know—workload, lack of work-life balance, and poor leadership," she continued. "So teachers are carrying such an enormous burden right now, feeling that very little support from the general public, but then also from administrators and folks within the system.”

“I'm in education for the long run. I love education,” said Damon, the Staten Island teacher. But she acknowledges she feels “very overwhelmed” by the current workload.

“There's just so much and there just really isn't enough time. I definitely work beyond school hours, more than before, to get a lot of things done,” Damon said.

One middle school teacher in Brooklyn who didn’t want to be identified because she was not authorized to speak publicly said her biggest stressor has been the frequent changes to school guidance with the city opening, closing and reopening school buildings this year. The students in her classroom may change as well, with Mayor Bill de Blasio announcing that remote learning kids could elect to switch to hybrid learning and return to school buildings April 26th.

“I'm doing double the work, and I have to keep track of the students every week. I'm losing grades for one class because they transfer in and out. That is driving me crazy, and stressing me out,” the Brooklyn teacher said.

The Department of Education said they support their 77,000 teachers with programming to address mental health and wellbeing, and pointed to data showing that instead of fleeing the profession en masse, fewer teachers retired during the pandemic than they did the previous year.

“We’re doing everything we can to support our teachers with mental health programs, trainings and Trauma 101 series, and teacher retirements and overall attrition are down by double digits this year,” DOE spokesperson Katie O’Hanlon said in a statement. “Our educators are doing invaluable work for their students and school communities, and we are incredibly grateful to them during these challenging times.”

This year’s teacher retirements are down over 20% from last year and resignations are down by almost 43% compared to last year, the DOE says — about 880 teachers applied to retire, compared to 1,100 teachers in 2019. About 900 teachers resigned last year, compared to 1,600 resignations in 2019.

For comparison, more than 2,000 teachers on Long Island filed for retirement in 2020, Newsday reported — a 26% increase over 2019 application volume.

Whether future teachers are still interested in joining the profession seems to be more in doubt, as the number of education college majors have steadily dropped in the past decade, according to the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education: “the average number of education graduates across all institution types fell by 24% from 2009-10 to 2018-19.”

Some New York City teachers have indicated that they’re staying in the job but would leave if they didn’t have financial concerns, said Brooklyn pre-K teacher Liat Olenick. She pointed to a small February survey conducted by MORE-UFT, an activist faction of the United Federation of Teachers union, that said 61% of the 1,100 school staff who responded to the survey would take a leave, retire, or resign if they could afford to.

Teaching was always a hard but rewarding profession, Olenick said, but the upheavals of the past year have worn her out.

"I just love my students so much, you know — I am happy to see them every day. But everything else has been exhausting,” Olenick said. “Obviously working with kids is extremely hard and teaching is always extremely hard. But I think the added dynamics of stress and uncertainty, and lack of communication and lack of trust in educators, and in families, has just added to that stress this year."

Stephen Simons, who teaches at Brooklyn Collaborative Studies, plans to retire soon but has felt more passionate about teaching since the pandemic started, because of his students.

“I definitely feel like it's made me more committed to end my career...in a really, really strong fashion for these students,” Simons said, in particular his homeroom class of juniors who will apply for college together next year. “So I feel like a lot of my commitment in my heart is really tied up in making sure to be strong for those kids right now.”

Simons added that remote learning forced him to quickly learn new technology. “Maybe that's one petite silver lining, that I've learned to use a whole bunch of technological features in my teaching that I would never ever in a million years have used,” he said.

As the school year progresses, there’s hope that the DOE’s recent loosening of COVID-19 protocol from a “two-case” rule to a “four-case” rule, will reduce the number of unexpected school closures that many students, families, and teachers have called stressful and frustrating.

Liz Haela, a middle school teacher in the Bronx, said one class in her school was closed on Wednesday because of a possible COVID case, and that has ripple effects across the whole system.

“We are a small school. We had one child attend yesterday, I believe, who was positive and because of that, every teacher that teaches that grade had to work remotely today due to exposure,” she said. “So I think it's a trying time for students, for parents, for teachers, administration, everyone together.”

The Brooklyn middle school teacher said the pandemic has clarified some of her dissatisfaction with the field.

“I'm not gonna lie, I definitely thought a lot about switching careers, but this was more pre-pandemic because normal teaching is, it's just really exasperating,” said the teacher. “You do 1,000 things so that gets very tiring, and that's the challenge of keeping up with the profession that's always evolving. You have to go with the flow at all times and always, always be flexible.”

She added, “I love teaching, but it's just one of the most tiring things I've ever done.”