How the System Exploits Teachers' Kindness

Teachers have GREAT love and passion for what they do. The system takes advantage of that by making the job unbearable enough (extra work, less planning, standardized testing, low pay, tyrannical admin (not always), new curriculums way too often, class size, and lots more) to ALMOST match that love and passion. It's just enough to keep many teachers in the classroom. Shouldn't we expect better? Shouldn't we demand better?

I feel it's important to share that these are MY opinions and MY thoughts on teacher matters. In this video, I have no research or evidence to prove one way or the other. This is how I have FELT as an educator navigating the system. This may not reflect the experience of other educators, but I'm hoping to give some insight to those who might not have experience in the education system and in the classroom. The truth is that there IS a problem in education and we aren't giving teachers what they need to stick around. This DIRECTLY impacts the education our students and our future citizens are and will be getting.

[melissabattaglia]

The longer I teach, the more I resent all the unpaid time we put into our jobs. Getting our rooms ready takes days, and it's all unpaid time. No other job has this same issue.

[julieannweinert]

You explained our situation correctly. No one can truly understand the shoe we walk in is so difficult, unless you’ve been in the classroom for years without support.

[whatever]

I am a college professor and things are quickly turning horrible here as well, we are ignoring cheating students like never before, and grade inflation is now beyond imagination. Everything is about "tuition money".
I have also realized that this job is not meant for people with certain personalities meaning those who are sincere and want to teach in the best way possible.
This job is meant for extroverted personalities who know how to talk, they may not know the subject they are teaching but as long as they have loud extroverted imposing personalities, then they will succeed in this job.

[Freedom-Fries]

Absolutely masterful explanation about why teaching these days is a huge burnout. It's not the kids and it's not the parents...it's the never ending parade of expectations....filling the same place the "why" is located. Brilliant analogy.

[MsPhillyFleur]

I put my foot down & when half the work didn't get done (no pencils, not enough books), the room got decorated during school hours, & my personal pet peeve, refusing to buy a $20 ticket to attend a "class trip", suddenly I get books, pencils, & once the VP gave me the money out of his own pocket. I learned that YOU TRAIN THEM... NOT the other way around. They will use you until your dead & broke!!!

[TeacherKellyTag]

I think teachers tend to have a giving personality. That makes them easy targets for being exploited.

[wks-iu]

I am retiring early for this exact reason. The amount of extra work required after contract hours, required during planning times, and not being paid for all the hundreds of hours worked before and after school, is no longer feasible for most of us and burnout is real. This year is my last year. I am a fantastic educator and am beloved by my students. I just can’t do this anymore. The school systems are losing great teachers in droves. This is very much the reality in teaching today.

[Jane]

They are counting on you being kind. They take full advantage of it- I am no longer nice

[likeumyeah]

Administrators capitalize on the gaslighting trick of asking "the why" of us in teaching. They only ask this as a deflective tool to not address the real problems in education. And they know that most teachers will fall for it, because answering the question makes many teachers temporarily suspend the trauma and abuse. I no longer fall for it. Now, when they attempt "the why" trick, I answer with, "Because you're paying me money to be here...next question?"

That response focuses their attention much more effectively.

[Catata]

Light Bulb moment is why I got into teaching...Administration may drive me out!

[brittascharmsandbeads]

As a European teacher I was so shocked the first time I heard that teachers in the US actually PAY for school supplies that are needed for their work in the classroom ! 😨
Here we go to the supply room in our school and pick what we need, and if there's something that we need that's not there, we tell the head master and he/she will most likely order in for us. At least that's the case here in Norway.

[shannonbrown]

I my kindness feel squashed by systems and not getting

[budmoore]

Sister, I have been researching the current exodus of teachers from the profession and our school systems. I have come to the conclusion that current administrations and state governments have been taking advantage of teachers with the amount of "little things" that they put on teachers. I would say that 95% of these extra things should either be refused or should at minimum require a renegotiated contract by the teachers and there districts. It has become VERY CLEAR that all of you need an advocate agency to stand in the gap between yourselves and those that seek to pile more things on your plates. I would highly suggest that you and your fellow teachers join or form a union to put an end to what I can only describe as abuse of teachers.

[duanebidoux]

Just retired. My last year I didn't have even a single Saturday or Sunday with fewer than 8 hours work for the first 2.5 months. especially

[qsaxby]

Thanks so much for this video. I agree wholeheartedly, and I want to say this is deeper than many might even realize; ultimately, I believe if you are in the field, you are purposely kept in the dark (through incessant 'training' that infantilizes grown adults (condescending teacher voice much?) and ultimately indoctrinates thousands of very smart people, and I don't use the word indoctrinate lightly) and if you are outside of the field (say, as a parent or just observer), you are overwhelmed by the official-sounding 'theory' and 'professional development' school districts use to convince you that what they are doing is working. (Guess what; absolutely none of it is working) It's an eduspeak word salad that means absolutely nothing, and it is being used to gaslight its participants.
I really don't mean to rant and rave, but this is huge. This is a rabbit hole that many teachers (who rightly feel humiliated, angry, and resentful towards this absolutely insane system which craps all over them, and then tells them to like it, basically) are not aware of, but after I have done months of research on this very topic, the current state of American education, there are things the admins and the consultants do not and I repeat DO NOT want teachers to know. I'm telling you, it's a google search away, and once this gets out there will be light bulbs going off in thousands of teachers' brains about what is really happening here.
Please consider this:
The vast majority of the 'professional expectations' the system has for the teachers still left in the system (and godspeed to you if you still are), are actually 100 percent BS, and guess what, all you have to do is follow the money, as always!! OF COURSE. They are selling BS in the form of 'professional development' (because in their eyes you will never be 'developed' enough, which is why you'll see 65 year old Janine who has been with the school district for forty years still expected to attend the latest asinine training on some official-sounding acronym cooked up by some consulting company somewhere, maybe it's RACES today, or SLOP tomorrow), and so someone is always selling a book on how you can be more developed with that very acronym or buzzword!
The field of education has been taken in by a giant pyramid scheme, and as crazy as I might sound, I'm telling you, just google it. First Google Fountas and Pinnell and see who is making the money on pseudoscientific reading programs, and see how they are making it off of pseudoscience masquerading as educational theory.
Everyone is so quick to say teachers don't get paid, which literally everyone (even the kids) know, but a few someones do get paid, and they love turning the screws on the teachers. And those people are? The consultants! The professional developers! The ones with the books on professional development and personalized learning! Want to talk about 'buy-in'? Their buy-in is keeping teachers compliant and believing the bullshit that is 'professional development'!
PD is the cover!
Please, look up the Reading Wars controversy, and you'll see that there is a lot of money to be made in pulling the wool over educators' eyes; Emily Hanford's podcast "Sold A Story" shows how the charlatans have been selling very expensive reading programs to school districts for decades, and guess what? The reading programs don't work! They don't teach the kids how to read! The schools had one job! And they are purposely not doing it, because it would mean losing their easy money.
Just as an example, so it doesn't seem like I'm some kook with a bunch of conspiracy theories (I was a teacher for eight years, and it was eight years of misery fighting this very system):
The consultants give the schools what they want to hear; they sell them on some unscientific buzzword (let's get 'rigor' in the classroom, whatever the hell that means, and it can mean whatever the consultants want it to mean), convince the actual experts (the teachers with content knowledge) that actually, it never was about content knowledge, but about process theory, and then ostracize the ones who will not get in line, who see through the constant rebranding but are a threat to this tenuous house of cards. The teachers who, I don't know, want to actually teach things? They get in the way of the money.
And how do you get rich off of a system where you thought there wasn't even enough money to buy supplies for classrooms, and you make it a moral imperative for the teachers on the front lines to 'care' enough to go and buy the crap themselves? Publish a PD book (which, if anyone actually read this claptrap about personalized learning or PBIS or whatever acronym they want to sell you, you would quickly realize are completely unscientific, baseless, and not worth the paper they are printed on; these 'PD' books should more rightly be shelved with the vague 'self-help' books of the likes of Tony Robbins! "Rigor is not a Four Letter Word" was the one the AZ Dept of Ed shoved down our throats at one of these absolutely pointless trainings) and sell it in bulk to thousands of school districts!

The money is guaranteed!

But who gets blamed when business decisions like this lead to an illiterate student body that the higher grade teachers cannot physically teach because these kids have been pushed through an inherently broken system? The teachers, of course.

[PaintinWitMrCooper]

The system is called a system for a reason. What do systems do? Operate with a singular function and ultimately if needed assimilate anything that facilitates the opposite in a way that services that function. They don't care about our "why." They care about how they can manipulate it to maintain a status quo for the benefit of those on top and to the detriment of multiple generations. Our role as teachers is to lay the groundwork for a spark that will equip students to overcome those odds. The system as it exists unfortunately is more interested in reducing the possibility of that as often as possible if it threatens the dynamic its become accustomed to, bystanders be dammed.

[irwinsaltzman]

A boss needs to get more work out of their subordinates. Most teachers are caring, honest people, high performers and so can be manipulated easily. So they work extra hours, paying for their own supplies etc. And many teachers believe they are responsible for their students in areas that are beyond their control, so spend extraordinary effort in areas that should be handled by parents and other family members.

[richabrams]

You want to survive 30 years as a teacher? Never do more work than the time they give you to get it done. I can count on one hand the number of times I have taken work home with me (Not counting COVID when I was teaching from home). Does this make me a bad teacher? I work hard on lesson plans and am present in the moment, but I don't overcommit my time with the assignments I give. When I leave for home I open a different compartment and close the school one behind me. When I retire they are not going to give me a gold watch and they won't give you one either no matter how much unpaid work you do. If you don't live your life outside your work, your work will suffer and so will you. Be the best dang teacher you can from the first bell to the last, then go home. When you go home, be home.

[haddow]

Exploiting teachers is a very explicit strategy of the right and they openly admit it all the time. They constantly talk about how teachers should never complain about wages or funding because their job is a public service and they get more out of the job than money.
This is just a tactic they use to screw teachers over all the time. It's also his they convince the public to not think it's a bad thing. Teachers absolutely need to not let this slide. Governments are filled with people trained in all sorts of underhanded strategies to exploit people. The highest one is to destroy things through underfunding them rather than explicitly changing the laws involved. This typically happens when they want to destroy something that it very popular, like socialized medicine or teachers unions. They'll slowly over years not keep parity between raises and inflation. The mathematical certainty of the situation is the funding reduces slowly over time.
This exploits the scenario of the frog in the frying pan. Put a frog in a hot frying pan and he will immediately jump out. Put him in a room temperature pan and slowly raise the heat and he'll never know he's being cooked alive until it's too late.
Same thing with underfunding public services. The underfunding starts off as annoying, but over time builds financial pressures until even the most sturdy structure crumbles.

[TheMarvelousBeautyChannel]

You are so spot on. This was the best explanation by far.