How to keep your teaching from being murdered
Stressed Auckland teachers drop to four-day week:
‘The workload is killing people’ Increasing stress, long hours, and dealing with poverty is impacting on the health of our primary school principals. Teachers at a West Auckland school have dropped to a four-day week this year in an attempt to regain work-life balance. Two-thirds of teachers at Laingholm Primary School now work part-time. Principal Martyn Weatherill said staff had told him it was the only way they could stay in teaching.
Four-day weeks hit headlines last year when New Zealand company Perpetual Guardian trialled them. Staff were paid for five days but could work four, and reported having time for family, hobbies, and doing things like car and home maintenance.
That’s not the case for teachers, Weatherill said. The teachers who reduced their hours had taken a 20 per cent pay cut, but still worked on the fifth day doing planning and assessment. An independent survey commissioned by education union NZEI Te Riu Roa has found school principals and senior leaders suffer 1.7 times the rate of burnout, 1.8 times the rate of stress and have trouble sleeping at a rate 2.4 times higher than that of the general population.
Titahi Bay School principal Colin Tarr, who is also NZEI’s primary principal representative, said it is not uncommon for him to wake up at 3am with his head noisy with thoughts of work. NZEI President Lynda Stuart said there were “disturbingly high” levels of stress and burnout among teachers, principals and other education leaders.
She blamed a shortfall in support for students with learning and behavioural needs for contributing to “deeply distressing” level of stress in the teaching profession, and called for more support in areas of learning support.
This article shows how teachers workloads are a massive stress, to the point of killing them. Click here to read the full article written by Josephine Franks:
Teachers are stressed because they are time poor, even with with lots of digital resources. We at Afed are very mindful of our teachers plight and believe we have a well thought out, well planned and truly deeper learning digital resource in place. Visit www.afedsquad.co.nz and see if this resource assists you in the classroom.
