At the Expense of a Teacher

A student shooting up the school, a student bringing a weapon to school, a student threatening a teacher, a student attacking a teacher, a student… and the list goes on and on. This is all violence and aggressions of students against teachers that have happened recently around the country, a new news story every day. How are teachers expected to take the role of student protectors when they are consistently put in dangerous scenarios by students.?

The level of violence and student aggressions are a factor that ties into the declining teacher rate. When it comes to talking about the declining teacher rate, it never seems to come up at the forefront of conversations that the profession is becoming more and more dangerous. We talk about low pay and low funding at schools, and even about the natural mental health toll and stressors that come with the job, but it never seems that the rapidly increasing levels of violence and aggression on teachers by students gets brought into the conversation.

Less and Less

There are many reasons for the declining teacher rate. Low pay is one of the biggest conversation topics that gets brought up when it comes to the declining teacher rate. Many believe the low pay is just a choice made by schools, but it is also included when a teacher talks about the salary and compares that to yearly changing costs of living in general.

“There are no cost of living raises and merit raises are few and lean,” says Dr. Lauren Taglialatela, who has an M.A. and Ph.D in Cognitive Psychology. “The expectations for faculty, at all levels, seem to be increasing.”

This is a big component of the conversation in declining teacher rate. With that, there are also factors such as the increasing amount of violence in schools, that are beginning to deter teachers away from the profession.

Stressors of the Job

It is no secret that in the academic field for both K-12 schools and higher education there has been higher levels of stress since the pandemic. Since the pandemic, there have been gaps in student learning that have caused standardized testing to drop, which now places pressure on teachers and administrations to try to achieve equivalent or better scores on standardized tests. To try to fix the student learning gaps, teachers are forced to go off the book and try to accommodate for new learning styles since the pandemic.

“Student learning gaps due to the pandemic are requiring teachers to remediate a lot of their instruction,” says Rachel E. Gaines, who has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and is now a professor at Kennesaw State University. This puts pressure on every single teacher and student to succeed.

With the learning gaps, teachers are being asked to go above and beyond with their education curriculums to close that gap, however many student scores are showing a need for more, more attention and drive for education. The National Assessment of Educational Progress found that the pandemic has caused historic setbacks in the education of students in both math and reading scores. Along with a decline in academic levels, there is also a trend of higher stress for both students and the teachers.

“Students have higher rates of anxiety and may have experienced more trauma due to the pandemic and its downstream effects,” says Gaines. “Teachers are having to manage students' social, and emotional needs in new and expanded ways now, which contributes to emotional labor.”

Because of the new needs of students, there is a lot of emotional labor and exhaustion that comes with the job. This exhaustion comes from the many roles a teacher fills as an educator, mentor, role model, and even parent-like roles, and has often resulted in many leaving the profession due to burn out. This burnout has especially become a trend since the pandemic, more students are facing stressors and teachers are having to respond and step in to assist.

Student Violence Sweeps Schools

So far, this year there have been many accounts of crimes against teachers where the students were assailants. However, it is becoming so normalized that these articles are rarely making large news before the next occurs. On January 6, 2023, a 6-year-old opened fire in his classroom and shot his teacher, at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia. On January 23, 2023, there was a school shooting in Des Moines, Iowa that killed 2 students and injured a bystander. January 26, 2023, a video went viral of a student attacking a teacher at Heritage High School in Conyers, Georgia. These are all incidents that have appeared in the news in 2023. All of these show the trend of violence and aggression from students that are causing such a spike in danger for the teaching profession.

A Look Ahead

As the rates of violence continue, there is more light being shed on the topics of teachers being put in the line of danger, dangers from burnout to direct violence. Due to this level of violence, many schools are taking safety precautions such as metal detectors at all entrances of the schools, bullet proof doors and windows, security cameras, safety drills and more police presence. Teachers deserve to be protected from the dangers of this profession, that already requires them to give so much of themselves, already.


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