18 What Teaching Obstacles Do I Face?

Alan sometimes felt as if heading to work at the school involved entering a minefield. When he decided to pursue a teaching career, Alan had assumed that teaching would present less of the conflict and competition, and have fewer obstacles to security and success, than careers in business, government, finance, and other sectors. Unfortunately, that assumption hadn’t proven true. School administrators pressured teachers to keep grades up and advance students on schedule, at the same time that they demanded that students’ standardized test scores move up. Enrollment was a constant concern, as were student behavior, school safety, and student cheating. Everywhere that Alan looked, his school seemed to be constantly under stress. And in that pressure-cooker environment, Alan learned that he had to guard his health.

Obstacles

Teachers are not alone in facing obstacles. Every profession and field has its own challenges. Teachers are not immune from many of the same challenges that other fields face. Yet teachers also face their own obstacles unique to their academic field. Teachers must instruct, educate, and prepare each next generation for both the usual opportunities and challenges of every age and day, and the unexpected opportunities and challenges of a new day and age. Whole fields and professions either transform or disappear, as knowledge and technologies advance and society changes. While teaching, too, faces transformation, the teaching profession seems unlikely to disappear. Humans must socialize and nurture humans, for long periods and in earnest if we are to reach our full potential. You’ll have a teaching vocation for a good long time, assuming that you, too, continue to learn and adapt. But prepare to face some obstacles in your teaching career. Only through obstacles do we truly strive, grow, learn, and adapt. 

Attitude

Your own attitude is frankly a first potential obstacle. How you continuously countenance the many events, opportunities, and obligations that swirl around you as a teacher will go a long way toward determining how long you persist, how healthy you remain, and how effectively you teach. Teachers deal with a constant flow of information and demands on several channels, more channels than some other professionals must simultaneously manage. Teachers respond continuously to the needs of dozens if not hundreds of students. Yet teachers don’t just tend sheep. Teachers instead have the affirmative obligation of positively influencing students in their academic growth and development. That effort alone can command everything a teacher has to offer. Teachers do so, though, within the rich context and complex structure of multiple administrative demands involving not just courses, classes, and schedules but also assessment, advising, curriculum development, research, publication, and professional development. Teachers are not alone in these efforts. They also care for one another as colleagues and friends moving together through the beautiful and challenging stages of life. Watch your attitude and stance closely. Beware weariness, bitterness, and the desire to control more than you can and should. Follow creation’s better patterns to receive the abundant grace of life. 

Security

Teaching once seemed a secure job. Children were always coming up through the schools, needing a teacher’s education, care, and nurturing. School teaching staff often included senior members who had taught for decades, even at the same school. The schools themselves might have stood for decades. The texts and materials from which students learned changed slowly, but school furnishings and equipment barely changed at all. Chalkboards remained chalkboards. Teaching methods changed little, too. Yet today, populations seem to shift much more swiftly, from rural to urban to suburban, through immigrant waves with changing culture and languages, and with large swings in the birth rate and the number of children coming up through the schools. Schools open, expand, decline, and close at greater rates, shifting and displacing teachers, who must themselves learn new technologies, teaching methods, objectives, and goals. The school environment no longer seems nearly as stable and instead can feel highly insecure, inevitably impacting and at times reducing the caring quality of teaching staff and the academic community. If that’s your sense, then find your security not in your circumstances but in your commitments. Be a rock among the shifting sands. 

Students

Students can also feel at times like an obstacle to teaching, even if in fact they are the primary reason to teach. Doctors may at times feel that the practice of medicine would be a gift if not for the patients. Lawyers may likewise at times express the sentiment that the practice of law would be a gift if not for the clients. Similarly, teachers may at times feel that teaching would be a gift if not for those especially difficult students or, if not the students, then their especially demanding or difficult parents. Of course, teachers must continually be on guard against any such attitude. Yet students are also changing in ways that teachers must understand and to which they must adjust. Whether the causes are pandemic shutdowns, broken families, or social media, gaming, and other constant screen time, students today can seem more anxious, distracted, and fragile, decompensating at the drop of the hat. Their parents can be either much more protective or, on the other hand, oblivious to their student’s unstable emotional condition and lack of motivation and resilience. In that volatile mix, teachers must tread carefully not to trigger students while also not unduly coddling them into a persistently disabled victim state. Recognize your increased challenge in supporting and instructing students effectively. The challenge may not be in you but instead in the student.

Devices

Teachers must also deal with the several adverse effects of the constant use, among students, parents, and school administrators, of electronic communications and devices. As just referenced above, social media and gaming distract, damage, and deplete students, shortening student attention spans and changing the way that students think, process, and remember. Teachers must adjust to those changes, learning how to instruct students who don’t concentrate, process, and recall like students once did. Teachers must also find the right line between either banning devices in the classroom or relying on devices in the classroom and beyond to teach students using technology’s powers. Students, parents, and administrators also email and text teachers round the clock, using their devices to communicate without schedule, courtesy, or reserve. Teachers thus also face the constant push and pull of their own cell phones and other electronic devices, turning teaching into an endless 24/7 routine. Be aware of how electronic devices are an obstacle to your ability to teach effectively, with a reasonable degree of peace, satisfaction, balance, and enjoyment. 

Disabilities

Teachers also face increasing challenges in serving ever greater numbers of students with disabilities, according to legal mandates and their therapeutic regimens. Schools at the K-12 level can look at times like literal pharmacies, recommending, dispensing, and relying on medications, rather than standards, expectations, and discipline, to manage the behavior of students diagnosed with emotional and learning disabilities. In that medicalized environment, teachers may not have the authority to hold disabled students accountable for either behavioral norms, instructional activities, or academic benchmarks. Teachers may also frequently have to alter their instructional format, content, and delivery to meet the different needs of each disabled student according to elaborate plans. Differentiated instruction can create obvious inequities in the treatment of students. Yet in that chaotically differentiated environment, teachers must somehow hold non-disabled students to persevering in their studies, meeting behavioral norms, and accepting consequences for their academic failures and discipline for their behavioral violations. Teachers must somehow hold the center while having fewer or no boundaries to enforce. Appreciate the complexity and sensitivity of your challenge in serving disabled students while upholding instructional accountability and behavioral standards. 

Cheating

Teachers also face big new challenges in upholding academic integrity, in the face of new technologies and services enabling new forms of student cheating. The internet made it easy for students to plagiarize online work to misrepresent as their own. Yet well beyond mere plagiarism, students are now able to subscribe to electronic tutoring services that, while holding the potential for valuable individualized student support, can become a ready means for students to have others do their assignments for them. These services can not only answer questions and solve problems but also outline, write, or edit papers and produce or improve other creative work. Students even secretly use these services for unauthorized assistance on quizzes, tests, and exams, destroying the integrity of assessments. The ready availability of new artificial-intelligence tools adds substantially to the opportunities for students to cheat, as students use AI chatbots not just as personal study assistants but to do their own work. In this new environment rife with student tools and temptations to cheat, teachers must use AI-detection software and other strange new means to ensure the integrity of student work. Recognize the increasing burdens of these new challenges. You teach in a brave new world. 

Workload

Teachers have traditionally enjoyed a relatively manageable workload, especially, in the traditional school calendar of around 180 teaching days per year, with extended holiday vacations and summers off. Yet for many teachers, that reasonable work/life balance no longer seems attainable. In an increasingly competitive education market, schools can add courses and classroom hours to a teacher’s instructional load, while removing class-prep periods. Schools may also add administrative duties to the teacher’s plate, around marketing, public relations, alumni relations, accreditation, and other school interests. In the new digital age and newly complex teaching environment, teachers during the school year can feel like they work around the clock to keep up with the continual demands. The official school day may be no longer than usual, but instructional design, learning-management system maintenance, IEP team meetings, grading, student and parent emails and other communications, professional development obligations, student disciplinary matters, and other duties can add endless after-hours work to a teacher’s classroom demands. Be aware of your increased workload and how it may be affecting your outlook on your teaching career. 

Health

With increased workplace stresses and demands, teachers can face new mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health issues. Teachers accordingly exhibit substance-abuse rates at or above national averages, typically associated with or aggravated by workplace stress. While teachers often have favorable health insurance plans and reasonable access to medical and counseling services, teachers may hesitate to acknowledge their health issues to seek the care they need. Teachers occupy highly visible roles, closely observed by hundreds of students and monitored by dozens of colleagues, in a workplace setting where private word of health issues can quickly get around. Teachers may thus conceal or attempt to disguise their health issues in the workplace, even when they do confidentially seek counseling or other necessary care. Beware the weakening of your mental and physical health. Take whatever steps you find necessary or helpful to improve your health, before weakness in your general condition turns into a serious health problem. 

Reflection

What are your biggest obstacles to persevering, surviving, and thriving in your teaching? What obstacles do you face that your colleagues don’t seem to face? Conversely, what obstacles do your colleagues face that you don’t seem to face? On a scale from one to ten, how sound is your attitude toward teaching? Do you find yourself bitter or resentful regarding your teaching burdens and duties at times? What most challenges and disturbs you, affecting your attitude the worst? How secure does your teaching employment feel? How stable, healthy, and engaged do students seem? Do you sense that you are struggling with instructing students because of the negative effects of electronic devices on their concentration and attention spans? What evidence do you see that students are distracted and depleted? Does serving your disabled students increase the complexity of your teaching preparation and classroom management? Are you at times unable to uphold academic and behavioral standards because of disability accommodations? Do you suspect or know that students are cheating using artificial intelligence or online services? How much effort must you put into monitoring unauthorized student use of AI or other online tools? How is your work/life balance? How is your mental and physical health?

Key Points

• Teachers face significant obstacles in a changing education landscape.

• Teachers must watch their attitudes closely to avoid resentment.

• Teachers find themselves increasingly insecure in their employment.

• Teachers must deal with increasingly fragile and volatile students.

• Teachers must deal with the negative effects of electronic devices.

• Teachers must answer increased demands to serve disabled students.

• Teachers must guard against powerful new tools for cheating.

• Teachers face an increasing workload, upsetting work/life balance.

• Teachers can face extra mental, emotional, and physical health issues.

  Read Chapter 19.