Teachers or miracle workers? – Jamaica Observer

Dear Editor,

My first return to school for this academic year was for meetings. While sitting there, one thing became immediately clear to me — the school was hot, very hot. And almost immediately my mind went to what the classrooms would feel like once they were filled with students again — 30 students; 40 students; in some cases, even more. All expected to sit, concentrate, participate, behave, and learn in rooms that are often poorly ventilated and not equipped with enough fans to make the heat bearable.

From there, my thoughts moved beyond the heat.

I started thinking about the expectations placed on education in Jamaica, and more specifically, the expectations placed on teachers, the people who carry so much of the weight of the education system on their backs.

We speak constantly about preparing Jamaican students for a modern world. But I continue to wonder: How exactly are we expected to deliver First-World education in Third-World classroom conditions?

We want disciplined students, emotionally supported students, technologically competent students, globally competitive students, and students who are ready for a world that is changing faster than many of our schools can keep up with.

Wonderful!

Who is expected to deliver all of that? The classroom teacher. The same teacher standing in the heat trying to teach 30, 40, or sometimes close to 50 students. The same teacher who is told to differentiate instruction, integrate technology, contact parents, mentor students, supervise activities, prepare reports, complete documentation, provide intervention, support students emotionally and academically, and somehow still produce excellent examination results.

At this point, I sometimes wonder whether teachers are educators or miracle workers. Perhaps the Ministry of Education should simply add “turning water into wine” to teacher training. We are constantly told to make do. If there are not enough resources, improvise. If the classroom needs something, find it. If the students need something, help. If communication with parents requires
WhatsApp, use WhatsApp. If it requires your personal phone, use your personal phone. If it requires your data, well, apparently that, too, is part of your contribution to nation-building.

That expectation extends into almost every part of the job. Teachers spend from their own pockets on printing, classroom materials, decorations, rewards, stationery, and sometimes basic items that students need.

We do it because, quite simply, if we do not, some things will not happen. And then people tell us that teachers care. Of course teachers care, but care cannot continue to be the currency with which the education system pays its debts.

That is perhaps one of the uncomfortable truths we avoid. Teachers have become the people who fill the gaps. When the system lacks something, teachers compensate; when parents cannot be reached, teachers try again; when programmes need to run, teachers volunteer; and when new initiatives are introduced, teachers simply absorb them. And somehow, because teachers have managed to keep doing it, the extraordinary has become normal.

What is also difficult to ignore is the issue of remuneration. There is a strange reality in education: The further one moves away from the classroom, the more money one can often earn. Yet the classroom is the centre of the entire system. The people standing in those classrooms, carrying the daily weight of the education system, are often not compensated in a way that reflects the magnitude of that responsibility. The backbone of the system is constantly being asked to carry more weight. Then, whenever teachers speak about compensation, someone inevitably reminds us about the holidays.

Ah, yes, the holidays — summer, Christmas, and Easter. The great fortune of being a teacher, never mind the marking, the planning, the reports, the school-based assessments, the students with behavioural issues we have to manage, the examination preparation, the workshops, meetings, classroom preparation, and administrative work. Never mind that many teachers spend part of those so-called holidays preparing for the next term or completing work from the previous one. Apparently, once students are not physically sitting in front of us, the teacher has ceased working.

And let us not even get started on senior teachers. These are educators who, in addition to their regular teaching responsibilities, are expected to supervise, coordinate, lead programmes, manage teams, and take on duties that are clearly managerial in nature. Yet for all of that added responsibility, the additional compensation is around $50,000 per month. In most other organisations, someone carrying that level of responsibility would be earning far more. In education, however, we seem quite comfortable adding management-level duties without matching them with management-level compensation.

The issue, however, is bigger than salaries. It is about the gap between what we demand from teachers and what we provide for them. We speak enthusiastically about First-World education and 21st-century learning, but some teachers are still trying to deliver it in overcrowded, poorly ventilated classrooms with inadequate resources. We demand the outcomes of well-resourced systems while depending on the personal sacrifice of teachers to bridge the difference. And then we praise teachers for being resilient.

Resilience is a wonderful quality, but it should not become an excuse for poor conditions. We have romanticised the teacher who “makes it work”, but perhaps the better question is: Why must excellence in our education system so often emerge despite the conditions under which teachers work?

Why are we so comfortable celebrating sacrifice rather than reducing the need for it?

Teachers do care. Most of us would not survive very long in this profession if we did not. But care cannot cool an overcrowded classroom; care cannot purchase every resource; care cannot pay for unlimited data; care cannot compensate indefinitely for inadequate infrastructure, and care certainly cannot continue to be used as the answer whenever teachers ask for better working conditions or better compensation.

If Jamaica is serious about delivering 21st-century education, then the conversation cannot continue to focus almost exclusively on what teachers must do. We must also ask what teachers are being given to do it. The people closest to our children, closest to the curriculum, and closest to the actual work of education should not always be the ones being asked to carry the heaviest load with the lightest support.

And if we insist on continuing that way, perhaps we should stop calling teachers educators. Miracle workers might be the more accurate job title.

T Kafash Thomas

A concerned educator

teddensetkt@gmail.com