The Best Way To Support Students During COVID-19? Support Teachers.

Never before have the needs of students and teachers seemed more at odds; never before have they been more aligned.

The demands of teachers and students are being pitted against one another everywhere from New York City, our country’s biggest school district, where teachers threatened a strike in advance of school reopening, to small towns and rural areas. Many parents, kids, and even the American Association of Pediatrics have begged for schools to reopen in person, for kids’ academic, social, emotional, and physical well-being – to say nothing of their parents’ sanity and the economy’s strength.

At the same time, teachers, too many of whom died in the first wave of COVID, are communicating in more ways than one that they don’t feel safe or protected as they go back into classrooms.

Teachers are right. And so are students and parents. Luckily, there is a path forward to support both.

My organization, 100Kin10, spent two years researching the teacher shortage, especially in STEM and especially for students of color and other historically marginalized communities. Here is what we found. Students thrive when teachers thrive . Improving the work environment in schools improves teacher satisfaction, bolstering recruitment and retention. When teachers thrive, instruction, engagement, and connection with students is stronger. Students learn more and are prepared and inspired to pursue the educations, careers and lives of their choice.

This should come as no surprise: We all want to work — and do our best work — in places where we feel safe and cared for and can flourish, teachers included. Schools aren’t just places where kids learn; schools are places where more Americans go to work than anywhere else.

If teachers don’t feel safe and supported when they go back in the classroom, the doors of the school building might be open, but little quality learning or engagement will happen there. If what we want is the best for our students, we need to ask what our teachers need – and do it.

What do teachers need, especially in a time of crisis and uncertainty, so that they can help their students thrive?

Maslow’s hierarchy can guide us. Teachers first need to feel safe. They need the proper PPE, the buildings need to be ventilated, class sizes need to be small enough to allow for social distancing, and everyone who comes into the building needs to be screened for COVID symptoms. If a school can’t guarantee basic safety to its teachers (and by extension to its students and their families), no one should be in those buildings.

But basic safety is the floor. What we heard from teachers, captured in our report Teachers At Work, goes beyond basic safety yet is no less essential to teacher and student thriving, especially but not only during COVID.

1. Teachers need opportunities for collaboration with other teachers during their work hours. Research shows that collaboration lowers elevated stress levels for teachers. Gallup, in an extensive poll of teachers, found that teachers who are engaged are 62% less likely to leave the school system than teachers who are not engaged or actively disengaged.
2. Teachers need a school leader who will ensure that teachers are supported and thriving. Gallup found that when they asked teachers whether their manager cares about them as a person, people who said yes were more likely to be top performers, produce higher-quality work, and were less likely to be sick or change jobs.
3. Teachers need support for their mental health and well-being. As the pandemic rages on and our country reckons with systemic racism, more students are experiencing anxiety and depression. Teachers are frontline supports for their students. To do that well, teachers need help, too. TeachPlus, in its recent report, found that teachers wanted principals to support the mental health and well-being of teachers and students this school year. 
4. Teachers need better compensation, through some combination of raises and loan forgiveness. For all the students who are in school to become teachers, they need scholarships in addition to loan forgiveness, especially if they’re preparing to teach in the shortage areas of STEM, special education, and English Language Learning.
5. Teachers need other professionals, including guidance counselors and mental and physical health providers, to support kids’ whole selves, because teachers’ jobs were untenable even before the pandemic: Why do we think that one person can help 30 6-year-olds learn to read, write, tie their shoes, tell time, wash their hands, blow their nose, understand numbers, add, learn about their bodies and their neighborhoods, and remember to share?

When we used to fly on airplanes, we got so used to the request to put our oxygen masks on first before helping others that we tuned it out. But it’s a wise lesson to remember now.

If we don’t take care of our teachers, they can’t take care of our children. And if we don’t take care of our children, we will lose Generation COVID – the very generation whose innovation and passion we need to be cultivating to solve the massive social, political, economic, and environmental challenges we are bequeathing them.

In this moment, what is expedient can also lead to long-term transformational change. We need our teachers to thrive and choose to stay in the classroom. Because teaching is the largest profession in the country, we will always need new people to become teachers, especially in our biggest shortage areas of STEM, English language learning, and special education. Targeted scholarships and loan forgiveness for teachers and teacher candidates, bringing more caring adults into the school building, and creating schools where teachers thrive through collaboration, caring administration, and support for mental health will not only keep our public schools from hemorrhaging teachers; it will encourage more people to choose to teach. 

Schools were facing budget shortfalls and teacher shortages before the pandemic. They need more money to support, retain, and attract teachers, so those teachers can in turn support Generation COVID. The pandemics of this year can catalyze today’s students to do great things, but only if schools become places where people want to work.