COLLINS: Teachers and nurses are facing similar issues — and it’s not a pretty sight
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TEACHERS HEADED BACK TO WORK this week and they are facing even more stress than they did when they left their schools in June. More demand for teachers because of increasing populations. Teaching becomes more difficult, there’s more stress when class sizes become unmanageable, trying to deal with the increasing number of students suffering with mental and drug-related issues, and now trying to deal with the use of cellphones in classrooms. All of these take their toll.
And lots of teachers have had enough. In Quebec, there are almost 4,000 vacant teaching jobs. Some estimates suggest that number is about 1,200 here in B.C. Many vacancies are in more remote areas, but even in our school district there are three urgent postings listed on one site I looked on.
Creating more openings isn’t the answer — we can’t find people to fill the vacancies we have now. Some districts have tried incentives, but that is not a sustainable format.
This is a global problem. Much of it centres around the way people, including teachers, want to establish their work-life balance. Since COVID, people are reassessing their priorities. But we seem to be attacking the issue with outdated ideas and without sufficient concern for developing a new model that may address modern concerns instead of what we’ve been doing for the past 100 years.
