School board discusses burnout

As Carbon County School District No. 2 (CCSD2) continues to move forward into the school year with some students attending virtually instead of physically, the potential of teacher burnout has become a topic of discussion.

During the October 19 meeting of the CCSD2 Board of Trustees, Director of Curriculum Noel Manning touched on the subject during his monthly curriculum update. 

According to Manning, the district was pushing the increased use of the Schoology program beyond just teachers who were doing Curriculum Based Virtual Education (CBVE). With the possibility of a school shutdown similar to this past spring, Manning said that it was important for all teachers to be familiar with the program. Unfortunately, there had also been some recent technological issues.

“We did have some recent difficulties, unfortunately, with two programs—PowerSchool and Schoology—not syncing together. We were able to resolve that. It was actually an internal calendar issue but there were some staff members that were frustrated by that,” said Manning. “I think we’ve pushed past that now, Andi Ward and Nanette Marchetti have both done a tremendous job trying to address these things. There are some staff member issues that pop up, but they’re able to resolve that fairly quickly.”

After informing the Board of Trustees about the technological issues, Manning touched on the potential of teachers feeling burnt out.

“There’s been so many changes since this past spring,” Manning said. “So, we have an A-Team meeting this next Wednesday where we’re going to be discussing what we can do to try to help lighten that load a little bit on the teachers moving forward because, obviously, we don’t want to put any unnecessary stress on our staff members.”

CCSD2 Board of Trustees board member Mike Boardman, who was in attendance via videoconference, asked Manning if it was possible that the recent technological issues were a contributing factor to the feeling of burnout among teachers.

“Is there something we can be doing better that you see? Is it something out of our control? If we can’t have this stuff functioning right by now, it’s no wonder our teachers are burned out,” said Boardman. “They’re probably troubleshooting constantly.”

Manning replied that none of the technological issues were related to the district’s network, adding that it was partly due to internal errors in the programs and partly due to users being unfamiliar with the program. 

“In terms of getting that information out to teachers, we’re working hard on that. Nanette is, especially, taking a lot of time to visit with teachers one-on-one to make sure they understand or get things set up correctly. I don’t think it has anything to do with individual programs being out of date,” said Manning. “I think it’s just something that I know I’ve experienced throughout my career whenever helping teachers work with technology. You just have to keep repeating yourself over and over and over again because people don’t keep those things in mind when they’re focused on doing what’s best for their kids in their classroom every single day.”

Boardman suggested the potential of a weekly meeting with district personnel about Schoology in which Manning or Marchetti could answer questions about the program.

“We should make sure we’re doing everything we can to get all these errors fixed so these teachers don’t continue to keep going through this,” Boardman said. “I’m assuming that’s what’s leading to the burnout or do you have other thoughts on that?” 

In response, Manning stated that he believed that the issue was far more complex than teachers having technical difficulties with Schoology. He said that he believed a lot of it had to do with the changes in education due to the novel coronavirus, adding that it was no longer just a matter of a teacher interacting with the students in their classroom.

“Every time you have change, there’s going to be difficulty and we’re trying to support it as best as possible. Nannette’s not doing live meetings with Schoology every week for 15 minutes, but she’s trying to do a lot of videos that teachers can see, they can approach at their own time,” Manning said. “So, we’re trying to come up with good alternatives but, obviously, we welcome any other suggestions.”

CCSD2 Superintendent Jim Copeland added that Marchetti, while physically going to the various campuses in the district to work with teachers one-on-one, had committed to individual sessions with teachers over Zoom to help troubleshoot.

“I’ll be honest, I have not worked in a district where there’s not technology frustrations on and off, some more than others. It’s just one of those things,” said Copeland. “It can be frustrating because most of us don’t know all the details about how to fix things or even understand how it works and when it doesn’t work, we’re frustrated. We just want somebody to fix it.”

“Credit to the teachers for their resilience, too. We all want to do what’s best for the kids so I hate to pile that on teachers and say ‘Keep doing what’s best for the kids’ but they’ve worked really well with us,” said Manning. “They’ve helped identify those problems and I know that they’re willing to problem solve until we can get those solutions.”

The next meeting of the Carbon County School District No. 2 Board of Trustees will be at 5 p.m. on November 16 at the Central Office in Saratoga.