At Gedit, we champion and encourage stronger student-teacher relationships. The foundation of any strong relationship is clear and honest communication. Strong student-teacher relationships often rely on and are sustained by educators who also feel supported and heard in their working environment.
The conversation about creating a more cohesive and comfortable learning environment starts outside the classroom between teachers, admin, counselors, and other influencing bodies within the school setting.
Over the last month, we’ve been reaching out to teachers across the country to better understand how they are feeling. We’ve realized that educators not only want to talk about their current teaching experience, but they also desperately need a solution.
We sent a short survey to educators on Twitter in order to learn more about the current challenges teachers are struggling to overcome. Every educator who responded to our survey only ‘sometimes’ felt supported in their profession. In a role that is one hundred percent reliant on supporting and nurturing young students, it is simply not good enough that educators do not feel the same.
Jaymi, who has been an educator for over two decades, shared the pressures of ‘being pulled in different directions to get a million things done at once’ while not having adequate materials to do so.
A teacher who has been in the classroom for 25 years also shared the following:
‘Students have so many needs right now that are different from the typical needs they had pre-pandemic, but we have to subject them to SO MUCH testing and there is a lot of pressure to "keep up" with the curriculum. It's hard to be attentive to individual needs under all that pressure. I have been doing this work for a long time but feel completely overwhelmed this year.'.
Unfortunately, most of the educators who responded to our survey said something similar. Not only does this highlight the frustrations felt by educators but it emphasizes the need for stronger school systems and tools that offer clarity about how students are feeling, and what support they require. Such tools can help educators take a more targeted approach to student support and use it as a way of looping other parties outside the classroom into this support cycle.
Whilst many impactful ed-tech tools are available to teachers, Lori – who has been teaching for over 30 years – mentioned the unspoken difficulties which come from ‘tech overload’. Lori feels that an increase in tech has resulted in ‘decrease[ed] focusing ability and communication skills’.
As an ed-tech start-up, our goal has always been to introduce a tool that allows seamless teacher-student communication, however, it is vital to ensure such tools do not compromise the one-to-one communication that has long been a hallmark of classrooms. It is also important to bridge the gaps in communication that have developed as a result of the pandemic and disrupted both teaching and learning practices. Whether further content materials or more efficient tech tools, educators should benefit directly from the resources they use in the classroom by gaining a clearer understanding of student performance and the effectiveness of their practice.
The thoughts and feelings shared by Jaymi, Erin, and Lori reveal some of the key concerns currently felt by educators. The opportunity to address these concerns is now while we still stand in the wind of the pandemic which has not yet shifted. There is still time for school admin and leaders to establish a new system of support for educators and students.
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