She has already been threatened with probation, court, disciplinary action and “I will report you to TVN”. — Now, if I am going to intervene among the students, I think ten times whether I should even get involved, says the teacher.
For example, she got into a fight with fifth-graders. The parents demanded: “Fix it!” Well, the boy who hit the other boy gets a reprimand. You shouldn’t hit your friends, you know. The mother protests because he was provoked. The other’s parents: OK, our guy can also get a reprimand, but if the one who hit him gets two reprimands. Or another situation, a student complains that her friend is harassing her. The school checks: they look at the monitoring, interview the teachers and observe. – It turned out that the student was trying to get attention from the one she later accused of violence. I tell her father about this and he says to me: “I’ll handle this differently!” And boom – a complaint to the principal and the school board – says the teacher.
So many years and my stomach hurts
Here’s another story: – In the principal’s office, they’re talking about a group of seventh-graders who are disrupting biology class by burping loudly, walking around the room non-stop, and imitating the teacher. We’re trying to work out some strategy with the parents. Suddenly one of the parents says to me, “Who are you to tell me how to raise my child?!” It would be better if he told me straight out that I’m too stupid for him, he says.
In the first school, Anka shares a classroom with one teacher, in the second – with three teachers. What psychological intervention can be carried out in such conditions? He discusses his problems with students in the hallway, unless there is no physical education there. Or he asks the teachers to leave the office, and they wander the hallways until he finishes.
— At school I am assigned as a supervisor and I scare them, says the psychologist. — The teachers scare the students: “why are you going to the psychologist?”, the principal always tells me: “do something for him”, and the parents expect me to remove from the school all the students and teachers who disrupt their wonderful bubble. The school year hasn’t even started yet and I already have a stomachache, he says.
Almost 1,800 teachers answered the question: “With what attitude will you start the new school year?” in a survey conducted by Głos Teacherski. Despair, fatigue and burnout – almost one in three teachers admitted to such feelings. Every fourth said they were worried about the constant changes in education. Only one in ten will cross the threshold of school in September with optimism and good mood.
Stomach tightness
Mikołaj, a history teacher and HiT with 10 years of professional experience, is already preparing to change careers. He did not come to school straight after graduation, but has worked at the university, in the library and also as a telemarketer.
— This year, the government has cut HiT, so I will have fewer hours to work, which means less money. This may change when the new civic education is introduced, but it is not known whether I will see that happen, he says. After the increases, he earns approximately PLN 4,300 net. — It is not enough to support a family. I have started new studies to completely change my profession. It focuses on serving tourist traffic abroad.
— It doesn’t surprise me that teachers are afraid to go back to school. Today, a teacher is supposed to be not only a subject matter expert and educator, but also a tour guide, event organizer, nurse and psychologist. At the same time, they work in constant uncertainty, because working conditions and requirements are constantly changing, and they have no support from their employers, says Violetta Kalka, a Polish teacher at a technical school in Toruń, who runs the following Facebook pages: Beware, thugs at school (5.7 thousand members) and Teacher changes profession (40 thousand members). — The headmistress, under pressure from parents, puts the responsibility on them, I have many reports of bullying. Sometimes absurd: one of the teachers asked for legal help when the headmistress was disciplining her because she didn’t want to explain to the parents that she had used the vulgar word “member” during class. And she told the students about the members of parliament, says Kalka.
Kalka has been working for 28 years, but admits that before the start of the new school year she also feels a knot in her stomach. “It’s because of the constant changes in education and the lack of a sense of stability,” she says.
— I dread paperwork. For example, we are changing the grading system at school, so at the end of the summer holidays we were working on new educational requirements. And I know that when the school year starts I will have to submit a lot more documents of this kind. When I started working in the profession, teachers had more freedom and were not so limited by regulations, they could focus on methodology. Now we spend less time teaching and more time creating evidence that we are working, he says.
I don’t know how long I can last
If Magdalena Góra, a Polish and German teacher from Ruda Śląska, were to take part in the Voice of Teachers survey, she would choose the answer: “I am coming back with optimism, I miss my job”. She has been working in the profession for 18 years and does not plan on changing anything. However, she sees a problem: “I am afraid of how much longer I will be able to survive physically,” says the teacher.
This year she will have 37 hours of teaching time during the week at two schools: primary and secondary. She only has a few minutes’ drive between them, so getting there is not a problem, and her lesson plan is also organized so that she can manage it. However, teaching time has been limited to 18 hours in the Teachers’ Charter for a reason. The idea is that the remaining time of the 40 hours of work per week can be spent by the teacher preparing lessons, checking students’ work and conducting additional training. “I don’t know anyone who works full-time,” says the teacher. There is a shortage of staff in schools and teachers are willing to accept overtime or take jobs at neighboring schools. “We do this to ourselves by agreeing to so much work. But otherwise it would be difficult to survive financially, even after the raises,” says Góra.
Bárbara has been in the profession for 37 years and this year she joins a new class of freshmen.
— The government has announced that Ukrainian children must go to school to receive more than 800. Last year I had such students: even their parents didn’t want them to learn Polish. I’m afraid of how many of them will come and whether I will be able to work with them, he says. — An official throws a bomb at our school and we have to deal with it ourselves, he says.
— There is really a lot of work, admits Katarzyna Włodkowska, a Polish teacher at a secondary school in Piła. She has 23 hours in the classroom every week, and also teaches huge preparatory courses for the Matura exam all over the country, with several hundred people in the classroom, and writes textbooks. — I have taken on a lot of commitments because I like challenges, but the thing is that it would be difficult for me to live on one salary. Now I only worry about having enough strength, he says.
