Teachers need more help in the pandemic

Dear Editor,

Teaching is a stressful job. Since the pandemic it has become even more stressful, especially when we are not being taken into consideration for assistance during this time.

Prior to the pandemic we had to make a number of sacrifices, now it is even worse.

Many of us are stressed mentally, physically, and I dare say spiritually. Several teachers, because of online teaching, are exposed to types of behaviours that we would not be exposed to during faceto-face classes. These include parents exposing themselves in background during classes, people using expletives in the background while class is in session, or using them to students and teachers during class time, male parents being inappropriate and making sexual advances to female teachers, among other complaints. One of my experiences include watching a fight between two adults break out beside a student who was online doing classes.

The concept of teaching online is new in Jamaica and, while a few teachers were trained to use Google Classroom and Zoom, all teachers are required to use the platforms. No teacher was given any equipment — tablets, laptop or cellular phones — with which to conduct online classes. The tablets that were given to teachers are part of our pay package and are our personal devices.

Added to that, some principals are demanding that teachers submit lesson plans in the same format as if we were still conducting face-to-face classes. This cannot be as the divide between face-to-face and online teaching is a universe wide.

The Ministry of Education asked that we provide our telephone numbers so that we could be reimbursed for phone credit used for online teaching. This is yet to be done. There has been no further enquiry from the ministry into our well-being.

Many of us are drowning, the cost of our utilities have increased, and now we have incurred additional expenses purchasing devices to aid with online teaching as, depending on the activities, we have to use more than one device.

The ministry must conduct a needs assessment to see how teachers can be helped.