‘We’re tired’: educator reflects on year of COVID-19

Alex Hargrave
Posted 12/25/20

Jennifer Brummell, a fourth-grade teacher at Trail Elementary, is happy to be in school, teaching in her classroom surrounded by students,

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‘We’re tired’: educator reflects on year of COVID-19

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GOSHEN COUNTY – Jennifer Brummell, a fourth-grade teacher at Trail Elementary, is happy to be in school, teaching in her classroom surrounded by students, even if they are wearing face coverings and sitting behind plexiglass to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. 

Still, her 26th year of teaching is the hardest yet, by far. The coronavirus pandemic descended quickly this spring, forcing traditional American classrooms to make the unprecedented shift to screens. This fall, Trail Elementary had originally designated one teacher in each grade to act as the “remote teacher,” educating both in-person students and those learning from their homes via Zoom, but everyone became a remote teacher fairly quickly, she said, as more and more students have had to quarantine due to a COVID-19 diagnosis or exposure. 

As co-president of the Goshen County Education Association (GCEA), the local chapter of the National Education Association (NEA), Brummell communicates with roughly 165 members, including educators, secretaries, paraprofessionals, cafeteria workers, janitorial staff, bus drivers, counselors, administrators and nurses. All of the district’s employees have been challenged in their everyday work by the coronavirus pandemic, especially teachers who work to accommodate remote students.

“That’s the biggest struggle across the district, we’re truly doing two jobs,” Brummell said. “Part of being an educator is to do 110%. We want it to be the best education. When you’re trying to teach a remote class and you have 18 other students in class, you just feel like you’re letting someone down all the time. That wears on us as educators.”

A nationwide survey by the NEA, the country’s largest teachers union, found that 28% of educators have considered retiring early or leaving the profession due to the pandemic. The number includes teachers with all levels of experience, from veteran teachers to recent college graduates.

Grady Hutcherson, president of the Wyoming Education Association, said he hears from school employees across the state who are stressed not only from the workload brought on by the pandemic but also because of the obvious risk the virus presents: getting sick with a mysterious virus that has different impacts on everyone who contracts it. 

Goshen County School District No. 1 has seen a decline in active COVID-19 cases recently. As of press time Monday, the district has just eight active cases in its nine schools plus central office. Since the beginning of the school year, GCSD has had 110 cumulative positive cases. 

Still, the pool of substitute teachers, primarily older county residents and retirees, has shrunk considerably, according to GCSD Superintendent Ryan Kramer, so teachers are tasked with covering each other’s classes and missing planning periods. School nurses and administrators are responsible for contact tracing when a student or staff member tests positive. 

“I’m hearing from education employees across the state, and it’s getting to the point where their workloads have doubled if not tripled,” Hutcherson said. “It’s a combination of burnout as well as just extremely high stress levels.”

Kramer has acknowledged the stressful situation in Goshen County’s schools since the beginning of the school year. GCSD had plans to implement standards-based grading prior to the pandemic and decided to move forward with it, meaning teachers have had to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in their classrooms, facilitate remote learning and adjust to changes to their grade books.

The board of trustees has discussed teachers’ and school employees’ mental health at nearly every board meeting this year.

“We’re killing our teachers because they’re doing so much,” Kramer said at a school board meeting in November. “And they can only, for so long, live on my thanks. I thank them all the time, but at some point, what am I doing for them as a superintendent to relieve stress? We have not done enough.”

The district recently had a week of early dismissals to give teachers more planning time. Teacher evaluations are also more about personal well-being than professional critiques this year, Kramer told The Telegram. 

“We’ve talked as an administrative team and our number one goal for teacher evaluation is asking, ‘how are you doing and how can we help?’” he said.

Kramer said the district has worked with Lynette Saucedo, Goshen County prevention specialist, to address additional needs of both students and school employees this year. 

In addition to a recent Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR) suicide prevention training, Saucedo said employees will have the opportunity to access two to three sessions of solutions-focused telehealth therapy at no cost. The counseling is offered and funded by Everybody Matters, an Arizona-based nonprofit focused on social-emotional support. 

“We’ve been talking since July about the concern of being able to support them and what that support looks like,” Saucedo said. “People who are the helpers and the fixers are the ones that are the last to realize they need some support themselves.”

Brummell said the service would be “amazing” for her colleagues.

“(Stress) runs the gamut from new teachers to older teachers,” she said. “Veteran teachers, we’ve been in it a while, but this is new to us. (COVID-19) has turned our world upside down so the fact that they can offer that, I hope people take them up on that.”

With the first half of the school year behind them, GCSD employees are nearly used to their temporary new normal. Schedules are adjusted to account for the 30 minutes lost due to an adjusted, COVID-19 conducive bussing pattern. Counselors bring learning materials to students’ houses whose entire families are unable to leave the house due to quarantine. Teachers receive a list of co-workers who are absent for the day and collaborate to cover their duties, Brummell said. 

“We’re all trying to pull together and to try to make it work so we can stay in school,” she said. “The whole first semester, we were so worried about if tomorrow is the day we go remote. We absolutely do not want to go remote. It just weighed on us every morning, like is today the day?”