What are we doing to help?

A friend posted this article on teacher burnout on her Facebook wall the other day.  This clearly defines who I have been for a while now.  Sadly, I can see these symptoms settling in on many of my co-workers.  If we can identify the warning signs of teacher burnout, what is the profession and the whole educational field doing to help?  The answer, from my vantage point is...nothing.

In the Greater Essex County School District, there is a counselor who works for the district and will speak with staff (and family members) for free.  While the counselor likely cannot meet with someone on a weekly basis, like a therapist, there is at least an outlet for staff to address emotional and mental health needs.  That is, of course, in Canada.

In America, way too many people see depression as a weakness.  For example, about a year ago, a principal I know was speaking to me about a colleague who was suffering depression. This administrator said, basically, that everyone gets sad and that this colleague just needed to get over it. I've mentioned before how so many people will encourage a depressed person to focus on  positive thoughts and push the negative aside.  If my brain would have allowed me to do that, I would have.

Recent attacks on teachers are not helping the situation.  People cannot be told that they teach at a failing school without eventually internalizing the implied message that if the school is "failing," the teachers are failures.  Reading between the lines, that is the message. To continually be told you are a failure is to suffer an erosion of the soul and spirit.

Back to my question in the headline, what are we doing to help?  Perhaps districts could band together and pay the salary of a counselor or two who could be resources for teachers in those districts.  Perhaps the two unions could help fund those positions.  Perhaps the two unions could work together and create a teacher crisis hotline. Teachers, active and retired, could man those phones to listen to teachers who need a shoulder.  The public gives teachers very little sympathy, we get summers off and many people seem to resent that fact. We need to talk with those who have worn the same shoes.   Anything is better than the nothing that is happening now.