Good Teachers Struggle in a Bad System
There are many good teachers in our public schools. Teaching is the only profession where you work before work so you can work your work day, and then you work on the work you couldn’t do during your work day so you can work tomorrow. Many memes attest to the hard work teachers do and the treatment teachers get from students and some parents. On the upside, “Teaching is the one profession that creates all the other professions.” “Teaching is not a job, it’s a calling. It’s a chance to make a difference in the lives of students, to help them grow and develop into the best version of themselves.” “Teaching is a passion.” There are lots of positives.
There are also some dubious distinctions. “Teaching is the only job where you steal supplies from home to do your work.” “You is broke, you is tired, you is a teacher.” “Classroom management is more like herding cats.” Sometimes I thought to myself I would rather quit and become a Walmart greeter than to continue to suffer the fatigue, stress, and health problems that came with the job. Many people think, “Teaching is such a great job. You get all those holidays and the summers off!” But summers were spent either working a part-time job because teachers cannot get EI for the summer, or taking more courses to keep up with the demands of the profession. My least favourite question ever was being asked in August, just when I was starting to relax, “Are you excited to go back to school?”
Then there are the really funny parts of teaching. One Grade 12 student in my class was told that there is a deadline for application to university. The student asked, “What if I miss it? Can my mom tell them to make an exception?” Another little one was asked to use triangles to make some other shapes. He made a tentagon and a kiteagon. And of course, “If you can read this, thank a teacher. Ef yu ken rid ths yoo probli ar a teecha.” I was adept at reading the most bizarre scribbling. And you cannot spend day after day with children without being delighted by them and we regularly found something to laugh at.
Truthfully, teachers that hang in there for the long haul are not doing it for the money. I used to work about 70 hours a week, which is not abnormal. An average salary is now between $45,000 and $85,000, depending on years in service and educational investment. Most mechanics and industrial workers make more. If Canadians value education and those who directly provide it, it does not translate into remuneration. Teachers teach because they want to educate. Either they had a great experience at school themselves, or they want to make the school experience better for their students. In my experience, good teachers want to share knowledge with others and make learning something to be proud of.
So why have many teachers been moving onto other vocations in the past few years? The CBC has done a variety of articles exploring the reasons. In Quebec, teachers on strike with no pay in 2023 began contemplating different careers. They cited not being heard or respected. “Simon Viviers, a professor at Université Laval’s school of counselling and orientation says, ‘…people are leaving education because there is a lack of resources to help struggling students. There is also violence and disrespect in schools that is turning teachers away'” (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/strike-quebec-teachers-job-change-1.7063118)
In Alberta in 2025, teachers were on strike without pay (The Alberta Teacher Associations had not created a strike pay fund.) for almost a month. The issues revolved around class sizes, but teachers also cited the heavy responsibilities of too many special needs students, including many more non-English-speaking immigrants than in previous years. According to a report by the ATA, teachers are leaving at alarming rates. They cite “work intensification, lack of inclusion supports, moral distress and compromises, public discourse and culture wars, parental conflict”. One teacher says, “I left teaching this year after five years, …The workload of teaching, plus overwhelming class sizes and student behaviour, as well as little to no prep time, made my physical and mental health suffer significantly” (https://teachers.ab.ca/news/workload-issues-prompting-teachers-quit).
In Ontario, over 25% of schools report chronic teacher shortages and half do not have enough education assistants. Principals resort to asking parents of special needs children to keep them at home if they cannot find an EA to be with them (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ont-school-staff-shortages-1.7154487). Even at the start of the school year, principals are still looking for teachers. If a teacher gets sick, finding a substitute teacher can be impossible.
In overcrowded classrooms, teachers must pay attention to a diversity of problems rather than just focusing on teaching. Continuity of learning is broken by special needs kids who must leave the classroom suddenly, kids with ADHD who won’t stay still, and non-readers who cannot keep up. While all students are deserving of education regardless of abilities and disabilities, crowding them all together in one room with one teacher and perhaps one EA is cruel. No one is learning optimally, and teachers are overwhelmed trying to make learning happen. One EA I know was in charge of a non-verbal child prone to violent outbursts. (Yes, they are in regular classrooms, too.) She was bitten by him and had to leave immediately to get a tetanus shot at the hospital, leaving the teacher alone to handle the rest of the class. My friend was off work for 10 days. The parent was called and removed that day, but the child returned the following day after a substitute EA was found. These are not uncommon incidents.
There are many more stories about the state of teaching in modern Canadian classrooms, but now we need to examine why the job has become so stressful and impossible for too many teachers.
The major duties of a classroom teacher are 1. Planning and preparing lessons, 2. Assessment, and 3. Classroom management. Each of these has become more complex over the years as administration seizes on the latest fad in academia and forces teachers to add it to their day.
As noted in the description of the constructivist philosophy, lesson planning is now a very burdensome task. Rather than using textbooks that come with prepared lessons and many options for delivering an interesting lesson, teacher must scramble to find or invent lessons with a hands-on approach to learning. This involves also finding the materials necessary for this discovery learning. That may include a trip to the library, use of technology, or simply a lot of manipulatives. Preparation is essential and takes a lot of time, and the teacher must have a lesson for each teaching period of the day. If you average 3 lessons a day, that is between 12 and 15 lessons per week for the entire year. That means between at least 12 to 15 hours per week of prep work on top of the 6-hour work day. Of course, they can reuse their lessons, but they still need to be prepared each time.
The old-fashioned method using text books and paper-and-pencil outputs for the students provided a continuity of lessons already available. A teacher could add to these lessons and enhance the learning, but it did not require an hour of planning. It was a flexible system, as the lessons were always available to review in the textbook. Many times, if I had had a lot of marking to do, I would use the prepared lesson in the textbook for the next lesson. I could easily come up with ways to make it interesting without a lot of preparation. Teaching is, after all, thinking on your feet.
Now, grading has gone by the wayside because so much time is spent preparing lessons. I have spoken to many students who never received feedback for the teacher on any assignment, and their work had not been returned for corrections. If a student only receives a grade and no feedback, they do not know how to learn. One learns by correcting one’s errors in thinking, judgement, or memory. When I taught students in university preparation classes, they did not think it necessary to improve their returned papers. They had never done it in high school, so it was a redundant task to them.
Instead, modern teachers are told to do formative and summative assessments. They are to judge every day if a student is advancing in learning or how far along the scale of learning they are. That is formative assessment. And this assessment is to be recorded somewhere, usually in some kind of software. Then there is the summative assessment to be done for the report card. Again, the teacher must decide whether the student is developing, achieving, or excelling in learning. But because there are few exams, and homework is rarely graded, it becomes a subjective assessment. If the teacher is happy with the student’s work, she will excel. If the teacher feels there is something missing, she will receive a grade of achieving or developing. These nebulous descriptions do not tell a parent whether the student knows the 7 times table or knows how to write a paragraph.
To solve the problem of the lack of clarity for parents, teachers are now required to upload their lesson progressions into software that is delivered to parents. A parent is supposed to look at those emails to see what their student should be learning that week. It does not contain information about whether the student has learned the material, just that the topic was covered that week. Of course, this is a make-work project designed as a smokescreen to prevent parents from having to confront the teacher directly for what the student is learning. It adds stress and more work to the teacher’s load and a duty for parents that is rarely fulfilled by busy parents. Most parents send their children to school to learn to read, write, and do math. They trust the teachers to be doing exactly that. But when they cannot tell until report card time whether the student has learned, it brings disappointment in the teacher first and the system second.
Finally, classroom management is an important part of teaching. How does one contain and manage 20 to 30 students who all have differing abilities, likes, dislikes, and personalities? Methods vary, but it is generally the view now that classroom rules and consequences are the norm. They are usually developed by the teachers with input from the students at the beginning of the year. Teachers display them in a prominent place in the classroom, and students are expected to consult them before they hit their neighbour with their ruler or poke them with their pencil. They are supposed to weigh the consequences of such behaviour and choose the better path. I am sure you can imagine the success of that endeavour. The rules are always consulted by the teacher and the appropriate punishment meted out, but it does little to mitigate the behaviour of a student with a behavioural disorder or a child who loves to torment his classmates. A lot of time can be spent applying the behavioural techniques described in the teaching manuals, such as meetings with parents, consultations with the counselors, and even student-to-student meetings to resolve ongoing conflict. So generally, these things rarely happen unless there is physical harm, and students are told to stop their behaviour. Period. So classroom management, like herding cats, is a never-ending attempt to control around 20 to 30 students with few tools. Some resort to threats, some use a sticker reward system, some try to coerce students into cooperation, and on and on. Teachers are very creative when working to make this education thing work.
Ultimately, though, the difficulties were created by out-of-touch administrators who have either never taught in a classroom or have given up trying and moved up the ladder. The system has become a machine that is supposed to run a certain way, but which relies on skilled mechanics, called teachers, to keep it running, or limping, along. The machinery looks robust from the outside, but is rotting from within. Like a good-looking watermelon that turns out to be bitter and tasteless inside, the system is so closed that just looking at it from the outside hides its vacuous interior. Good teachers know its futility, but struggle along to try to turn the ship around. They focus on the seeds of the system, the children, and work every day to make them rise above the mediocrity the system has created. Let’s give them kudos when we can, but let’s also start demanding that the system itself be improved.
Can we fix it?
In his book School’s Out: The Catastrophe in Public Education and What We Can Do About It, Andrew Nikiforuk outlined several ways to improve the system. His book was published in 1993, 33 years ago! I recommend this book, as the issues he raised have not only not gone away, but have been increased and added to. He offers some alternatives as solutions, and they are still valuable to read.
There are solutions for individual families, such as private or charter schools, and homeschooling. But I feel the need to speak up for those in public schools. Parents and grandparents need to start attending council meetings, requesting access to the classrooms their children are in. We need to start challenging the curriculum if it does not align with the best interests of children. Parents are key to creating the change we need. Teachers’ voices get crowded out by the so-called experts who know nothing about the dynamics of teaching in a classroom. So parents, if you want to see change, start attending the meetings where the decisions are made to continue programs that damage the children, the teachers, and the whole system.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/education-educator-shortages-1.7156002
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/what-a-typical-teachers-day-actually-looks-like/2022/04