For Teachers, Maybe It’s Not About the Amount, but the Type of Work

My name is Vanessa, and I am a workaholic.

Sigh. There, I admitted it. Step one, check. Eleven more to go.

Luckily for me, my job as a teacher is very good at feeding my addiction. There is literally always something to do. I could work around the clock without sleeping or eating, and still not ever be done. If I really wanted to, that is.

And I know what you’re thinking, but this isn’t one of those articles about the unbearable post-pandemic teacher workload. There are enough of those. Besides, I like having a lot of work. Especially work that I am good at. And, I am really, really good at this work.

In fact I would argue that even as all of these articles complain about the amount of work on teachers’ plates these days, they’re not understanding the problem. Or, they’re only understanding part of it, at least. What if the increase in teacher stress and burnout in recent years isn’t about the amount, but about the type of work that we are asked to do?

Unconvinced? Allow me to explain, using Steven Covey’s much-lauded work in 7 Habits for Highly Effective People (2004).

In his book, which is regularly referenced by managers, productivity gurus, and even Instagram influencers across the world, Covey argues that it is key to “Put First Things First”, that all of life’s activities fall into 4 basic quadrants, or types:

• Quadrant 1: Important, Urgent: This category includes things like life crises, important deadlines, and work meetings that crop up at the last minute.
• Quadrant 2: Important, Not Urgent: In this category, you will find activities like working towards long term goals and planning for big projects.
• Quadrant 3: Not Important, Urgent: These are the things that are happening in the moment, like phone calls, meetings, and questions that need an immediate response.
• Quadrant 4: Not important, Not Urgent: The activities in this category can be best described as distractions. These are things like chatting with a colleague or checking your social media posts.

The idea, according to Covey, is that by prioritizing our Important, Urgent tasks, scheduling the Important, but Not Urgent tasks, and delegating tasks that that are not important, we can increase our productivity and reduce our overall stress and workload. The goal, ultimately, is to be proactive and schedule our days in order to prevent unexpected problems from arising, thereby reducing the number of Important, Urgent tasks we must do so that we can spend the majority of our time in Quadrant 2, which he calls the “quadrant of quality”. Studies have shown that Quadrant 2 tasks yield the most job satisfaction among a wide swath of working professionals. They are the tasks we take pride in. The deep work.

All of this is sound advice, and probably rings true for most people. There’s just one problem:

In the teaching profession, everything is urgent. In fact, I would argue that the only educated professionals that deal with more urgent tasks in a day are those that work in Emergency Rooms.

It’s Not about the Amount

Before you start saying that your profession has to work just as much, if not more than teachers, rest assured, I don’t doubt your job is hard and I’m not going to argue with you. Many professions may have more work to do than teachers: the amount of reading, writing, and research that a lawyer must do in a day seems downright overwhelming; bankers must be fastidious in their filing of paperwork and attention to detail; marketing professionals take on huge multi-layered projects…

But, all of these professions are able to prioritize their work day, and schedule the things that are important to them.

The difference then, is not in the amount of work that teachers must do. Like I said, I like having a lot of work. I am a workaholic, remember? But nearly everything on a teacher’s to do list in a given day — important or not — is urgent. So urgent, in fact, that we often can’t go to the bathroom or take time to eat.

• Grading student work is urgent, because students must get timely feedback in order for it to be effective.
• Student behaviors are urgent because kids are experiencing more trauma than ever before and we are expected to maintain a positive learning environment.
• That email is urgent; the principal needs an answer immediately.
• That parent phone call is urgent; you need to speak to them about their child’s missing work.

Everything is urgent. The list goes on.

And because everything is so urgent, teachers get to spend very little — often none — of our workday in that “quadrant of quality” where we can achieve the most job satisfaction, working on long term projects and goals. We are constantly putting out fires with no time left for deep work. This leaves us feeling a bit burnt out and demoralized. When we are really dedicated, we take the deep work home with us, because we need it in order to feel any satisfaction at all. But this means we have no time for our families and lives. That is an unsustainable way to live.

So What’s the Solution? Flexibility.

With a reported 44% of teachers looking to leave the profession within the next two years, teacher job satisfaction at an all time low, and a lower number of teacher candidates graduating from education programs than ever before, school districts are scrambling for ways to retain their teacher workforce, with some districts increasing teacher salaries by as much as 10% to attract talent.

While I am never one to turn down more money, I don’t think this is a solution to the problem, and at best, it addresses only part of the problem.

What teachers need is the job satisfaction that comes with being able to prioritize deep work. What that will require is more flexibility in the workweek. Teachers across the nation are seeing their corporate, higher-paid counterparts achieve a level of flexibility and work-life balance that would have been unheard of before March 2020, and we are wondering when our share of that flexibility will come. We want more control over how we spend our time, so that we can spend more of it attending to Important, not urgent matters.

The best solutions I’ve seen so far are districts reducing the student week to 4 days to allow that 5th day for teacher planning, meetings, and other work. But I know other solutions are out there, waiting to be unearthed.

If the number of articles in my feed about the current and impending teacher shortage are any indication, we are going to have to get creative, or there simply won’t be any teachers left. And then, where will we be?