So warns Dr Amy McPherson, senior education lecturer at the University of Newcastle, who is leading research exposing the lived reality of teachers and school leaders in hard-to-staff schools.
The team’s latest study has found a huge emotional weight hangs over educators operating in understaffed and stretched workplaces.
McPherson says teachers were acutely aware of the logistical challenge of running a school on limited staff numbers, and for many the prospect of tipping the precarious daily scheduling into chaos was too much to bear.
“Teachers just feel, I think, an internal pressure to keep things running and avoid burdening others, even if that means sacrificing their own time and even their own wellbeing,” she tells EducationHQ.
“And I think while that level of dedication and collegiality is incredibly commendable, it takes an emotional toll.”
Media coverage of the national teacher shortage to date has largely focused on the problem from a workforce policy lens, the academic reports, leaving teachers’ own experience a neglected, unknown realm of the story.
And contrary to the many reports decrying multiple classes are being left unsupervised across the country, McPherson says this is really the ‘last resort’ for schools.
“Instead, they often take other measures – they collapse classes, they redistribute students...
“Teachers cover each other’s classes when necessary, and that means that if a teacher has scheduled non-teaching time, intended for planning or marking or chasing student issues, then they might be reassigned to supervise another class.
“And so essentially, they take on the role of a casual relief teacher. We’ve found that (has been happening) for some time, particularly in secondary schooling at the end of the year after the HSC.”
When operating in ‘crisis mode’ becomes the norm in understaffed schools, permanent teachers functioning as CRTs is simply common practice, McPherson adds.
It’s teachers’ mental health that is ultimately compromised by this, she warns.
“Constantly being asked or feeling obliged to cover classes, to fill the gaps, leads to fatigue, it leads to increased stress, a growing sense of burnout.
“They have to triage other tasks, so trying to decide what’s important and what’s not is incredibly difficult.
“And that strain has effects on individual morale and then the culture of the school.”
Researcher Dr Amy McPherson says behind schools’ ‘façade of smooth operations’, staff are working tirelessly to ensure student learning is not compromised by shortages.
As part of the data collection, researchers shadowed nine teachers in hard-to-staff schools, gathering field notes as they built up a nuanced understanding of the scene.
As one jotted down at the time, all was not as it seemed.
“On the surface, the school appears to be fully staffed,” the researcher noted.
“However, it becomes evident over three days that it is running on the smell of an oily rag. It is only through creative and strategic use of human resources that every class has a teacher standing at the front…the biggest threat to daily instruction is teachers needing to take personal leave.”
McPherson says behind schools’ ‘façade of smooth operations’ a frenzy is underway to keep all balls in the air and ensure student learning is not compromised.
“This often requires a significant amount of behind the scenes effort that we completely underestimate,” she says.
“Teachers forego their preparation periods, they take on extra duties, they take on multiple roles to fill the gaps.
“Leadership teams work tirelessly to juggle timetables, redistribute workloads, avoid any disruption, support and induct new teachers that are constantly coming into the school … and they’re doing all of this work simultaneously.”
But projecting the illusion of normalcy to the wider school community actually masks the significant systemic issues at the root of the problem, the researcher adds.
“[It] delays really necessary conversations around how we solve these problems in maybe the medium, but certainly the long-term.”
Rather than risk destabilising schools’ precarious scheduling, teachers often went to extreme lengths to not ‘let down’ their colleagues, the research found.
One teacher, for example, explained she felt obligated to create lesson plans whilst in hospital to lessen the burden on her colleagues.
This was not an isolated case either, McPherson flags.
“We had a number of hospital stories … people who are going to hospital trying to make sure they’ve got work [done for their replacement].
“There were a number of them who just felt this obligation to not add any more work to their colleagues [so they wouldn’t take an] unplanned day off.
“If anyone questions [their] commitment – they shouldn’t be at all.”
McPherson’s work in this area continues. The end goal, she says, is to put the everyday experience of teachers squarely in front of policymakers.
“[It’s] so that they’ll understand the lived experience in hard-staff schools.
“I guess we hope that the research will highlight the human impact of these pressures and continue to prompt meaningful responses.”
