The fatigue of teachers after almost two years of pandemic

This was the main topic of the webinar "Socio-Educational Clinic: The Mental Health of Teachers During the Pandemic," which was held jointly by the Faculty of Education and the School of Social Work at the Catholic University.

Since the start of the health crisis COVID-19, the feelings of fear, frustration, tiredness and fatigue have been present in the life of Chilean teachers and professors. After 17 months of the pandemic, this Thursday, September 2, international experts met to discuss the socio-emotional well-being of teachers in the online seminar “Socio-Educational Clinic: The Mental Health of Teachers During the Pandemic”, organized by the Faculty of Education and the School of Social Work UC.

In the instance, transmitted through YouTube to almost 500 connected viewers, the dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences UC, mariane krause, and the Dean of Education UC, Alejandro Carrasco, in addition to the academics from the School of Social Work, Alicia Razeto, Nicolle Álamo and María Olaya Grau.

One of the guests at the seminar was the academic from the University of Lyons II, in France, Dominique Cau Bareille, who exposed the challenges faced by teaching in schools in his country during the first months of the pandemic. The main one: the lack of support for teachers.

According to the expert, “the authorities did not coordinate how to advance in pedagogical continuity and handed over all the responsibility for distance education to the teachers, so they had to work without clear directions. We also saw that they were forced to work with their own computers and cell phones that they often shared with their children at home, and many did not know how to use the technologies.".

Although, he assured that it was a learning period and that it allowed personal and professional development through creativity and innovation in the classroom, then "they began to feel a lot of anger towards their own institutions and ministry because they felt devalued by not being taken into account for political decisions or in the implementation of the measures”.

An experience that is not far from the Chilean one, assured the academic of the Faculty of Education, Patricia guerrero. According to a study carried out by GESTRADO in 12 Latin American countries - including Chile -, of which Guerrero was a part, The main means of communication between teachers and students were virtual meetings (Zoom or Meet) and messaging (WhatsApp or SMS), with 81% and 80% respectively. Likewise, 57,7% resorted to telephone calls and only 58,6% used educational platforms.. For the expert, this shows that “it was the teachers' cell phones, as in France, that allowed them to work. This is absolutely entering the private life of the teachers”

According to data from the same study, 34% of the teachers surveyed were highly affected by the crisis and only 2% were not affected at all. "Last year we found that our country appeared as one of the countries with the greatest impact on mental health due to the pandemic in teachers," said the academic.

This situation, he said, refers to the fact that mental health "It's not just about doing Mindfulness and having free time also implies feeling essential, inscribing your brand in the activity they carry out and, of course, that the activity for which they evaluate you is not so different from the real one. And the prescription of what teachers have to do is very different from what they actually do, because there is a misconception starting from the curriculum, in addition to the regulations and requirements of taking standardized tests. This could explain the tendency to feel overwhelmed.”

How to deal with fatigue and frustration in teachers? Patricia Guerrero pointed to working on it "through catharsis": «We must make room for complaints, for conflict, suffering and pain, we must learn collectively with creativity and a sense of humor, and reveal this gap between the prescribed work and the actual work”.

Download the presentation of Patricia Guerrero

Relive the webinar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9bl0FAtbS0&feature=emb_title