The schools of Sarasota, Florida, have adopted what they call “a concurrent model,” with teachers responsible for both in-person and remote learning. Some teachers say this is like working two jobs at once and wonder whether this is sustainable.
School in Sarasota County started a few days ago, but some educators say they are already overwhelmed and exhausted by the new way of teaching amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Teachers knew this year was going to be a challenge with social distancing, extra sanitizing measures, technology issues, projecting their voices through a face mask for hours on end, and juggling students both in the classroom and at home — something the district is calling concurrent learning.
Four days into the new school year, some concurrent teachers aren’t so sure the teaching model is doable long term.
“I am worried that after a month or two of this, teachers that are really trying their best are going to start breaking down because it is not a sustainable way of teaching and we will burn out,” said Sarasota High School teacher Sarah Sturzu.
President of Sarasota Classified Teachers Association Patricia Gardner tells 8 On Your Side she’s been getting emails and teary-eyed phone calls one after another since school started Monday.
“They are finding they can’t give the attention to both groups. They just don’t feel like they are doing the job they should be doing and they feel the kids aren’t getting what they deserve to get on either side of this,” said Gardner.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t know what to say. I didn’t school in Florida. I’m 60. From NY.
Throughout the time that I was teaching, administrators would add tasks, and their attitude was always, “Well, ALL that I’m asking you to do is X, this simple thing.”
Which was added to A, B, C, D, . . . W, which they had previously requested. They always behaved as though teachers had nothing at all to do but wait for new tasks to fill their time, which would otherwise be spent totally at leisure.
But the truth about teaching was that there was NEVER ENOUGH TIME. I’m not a dummy. I worked extraordinarily hard. But there was NEVER ENOUGH TIME.
This made me furious. I so feel these teachers’ frustration!!!!
DeVos has some inspiring advice for teachers. Teachers have “to pivot, to be nimble and flexible and to adjust to new and different circumstances.” Her tone deaf message is little solace to teachers that are preparing for the demands of in person, remote and virtual instruction.
Sounds more like the ripcurrent model than the concurrent model.
Just remember, fellow teachers, hundreds of billionaires are sitting on the decks of their super yachts, sipping martinis or endangered species blood or whatever it is billionaires drink, funneling their wealth into tax sheltered nonprofits that lobby for public school austerity, and profiting grandly off your pain and suffering. It’s all good as long as they are happy.
Pinellas County, just North of Tampa Bay, also has been using the same model, and not only are the teachers upset but parents are too. They’ve been circulating a petition to send to the district. Teachers are also going on leave, resigning, and taking early retirement because of the pandemic. Subs are difficult to get because no one wants to work for the poor pay.
The virus is a serendipitous detour on the highway of Deform
Mission Accomplished
Mission accomplished
Send in computers
Teachers are vanquished
Bots are our suitors
Contracts were written
For soft-ware and hard-
Teachers were smitten
By Gates and his guard
I teach six classes a day. We are on a break right now, a recess unique to the country where I teach and where I grew up. When I return, I will have real and virtual students in every class. I have no idea how effective I am being. What I do know is that the effectiveness I feel I need has always been compromised by the number of students I see each day and the time limitations on evaluation of student writing.
Because of this, teaching both virtual students and those electing to ignore the Covid and come to school seems pretty much normal. I do not like it, but my only choice is to quit. Apparently many teachers here are choosing the latter.
One of the key phrases from this post is, “…it is not a sustainable way of teaching.”
Which could be said about a lot of what was going on in public education and our nation, long before the pandemic.
And, of course, the current crisis has brought us to this breaking point.
As Bob mentions above, the paradigm has long been to add more and more to what educators and our schools have to do.
I’ve been saying for years that this trajectory is not sustainable, not if a teacher is honest, sane and cares.
And, it’s not just teachers, it’s the workers who hold up the entire edifice of this very, very fragile U.S. economy. Like LeftCoastTeacher implies above, it’s a house of cards ruled by overlords caste as celebrities, business gurus or sport stars etc….etc…
But the inverse of this equation is that so many workers then go out and demand the same sort of sacrifice of other workers. It’s that model of capitalism where bosses crap on workers then workers go out and crap on other workers. (Or, vote for an idiot like Donald Trump so he can crap on large groups of citizens… treat them like lesser mortals. It’s more efficient that way, don’t you see?)
And, evil.
Crap capitalism I call it.
The national debt is not sustainable, the environmental destruction is not sustainable… on and on..
The only way to keep the show rolling is to fool enough people….
Or maybe not!
Richard Feynman said “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”
Feynman was talking specifically about the actions by NASA and Morton Thiokol officials that led to the Challenger explosion , but he could just as well have been referring to much of our current economic system and society.
The only thing that has kept it going for so long is “public relatiions” and the willingness of the public to buy into what are essentially just stories/myths.
key understanding: not if the teacher cares
Omg…terrible. This is so not right.
I wonder how many people will become infected?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-04/raging-campus-outbreaks-send-students-home-across-the-u-s
College students can’t be trusted to maintain social distancing and wear masks, but ofc, there will be no problems at all with making these things happen with K-12 kids.
Said no one in his or her right mind.
Exactly. However I am hearing a lot of armchair educators claim that it will be no different than enforcing a dress code. SMH!
My brother teaches elementary science at a private school.
He has started in person teaching and says he spends much of his time “reminding” his students about proper behavior to prevent viral spread.
It’s completely unrealistic to just assume that everyone is going to behave “responsibly”.
Elementary school kids don’t even know what that means.
I have been pleasantly surprised that in my area, the kids (I teach at a 7-9 grade school) have not complained at all about wearing masks and have really complied with them. I hear word from elementary teachers in my area that even the little ones are wearing masks pretty well. I don’t know how long this will last, but so far, so good.
That’s a relief, because the rest of this is rough.
I’ll be teaching three groups at once here in Westchester County-one group live in a classroom, one group in another room in the building, and students who chose to stay home…I am dreaded the experience and the reliance on tech. It will be horrible for teachers and students. We are in the middle of a staggered start for kids-today the internet was down for the entire day, apparently due to a fallen tree somewhere. Man plans, God laughs!
Tech dread.
I can feel my blood pressure go right up as soon as one of the machines goes down.
Take care.
One of my closest friends was ready to resign and was given “opportunity” to teach remotely just before he was going to do so. He’s now getting requests to teach students from adjacent schools that are closing due to infections. Sad state of affairs for a sad state.
I wish there were some specifics describing this “concurrent” model that is burning out the FL teachers. My town is not convening hybrid classes until (Oct? maybe), but their plan for hybrid was issued in early Aug. Basically, it’s this: cohort A meets in person 2 days/wk for 4 hrs while Cohort B watches from home – B is just watching a live videostream of the teacher & whiteboard – can hear classmates but cannot participate. [B gets two other days in-person while A watches; 5th day is online for all.] There’s a shorter pm session online for all where teacher uses zoom – mostly as I understand it for Q&A w/those who were watching from home that a.m. – perhaps other cohort is doing some hw problems & teacher checks on them.
I’m wondering if these FL teachers are doing something different. It almost sounds as though the at-home students are on zoom participating, as opposed to just watching live videostream & getting clarification in the afternoon?
I begin each class by calling each of my remote students on Microsoft teams, the platform my system chose to use for remote learning. I have a laptop that I focus on the board where I am using visuals. I take the roll by clicking on each remote learner under a column in the attendance program that indicates that status. I go back and retry students who did not answer the call before I click that they are absent. I cannot hear the laptop speakers well enough to answer many questions, but my traditional students who sit next to the laptop alert me when a remote question arises.
Burnout comes more from the feeling of powerless subjection to conditions that seem unavoidable. Teachers have long been subjected to being harangued by people who feel they can for example, learn algebra without ever have been capable of learning arithmetic. Now they are being asked to do even more. That is the source for the burnout. Teachers were already living on the edge of quitting.
I get what you’re saying about the burnout you’re observing. Plenty of studies out there for decades showing the less input to/ control you have over your work parameters, the harder it is to manage work-related stress. And that’s increasingly been teachers’ lot since ‘90’s.
But for me personally, trying to teach an in-person class while simultaneously managing a videoconferenced cohort sounds crazy. It’s a good thing you’re using MSTeams instead of some of the alternatives – in the sense things may run more smoothly. But it’s an expensive option with features for sharing docts, screens etc. My husband is in meetings on it daily. I’m always hearing them [engineers!] saying ‘what do you mean? That’s not what I see – oh, you have to click over here—no, click on the right—etc. Can’t do any of that while simultaneously teaching in person. Even just ordinary zoom, for heavens sake. You have to concentrate totally on what you’re doing to teach in person, or to teach in videoconference.
I’m in one of the large Florida districts. I believe that the state order says that schools have to allow students in school for 5 days each week, so there is no “Group A on Mon/Wed” kind of thing.
Hybrid for us is teaching students in our classrooms AND students at home at the same time. Students at home are to be treated as if they are there in person. So, they are entitled to asking for help, asking and answering questions, etc. to the same extent students inside of the physical classroom.
It’s tough managing two classrooms. I am elementary specials teacher. I’ve found that when I am trying to talk a home student through a technical issue or something, a student in my classroom who needs help ends up getting help from another student who has decided to get up and help them. I don’t always catch it because I’m focused on the screen. Of course, not only would that be a problem during assessments in normal times, but now that is a physical distancing problem as well.
Sorry to be late getting back to your reply. “Concurrent” is indeed what I was afraid it was. This must have been dreamed up by people who never tried it out IRL. I understand their concern that kids at home get the same quality of ed as those in the classroom—that remote ed not be “inferior”– but that’s not something you can just mandate. This particular set-up pretty much guarantees an inferior experience for all.
OTOH: idea. “Managing two classrooms” is exactly what went on in my rural ‘50’s elemsch—two grades per classroom– & it was a good ed. Basically, one grade did deskwork in prep for the next class coming up while teacher taught other grade. We alternated like that all day. You could do something like that with the concurrent in-person/ videoconferencing groups, like hybrid: one day, one group is working at desk w/minimal attention while the other group gets the focus; next day reverse groups.
We’re extremely stressed just trying to adapt to distance teaching. Having to handle in-person teaching too would drive many of us over the edge. So glad most districts realized hybrid would be a fiasco.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
This is a horrible model. Starting on September 14, we start this model…ugh.
Some NJ schools are doing the same. Some teachers will not only teach THREE classes per day, but will also have to record a 4th separately, and it cannot be one of the “live” classes they teach that day. Can you imagine?
Hi therlo. What does it mean to “record” a different 4th class? Video a lecture? I.e., present material that will be the basis for subsequent concurrent classes? I think I can imagine it working for a math class: spend 10mins each walking them through 4 types of problems on a whiteboard. That could be useful & not require a horrific amount of prep. But a science lab demo, or any humanities subject could take at least 3 hrs to put together. And the attention span required to get much out of it is not a major feature of 5-17yo’s 😉
I teach elementary school. My little ones have to sit behind shields that block their views. They can’t engage in conversation behind face masks. They can’t read books together, do a word puzzle, or work together to figure out a math problem. They are isolated sitting behind their plastic barriers like they are looking through windows. They aren’t really engaged. And I am not really teaching. I wonder how this will affect them psychologically? I feel so helpless, frustrated, and sad.