The president of the New Brunswick Teachers Association says a heavier workload and longer hours due to new COVID-19 protocols is burning out teachers faster than ever before.
Rick Cuming says teachers have more supervision than before because of new COVID-19 protocols and ensuring all of their students are following them.
He says there is also additional classroom preparation for those in school and for those learning at home.
Cuming says teachers have been reaching out to the association, the province and the district superintendents to express their concerns.
“They are putting in longer days and weeks because of the operational changes that have been put into place. They are not complaining about the operational changes that are there. However, this does have an undue strain and there is much greater supervision that has ever been done before,” he says.
“There has been quite a bit of awareness at all levels of government. So there are a number of conversations that we need to be serious about in terms of what we can remove as a workload from the teachers’ plates to ensure teachers aren’t going to burn out before the end of the school year.”
Cuming says this is not the time for new initiatives, “Not the time for the government to be putting in any new initiatives, or new projects or anything. That is from the district or department alike. We have a pet project in New Brunswick right now, and that is called teaching through a pandemic.”
He says in September, teachers were already saying they were December tired.
