Navigating the Other Side of the Classroom: Exploring Teachers' Experiences at Work

Below is a description for a regular session that will include a maximum of five 20-minute presentations.

How do primary and secondary schoolteachers navigate their work environment? What techniques do teachers engage in to ensure the best student outcomes? How have the stressors educators face changed over time? What are some of the reasons why teachers stay in the profession, while others leave? This session explores the multifaceted nature of teachers’ work. Teachers are tasked with navigating relationships with administrators, colleagues, parents, and students in their efforts to be effective educators. While teachers must manage these various relationships, their work has become open to increasingly intensive scrutiny from several sources including government agencies, school administrators, parents, and the public. This is all taking place as the competition for scarce funding, and status relative to other schools increases. Teachers’ working conditions affect various aspects of their job, including how they grade students’ work, their engagement with parents and administrators, and how they evaluate their success as an educator.

This session invites contributions that focus on the experiences of primary and secondary schoolteachers at all types of schools (e.g., public, private, parochial). The topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Teachers’ work to achieve ‘good’ student outcomes
• How teachers’ race, class, or gender impacts their experience of work
• Role of the school environment in shaping teachers’ work
• Psychological costs associated with teaching
• Techniques for navigating the challenges of the work environment
• Motivations for leaving the teaching profession