Speaker: Laura Myers
Please share: Your name, the city/area you teach in, the grade you teach, your class size and factors that make your class complex.
Laura Myers: Hi, my name is Laura and I teach just south of Calgary in the foothills. Uh I teach English in a high school that's from 9 to 12 and I've been very lucky that my classes have not been too large until this year. This year, I have a couple of classes that are quite overwhelming in terms of marking all the things that you mark as an English teacher and uh prepping all the materials that you need. Uh We do almost everything online which does help but um it's becoming more and more difficult to provide resources for the various different needs that kids have even in a digital world. So it becomes this daily sort of chaotic craziness of trying to address whatever needs need to be dealt with in the moment for whichever kids need to have those things dealt with. And it feels a lot of the time like we're not making any progress or moving things forward. So I am concerned about the lack of e a support, um specific um evaluation needs like getting kids assessed for various different things from anxiety to learning disabilities and the difficulties with making sure every kid gets what they need in the moment. Um, it makes me worry that teachers are going to burn out. It makes me worry that kids are going to fall through the cracks and we're not going to see the damage for years to come because that's how it works in education. I, I really hope that we, um, can identify and sort through some of these issues so that the system does not collapse in on itself.
