Did you know a school’s climate impacts the joy and success of the students? In fact, in a study published in the Review of Educational Research it was suggested that a school’s climate is something educators, communities and teachers should prioritise. Why? Because it has a direct impact on a student’s achievement!
So, how do you make a school’s climate awesome? To answer this question, we need to know what impacts the school’s climate the most. The answer to this is the educators and teachers.
I remember my math teacher from year six, and it is not a pleasant memory. Every day before school, I would repeat a mantra to myself, “Please don’t let my math teacher be mean to me. Please don’t let my math teacher be mean to me.” There wasn’t a day that went by she didn’t make a student cry – she was stern, hardly ever smiled and favoured yelling over instructing. Needless to say, her tendency towards verbal abuse made for a very stressful school environment for me and my classmates! In short, it’s hard to learn something new when you are in a “flight or fight” response.
We’ve said it before and we will say it again – we cannot underestimate the power teachers have in the success and development of students. And if teachers are overworked and stressed out, it becomes much more difficult for them to be present to the students and focus on the children’s development.
How can we make teachers happy
Teachers do more than teach – they broaden imaginations, offer encouragement and support, foster social responsibility and can incite passion and curiosity within the minds’ of students. But if teachers are stressed out, this can impact more than the classroom, but the students as well.
Many schools are dedicated to making teachers’ lives easier. By taking the guesswork out of things like attendance, health checks, progress reports, lesson plans and grading (to name a few of the many features of our phone app), we help teachers digitalise their to-dos, giving them more time to focus on having fun in their classroom, engaging their students and teaching through edutainment.
Many teachers spend an additional hour and a half to two hours after school grading papers, creating newsletters, cleaning up their classrooms, tallying attendance and manually reporting grades. There are many phone app takes the guesswork out of planning, freeing up teachers to be more efficient and happier while saving them time.
John Engberg is a Senior Economist at the RAND Corporation who specialises in applied statistical methods and microeconomics. He wrote in this article that teachers have more of an impact on students than their home life and other environmental factors. He goes on to say teachers matter more to student achievement than any other aspect of schooling!
Imagine a world where teachers could focus on their passion instead of being bogged down by paperwork. This should be a motto for all schools – to make the world a better place for students, parents and especially for teachers! —Toddlytic
