A majority of teachers who taught online or hybrid reported working an additional 900 hours—or 37.5 days—since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, a survey has found.
Online teachers said they spent the extra time lesson planning, managing a learning management system, meeting with students and attending faculty meetings, according to a survey of 1,500 public K-12 educators conducted by Sykes, a customer engagement company.
This may have lead to another finding in the report: 73% of the teachers surveyed considered leaving the profession while teaching online during COVID, with half having thought about leaving at least “a few times” or “often.”
However, more than half of the teachers surveyed also described their morale as “positive” and 60% said their outlook is improved for he 2021-2022 school year.
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Digging deeper, two-thirds of the teachers felt they were able to create a classroom community in the virtual setting. Three-quarters reporting holding office hours that were well-attended by students.
Most teachers were satisfied with the learning management systems they used, with Google Classroom rating as the most popular product. About half the teacher surveyed gave 4 stars to the tech support they received from school IT staff.
Looking forward to fall 2021, 48% of the teachers surveyed said they want to teach in-person while 34% hoped to teach online.