Education, Ergonomics and Exits
Hug your favourite teacher today
In the spirit of our Tag Der Arbeit long weekend, better known to some as Labour Day, it seems apt that I’ve recently been thinking a lot about my latest job transition and what I want for myself moving forward.
The last few weeks have been a whirlwind. After working as an educator with young children for nearly four years, I decided to call it quits. I took some time off to figure out what I wanted to do next, and at the beginning of this month, I started my new role in a digital marketing agency.
I recently read that there is a shortage of approximately 30,000 educators in Germany. The country is so desperate to find educators that they are offering an increased salary and additional benefits if teachers relocate and take up the job. They are even willing to invest in special training programs for individuals who aren’t qualified in education or childcare, all to try and fill the gap in the market. Teacher turnover rates have never been low, but recently, especially after COVID, they seem extreme. I myself am part of this statistic, and when I look at the other teachers I worked with, many of them have moved on to find better work conditions, or have transitioned completely out of the field.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved my kids, they will always have a special place in my heart. Even after leaving, I still get photo updates from mothers on how much the children have grown since I last saw them, and I’ve been invited to a few birthday parties later on this year. However, I would be lying if I said that this job always filled me with joy. It was especially hard to love my kids during the pandemic, when they would come right up to me and ask me to sit with them to read a book, or when I had to physically console them if they fell down in the playground and hurt themselves. I was torn between my professional obligation to care for and educate the children, and this desperate need to protect myself and socially isolate. I slowly came to resent the public policies put in place to curb the spread of COVID - why was it okay to physically interact with different households at work, yet not be allowed to meet up with anyone who wasn’t in my “social bubble” after the day was over? An educator describes COVID as the straw that broke the camel’s back - not being able to socially distance from the children and feeling at risk of catching COVID on public transport as they commuted to work daily made them anxious. I related to this completely.
Being a teacher isn’t easy. You have to be “on” all the time. Working with young children, we are responsible for helping them socially navigate their interactions with one another. Emotions run high. Children fight, scream and cry at each other. Yet, as educators, we are supposed to leave our emotions out of it when we step in. We are expected to have the answers to everything. To be role models. To be the perfect example of how to act and react. We spend the entire day focusing on the well-being of others, investing all our energy to make sure our children feel safe. Being a teacher is never easy, but when the pandemic arrived, it began to feel impossible. On top of all our regular tasks, we were now expected to implement rigorous hygiene and safety protocols like sanitising door handles and table surfaces, and made to wear FFP2 masks the entire time (which is disgustingly difficult when you have to talk to the children all day). In the early days, if a fellow teacher called in sick, we couldn’t get a substitute in because people from different groups weren’t allowed to mix. In an already turbulent time, we felt abandoned and alone.
For me personally, the ergonomics of the job added to my stress. I wore out countless pairs of jeans as I spent a lot of time on my knees to be at eye-level with the children. I sat on tiny chairs during lunch and used tiny cutlery to show the little ones how we eat at meals. My neck and back ached from having to lift children. My Apple Watch pinged me constantly to remind me that “repeated, long-term exposures at this level can damage your hearing”. But I couldn’t just step away; these decibel levels are unavoidable when you put 12 nursery-aged children in a room together. My least favourite part of the job was ‘tidy up time’. I probably tidied up at least 10 times a day. I remember by the end of one week, I collapsed in the kitchen half way through making dinner and began to cry, just because I couldn’t bear the thought of having to clean up once again after making a mess.
Despite these moments, I powered through and focused on the positives to get me through the day. There is something magical about teaching children of a young age, everything is new to them. The awe when a child finds spring flowers in the garden for the first time, or their determination to capture flowing water with their hands. Everything to them is wonderful, and their energy became my beacon of hope during the most difficult moments of the pandemic. However, in the last year, I began to realise that while the pedagogical work was rewarding, the strenuous physicality of certain tasks was ruining my body. I struggled with my health and chronic pain, undergoing two surgeries in two years. This was when it finally became clear to me - my role and I were no longer compatible.
This revelation terrified me and I spent a long time feeling conflicted. Should I stay in a field I knew I was great at, nurturing others while neglecting myself? Or should I pursue something entirely new that I was personally curious about? Some of my educator pals voiced scepticism at me leaving the altruistic realm of education behind for a corporate setting rooted in capitalism, and I also doubted myself. Here I was, about to throw myself into the deep end, to become a complete beginner at something, to start from scratch. What if I couldn’t handle it?
My first month in my new role is coming to a close and the one thing I know is that there is a lot right now that I still don’t know. I’m working in a language that isn’t my mother tongue, I still struggle to unmute myself on calls (I can finally relate to all the WFH memes I see online), and the array of digital knowledge I’m expected to eventually comprehend seems endless. However, the weeks have flown by and even after my work day is over I forget to leave on time because I’m so immersed in all the new topics I’m learning about. This time, I am the child in awe, finding spring flowers in the garden for the first time. Despite this, I’ve found myself lately reflecting on my time as an educator, and thinking about the heroes who have dedicated themselves to this field. Teachers give so much of themselves to others, dedicating hours of their time to teach, educate and guide the very people who go on to shape our future. So if you know someone who works in education, hug them and tell them thank you, and if you’re reading this and you work in education, THANK YOU, I see you, I appreciate you and you are doing one hell of a job.