Ames school district looks into strategies to assist teachers
Kiley Wellendorf
Support is on the way for teachers throughout the Ames school district, district officials shared in an update to the Ames Board of Education during Monday's meeting.
Recently, Ames teachers were surveyed by building principals in efforts to understand where ares of stress were occurring.
The survey process was announced during Sept. 28 board meeting, when several teachers came forward and shared their challenges with long work days and teaching onsite and online classes synchronously.
According to both Superintendent Jenny Risner and Jeff Hawkins, executive director of secondary education, district staff and building principals are meeting this week to go over submissions from the surveys and also identify solutions moving forward.
"The feedback from staff has been analyzed," Hawkins said. "Superintendent Risner and Ms. Mixdorf met with our elementary principals and identified several strategies that could be used to address the concerns that we were hearing, or the feedback of teachers about how to make instructional delivery in this model work well for them."
Hawkins said he's heard "positive feedback" from elementary principals regarding the suggested strategies, adding, "those strategies are working and staff are feeling heard, and there's a sense of relief from those expectations."
On Monday, Hawkins and Risner met with the Ames High principal, Valerie Nyberg, to go over feedback from their staff, and a meeting was scheduled to meet with Ames middle school principal, Yonas Michael, on Tuesday, Hawkins said.
"We're looking for some ways to put some strategies in place that might help relieve some of the load on secondary teachers now with their feedback," Risner said. "I can't say that we're going to totally do that; we're doing our best to make adjustments and be responsive."
Risner added that the district is "looking at other changes as well that might have to do with trying to gain back some time on Wednesdays and still be in compliance, to give teachers some more planning."
The district's original hybrid plan – which scheduled Wednesday as a remote day for students – was a focal point of the board's last meeting on Monday, Sept. 28, as principals and teachers came forward about how the district's 50% hybrid model is working for staff.
In a principal's update, Yonas Michael echoed the challenges from teachers, citing the loss of the district's original hybrid plan which scheduled each Wednesday as a remote day for students, giving teachers an opportunity to tackle work for the next two days.
"We're going through a lot of growing pains right now on trying to balance teaching students who are right in front of us and then those who are learning remotely," Michael said.
After a week of hybrid teaching, Jesica Sidler, equity coordinator for the district, said she's hearing teachers describe experiences this school year as "overwhelmed, drowning, impossible and overstressed."
"From an equity standpoint, this isn't even considering single-parent teachers, teachers that work additional jobs to make ends meet, and staff who are simultaneously coping with the racial trauma of our current environment," Sidler said.
Monday's virtual meeting is available on the district's YouTube page.