#but Prax has a kid to care for and a job to do.

[daisyachain]

Ah all right so they’re deliberately comparing Amos and Prax’ relationship to a romantic interest

[coffeeteaitsallfine]

"Teaching has been considered a high-stress job for years. And then the pandemic happened, and everything got worse. Teacher stress levels skyrocketed as they pivoted to teaching online, in socially distanced classrooms, or both at the same time. They desperately tried to engage students who were checked out or who only appeared as a black box on Zoom."

"Teachers are also tasked both with catching students up academically and attending to their trauma and social-emotional needs."

"Research shows that when teachers are stressed out, the quality of their instruction, classroom management, and relationships with students all suffer. And students tend to be more stressed when their teachers are, which could negatively affect their academic performance and engagement.

Yet, stress seems inevitable: Teachers tell me that over the past decade, they’ve had more and more responsibilities piled on their plates. There’s more of a focus on accountability and data points. Students’ non-academic needs seem greater. And over the past year, there’s been a growing amount of public scrutiny over what teachers are teaching and how they run their classrooms, leaving them feeling micromanaged and disrespected."

"But instead, many districts have offered programming that encourages self-care, which only 11 percent of teachers say would be helpful. Meredith Lesser-Gonzalez, a 5th grade teacher in Framingham, Mass., put it this way: “Do you want me to feel less stressed? Give me more time to read and respond to kids’ work.” "Encouraging yoga or meditation can’t make up for systemic issues that cause stress, experts say. “You can’t deep-breathe your way out of a pandemic; you cannot stretch your way out of terrible class sizes; you cannot ‘individual behavior’ your way out of structural problems,” said Chelsea Prax, the programs director of children’s health and well-being at the American Federation of Teachers. “Those are effective coping measures, but they don’t change the problem.”