The Brighter Side of Education: Research, Innovation & Resources

Teacher Crisis: Addressing Commodification and Mental Health with Leadership Consultant Dr. Roger Gerard

Season 2 Episode 45

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Ever wondered how the commodification of education affects our teachers' mental health and the quality of education? Join us as we explore this pressing issue with renowned healthcare executive and leadership consultant, Dr. Roger Gerard. Together, we unpack the alarming rise in teacher burnout and anxiety, exacerbated by the pandemic, and delve into the structural issues that contribute to this crisis. Drawing from Dr. Gerard's upcoming book, "Lead with Purpose: Reignite Passion and Engagement for Professionals in Crisis," we discuss actionable steps to reignite passion and engagement among educators, emphasizing the need to treat them as valued professionals.

We tackle the fundamental needs of teachers, such as campus safety and competitive pay, and the systemic challenges that hinder fair compensation. Through personal anecdotes and critical analysis, we highlight the detrimental effects of pay freezes and outdated salary data, and critique the use of manipulative incentives. Instead, we advocate for intrinsic motivation and systemic solutions to reduce teacher shortages and overburdening. This episode underscores the necessity of genuine support and respect for educators, ensuring their well-being and effectiveness in the classroom.

Discover how school board members can foster better educational environments by actively engaging with teachers and students. We discuss the importance of understanding daily school operations and promoting respectful partnerships among parents, educators, and administrators. By addressing the over-reliance on test scores and fostering a supportive educational culture, we outline five key promises leaders should make to their teams. Listen in and join our mission to drive positive change in education, prioritize our children's success, and share your success stories to inspire others.

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Want to share a story? Email me at lisa@drlisarhassler.com.
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The music in this podcast was written and performed by Brandon Picciolini of the Lonesome Family Band. Visit and follow him on Instagram.

My publications:
America's Embarrassing Reading Crisis: What we learned from COVID, A guide to help educational leaders, teachers, and parents change the game, is available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible, and iTunes.
My Weekly Writing Journal: 15 Weeks of Writing for Primary Grades on Amazon.
World of Words: A Middle School Writing Notebook Using...

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Welcome to the Brighter Side of Education. I'm your host, Dr. Lisa Hassler, here to enlighten and brighten the classrooms in America through focused conversation on important topics in education. In each episode, I discuss problems we as teachers and parents are facing and what people are doing in their communities to fix it. What are the variables and how can we duplicate it to maximize student outcomes? In this episode, we'll explore how teacher co-modification connects to burnout and what leaders can do about it.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

While teachers enter the field with the best of intentions, increasing pressures over the past four years have led to a persistent national teacher shortage. National data and community reports indicate critical shortages of both teachers relative to pre-pandemic levels and teachers fully certified to teach in their content area. A 2022 study by Johns Hopkins University and the American Educational Research Association found that the mental health of pre-K to 12 teachers has been significantly impacted by the pandemic. Teachers reported much higher anxiety levels than other professions, with remote teachers experiencing even greater distress. Us teachers are 40% more likely to suffer from anxiety than health care workers and 20% more likely than office workers. Cheryl Robinson in her 2024 article Teachers here's how to Successfully Change Careers After Burnout, noted that post-pandemic, there were 500,000 fewer educators in US public schools, with 43% of job postings unfulfilled.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Increased workloads, changing curriculums, economic pressures and low pay have led many teachers to question if the profession is worth it, with many saying enough. So what does commodification have to do with this anxiety and how can it be prevented? To explore effective solutions, we're joined by Dr. Roger Gerard, a healthcare executive and leadership consultant. Dr Gerard is the owner of Sloan Gerard Consulting, a private consulting practice serving executives and boards in strategic planning, operational planning, executive coaching and management development. He's also a three-time author sharing leadership principles applicable to professional and personal settings. In his upcoming book "Lead with Purpose: Reignite Passion and Engagement for Professionals in Crisis, he discusses commodification in careers such as education and offers practical strategies to inspire high levels of engagement, preventing burnout. Dr Gerard, welcome to the show and thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

Thank you for allowing me to be part of this. I appreciate it.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Your background in the health and leadership consulting sector for the past 52 years has led to your publications On the Mend and Owning the Room, and you have a latest book, lead with Purpose, and you write about professionals in crisis. So what inspired you to focus on this particular area and how do you believe it can help teachers?

Dr. Roger Gerard:

Well, I've had a very privileged career in that I've been able to spend a lot of time with many different kinds of professionals for over 50 years. It's been a wonderful ride and I've watched in those 50 years what I think is a decline in respect for professionals, and some of it is structural, some of it is institutional, some of it is just in the paradigms that we use as we consider who the professionals in our society are. You know, in the HR world a professional is defined as somebody who has a certificate or a license or a degree and they're capable in those licensures or certificates to do certain things, and that's a pretty sterile definition. Or certificates to do certain things, and that's a pretty sterile definition. My definition of a professional is somebody who comes to the workplace wanting to be engaged in doing something that matters, and in that kind of a definition we're talking about people who come to work with a calling.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

We know from all of the Gallup research today that people aren't engaged. They're discovering in their research over the last decade or so that about 35% of the people doing daily work are engaged in that work. I mean emotionally connected. About 35% are not engaged. They're actively disengaged. Wow, that's a lot, that's a lot. And the people in the middle are on the fence. They're showing up and they'll do the job. They're good soldiers but they're not emotionally connected to the work.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

So if you start thinking of a third, a third and a third the people who come to work with a calling, with a sense of purpose, the people who come to work with a calling, with a sense of purpose, those folks are special. And now you want to look at who they are. Well, they're the firefighters, they're the teachers, they're the doctors, they're the nurses. These are the people who come to the workplace wanting to make a difference and do something for somebody. Those are the folks I've been able to work with for my career and I'm seeing today that they're not being respected, they're not being treated as the professionals that they are. So I mean, that's kind of where I'm at, and I've spent a lot of time trying to help executives and managers in many different organizations see that and recognize what it's doing to people with, I hope, some success. In my book I'm trying to encapsulate in a couple hundred pages what's happening and what leaders need to do about it. That's what it's all about.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

So when you're talking about crisis, it's not being seen as professionals. The disengagement, that being on the fence, losing that passion, the impact of that on society, and it's a lot.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

I mean, it's a social impact, it's an economic impact. Think about how work is being done today and how much waste occurs because people are cynical, because they're apathetic, because they don't want to do what they're being asked to do. All of that is waste, and there's a lot of it in just about every organization I've been in.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Yeah, being able to have the right frame of mind, to be eager about embracing what it is that's being asked of you. You know that's a big difference, because you have motivation and the motivation makes you want to jump up and do it with happiness and with a lot of dedication. And if you don't have that motivation, then the dedication isn't there and I think the quality definitely suffers, which then of course impacts those who we're supposed to serve, and that's the community, and so the community then suffers you got it.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

Teachers and educators are one of the groups that I focus on in my book and I know that's part of your focus and your mission. And I was, 23 years, chief learning officer for ThetaCare, which is a health care system here in Wisconsin. They originally wanted me to be the chief education officer and I said no, I'll be the chief learning officer because it's my job to help people learn, but I can't guarantee that they will. I won't be held accountable for their learning. I'll be held accountable for creating that environment where they can learn. So that's what we did for 23 hours.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

We have to be very careful about how we treat metrics and how we treat the work that professionals are there to do. One of the words that I use is commodity. We are standardizing work, we are scripting the teachers. We are creating standard approaches for education, and most people in their academic background learned that there are many different ways to learn and people come with different preferences in their learning styles. We know that and because we know that, we need to be very careful about how we standardize the learning process in our education systems. I happen to be the parent of a young man who has special learning needs. It was very, very difficult to work with the school systems to make sure that his needs were accommodated properly and appropriately. But from the standpoint of the educators, they're constrained too. I mean, they're encouraged to teach to the test course. They're encouraged to teach in certain content that they may or may not have been trained to teach. They are expected to teach to a script.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Is that where the commodification comes from? Yes, so what exactly is commodification?

Dr. Roger Gerard:

A commodity in economics is a base material. For instance, it's gold or silver or steel. It's the basic materials and you can't brand it. It is what it is. In farming, it's eggs or green peppers or carrots. How do you brand that stuff? I mean, people try, but it's all exchangeable.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

When you start commodifying teachers, what you're doing is you're saying you're exchangeable, you're there to do a specific purpose and you don't get to have autonomy in that purpose. It's all about autonomy. It's all about how much influence you can have on your professional practice. In healthcare, standardized process for a physician to treat a diabetic patient starts taking the autonomy away from the physician about how each individual should be treated. Education is no different. I know that teachers would like to be able to individualize their teaching with the students because that's how the light bulbs go on. But once you script them, the teachers are bound by a script. And when you start putting metrics like test scores on the teachers and say this goal has to really perform on the national test scores or the statewide test scores, well, now you're putting another set of constraints on the teachers and eventually they feel like commodities. What am I really supposed to do here? I was taught how to practice a profession of teaching, but I'm not allowed to do all the things I know how to do.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

So it does take out the creativity and some of that individualism that we as teachers know that the children need.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

I agree there is a certain amount of scripting that does happen, I think, especially in the public sector, more so than other schools, where they really say like everyone needs to be on, and I'm not sure how this is in other school districts, but I have been in a school district where it said, all right, the entire district, if you're in third grade, you need to be this day, on this page in the math book, everybody has to be there, and so there are some that have very tight schedules, and I understand the frame of mind like we want to make sure that all the children are getting all of the education that they're supposed to.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

But on the other hand, it does hold the teacher a little bit hostage to not be able to take the time if he or she believes the students need to actually go deeper into a concept because maybe they were not understanding it, and so I feel like they kind of are being pulled by two different forces to say this is what my boss is saying, but this is what the children need, and so it's a tug, and I think it can be kind of difficult.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

It's more than difficult for some. As people come out of their education process and go into the teaching world, they have expectations, they're wide-eyed, they're excited, they want to do some new things and what you see is after about two to three years, turnover goes up. They either leave to go to somewhere else to teach or they go out of the profession altogether. That effect is an interesting effect as you start thinking about what we're doing to these people coming into the workplace.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

So is that how? Commodification, then, is leading to burnout?

Dr. Roger Gerard:

Absolutely. I just read an article produced by Forbes last week. The industry has lost over 500,000 teachers in the last five years.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

That's wild, because the teacher shortage started pre-pandemic and, of course, the pandemic just intensified that because of the expectations, and I think just society as a whole has also changed because so many parents were able to see what was going on in the classroom in a sense, even though it wasn't really the classroom when it comes to, you know, being online, it was not the normal and so I think that people became more invested and interested in what was going on in the classroom and because of that, we've got a lot of policies and a lot of people looking at our shoulders saying I think you should be doing that and you're not doing this right. So add this, add this, and after a while it just gets to be too much.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

It can be a lot, and you know the teachers today, and this goes back to how they're being treated, this whole idea of respect. Teachers are not only expected to teach, they're also expected to be disciplinarians. They're also expected to be safety protocol experts. They're also expected to, sometimes by the parents, to be mom.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Nurses and psychologists too, yeah.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

And so when you start laying on top of the teaching function all of these other layers, eventually the teacher kind of looks up from this mess and says hold it, what am I supposed to be doing here?

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

What is?

Dr. Roger Gerard:

happening and you know, it's really easy for an administrator to sit in an office and basically, say well, you know, the teacher's there. Maybe they can take on this responsibility, but every time that happens, they're being taken away from their teaching role, which is why they're there in the first place.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

I think that's then why you get that disengagement. If you're not able to do it in a way that's giving you that motivation, then you can become disengaged.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

Motivation is a choice. It's not something a leader can do to you. It's something that you choose to be and you're going to make that choice based on how you're being treated. Choose to be, and you're going to make that choice based on how you're being treated. Engagement is a choice. It's an emotional choice and if we don't pay attention to the emotions and the needs of the people doing the daily work of teaching, they're not going to come to that workplace motivated.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

So what steps can the educational leaders take to re-engage educators?

Dr. Roger Gerard:

Well, first you have to understand what teachers want and need. Teachers want safety.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Yes.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

In today's world, that's a big deal.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Yeah, Safe campuses. They want to make sure that their kids are going to be safe and that they are definitely.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

Absolutely. Teachers want competitive pay. It's not all about the money, but they want to know that they're being respected as professionals with competitive pay. That's a struggle. I was working with one school system where the pay was literally at the 40th percentile. You have to be at the 50th percentile to be competitive and their comp ratio was not good and I asked to see how they calibrated their pay. And their pay was calibrated based on data that was over a year old. Well, things move. And when I suggested that they needed to have a more robust approach to determining competitive pay, the HR people were kind of paralyzed because the school board had put an absolute freeze on teacher pay for the previous year and a half and for the future year.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

I have a couple of things to add about that. When I first started teaching, the pay was so low that I was so excited after I don't even remember how many years of teaching that my pay was actually above the poverty level. I am not kidding you and I was like celebrating.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

I was like, oh my gosh, look at this, look at this. I got a raise this year. I am now above the poverty level. It was a private school, but you just want to be able to live. I love what I do and I want to give it my heart and soul, but I also want to be able to put food on the table. That matters. And so when you look at incentives versus the pay, the pay is important because we all need to live, but the incentives are nice, you know. So we can come back to incentives versus the pay and how important that is.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

I put that idea of incentives in that compensation bucket because it is money usually. Unfortunately, incentives it's a carrot that comes with a stick. Incentives are used to cause people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do. That's called manipulation, and most of us don't want to be manipulated. I would agree We'll take the incentives in the short term, but we'll resent them in the long term.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

Where I see this play out is when, for instance, you give somebody a sign-on bonus to come in. So it's a $500 sign-on or $1,000 sign-on. It's a $500 sign-on or $1,000 sign-on. And then they take it and then they find out somebody else got $1,500. Oh, or a competitor is offering $1,500. And now I've locked myself in at $1,000, and how come I didn't get more Right? All of this manipulation creates side effects and unintended consequences that just don't make any sense. I'm not a fan of the use of incentives because they have a backlash that you have to contend with for years. It really is difficult. There's a great book out there, written in the late 80s, called Punished by Rewards. Alfie Kahn is the writer K-O-H-N. It's a marvelous text on what happens when you use incentives to try to cause change in behavior.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Interesting title.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

And he uses the education industry as an example. Once you use incentives, then everything becomes transactional. The intrinsic motivation is replaced by extrinsic motivation and once you go there it's kind of hard to go back. People come out of their educations with intrinsic motivation to do all the right things. Correct and now it's a negotiation. That's a problem. So safety compensation, and I'm going to give you one more.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Okay.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

Deal with the shortages.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Teacher shortages.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

Oh my gosh yes.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Yes, okay.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

The teachers are overburdened.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

So how would you suggest them dealing with it?

Dr. Roger Gerard:

Well, it's not going to happen until people at the school board level or the executive level of different educational institutions begin to really understand the role of the people doing the daily work of teaching. I was asked by somebody recently what would you advise the leaders of the education world to make changes? The first thing I would ask is do the teachers know who the school board members are? And the answer is no. The second question is do the board members ever sit in on any of the classroom work to see what the teachers are doing? If I were a board member, the first thing and the answer is no. The second question is do the board members ever sit in on any of the classroom work to see what the teachers are doing?

Dr. Roger Gerard:

If I were a board member, the first thing I'd want to do would be to visit the school and spend a little time watching and learning, just for my own benefit. So I knew how things worked and I know it doesn't happen, and I know the idea of that will cause a panic in the heart of the superintendent or the principal of the high school. I know that'll happen, but shouldn't they have a personal knowledge of how things work in a school system so that they can help administration do it differently. I'm lean trained and I helped introduce the manufacturing lean process in a healthcare environment and one of the first things they teach you in that process is that leaders have to go and see. If you don't go and see, you don't know what is going on.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Yeah, I think I've only known one school board member who did go to the classrooms and rode the bus and did the lawn care with the people on the weekends and stuff like that though he was quite a phenomenal school board representative, but he was an exception.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

I think that's the first big change that has to happen in education is the people in leadership have to have a foundational understanding of how the processes really work, what really matters to the people doing the teaching and how to help them be successful. I was talking with a teacher friend of mine who allowed me to come into her classroom. She teaches art and so I visited and there was a box by the doorway labeled Corral and I said what is the Corral? I don't understand why you have that. And she said that's the phone Corral. I don't understand why you have that. And she said that's the phone corral. I said why do you have a phone corral? She said if I don't collect their phones as they walk into the classroom, they're not going to be focused on their art, they're going to be focused on what's going on on their phones.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

So we've told the teacher that she now has to be a disciplinarian and we've encouraged the kids to have a second phone so that they can still do what they want to do while the teacher's not looking. And that's exactly what's going on. You know everything has consequences and in that world she has the prerogative of helping these kids do something very special in the way of learning the artistic process and doing some of the things that they do in that classroom. Some aren't going to make it. She has to decide whether she gives those people an A or a B or a C or whatever she's going to give them as a grade point at the end of the term and it's going to affect their education. She has to make those judgment calls but she's a disciplinarian in that process. That's pretty deflating.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

So what do you think a successful organization looks like in education, then, and how can a balanced, holistic approach create it?

Dr. Roger Gerard:

Well, that's a double-barreled question. A successful educational structure will place a high value on fostering respectful partnerships between parents, educators and the people running the system, and I don't see that as robust as it needs to be. I hear the teachers saying you know, we want the parents to be our partners, but when the push comes to shove, not all the parents are treated that way and don't feel treated that way. But I think you can formalize a stronger parent participation, at least for those parents who want to be involved and unfortunately many don't, but at least for those who want to be involved. You can foster a higher level of participation in how learning is structured.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

I think scripting needs to be managed very carefully in the teaching enterprise. I understand the use of test scores and I understand how test scores can be a metric of success or not. But I don't think it's only that. Metrics are very curious things and I've had to deal with this in healthcare. I've had to deal with this in working with law enforcement. Metrics are very curious things. You can go to your spouse and say you know what in this relationship we need to put a metric on how well we're doing as a marriage. I don't know a better way to mess with a relationship. Okay, you can't measure certain things. You can't measure the relationship that a teacher really feels for the students that they're mentoring and teaching every day. You've got to be very careful that you understand that the metrics that we're using are insufficient and incomplete. They're not sufficient to really describe what's really going on in the teaching process.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Yeah, I think that it depends also on what you're doing with those assessments, if you're using it as a tool to monitor yourself as a teacher or the school to say, all right, this is where we are, where are our deficits, and now what are we going to learn from that and how are we going to grow versus this is now an F school and now we're going to start putting all of these things into it, because those factors create fear, and I think that that fear then has a negative impact on how we're teaching and what we're doing with our students.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

So things like specials start being pulled out, and well, there's no more art class, because now we got to really focus on only math, so we're going to have math for two hours a day instead of saying, all right, how are we going to fix this? Let's look at this internally and what could we be doing a little bit better, exactly? And then, of course, there's retention factor there, and so that creates fear within the student and within the family and all this around a test. But if we just changed our outlook on it, I think it would have a more positive effect where we still were able to gauge progress.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

I'm so glad you put the fear word out there, because it is present in a lot of cultures and in the educational culture. It's present in steroids, and administrators need to spend time making it a safe culture so that people don't have to have that fear, so they can say what needs to be said, so they can do what needs to be done, and I'm not sure there's enough focus on that.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Right.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

How do you take fear out of the enterprise? How do you take fear out of the culture? The opposite of fear is hope. Yeah, how do you help people generate an attitude of hope and kindness to one another? It's tough in today's society. We live in a very cynical society today.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

So how do you instill the hope to create a successful organization? What are those five steps?

Dr. Roger Gerard:

Five promises.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Okay.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

I think every leader needs to make five promises to the people they lead. This cuts across many industries. Promises are simple. Promise number one talk to me, I'll listen. Promise number two give me advice, I'll treat it seriously. I might not agree with you, but I will listen to it and I will consider it. Promise number three I will help you be a professional and successful beyond your wildest dreams. Promise number four I will make sure that you are compensated competitively. We will treat you respectfully with regard to compensation. Promise number five I will have your back when things go south.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

That'd be great.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

Think about the environment you're creating, right.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Yes, yes. Support to know that someone is behind you because they trust you and believe in you that's big.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

If you could convince every principal, every board member, every supervisor in the education industry to make promises like that and keep them.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

I think it would create a safe environment, like you would feel safe to come to your leader and express honest opinions and concerns. I think so. I think so. Yeah, that would be great. So what is the most important thing you want our audience to know? Moving forward, two things Okay, and I end in both the Owning the Room book and Lead with Purpose book.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

I end every chapter with these two things Thing. And I end in both the Owning the Room book and Lead with Purpose book. I end every chapter with these two things Thing. Number one go and see. Okay, if you're not going to go and see, you don't know what's going on. Go and see. You need to get yourself in the middle of things, not to solve problems, not to fix somebody, but to go understand what's going on so that you can make intelligent choices about that. Step number two go and do something. Find somebody within the next 24 hours and show them some respect. Find somebody in the next 24 hours and help them be successful in ways they are not successful today. Find somebody by next Tuesday that you can collaborate with and do something you've never done before. Go and do. So it's real simple Go and see, go and do.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

Go see and go and do. That's wonderful Well, thank you so much, Roger, for joining me today to discuss the mental health of teachers from commodification and leadership steps to prevent their burnout.

Dr. Roger Gerard:

Thank you very much. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I appreciate it.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

The call to action is to spread awareness of how commodification in education is affecting educators' mental health, so that institutional leadership can better support them. If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, you can email me at lisa at drlisahasslercom, or visit my website at wwwdrlisahasslercom and send me a message. If you like this podcast, subscribe and tell a friend. The more people that know, the bigger impact it will have. And if you find value to the content in this podcast, consider becoming a supporter by clicking on the supporter link in the show notes.

Dr. Lisa Hassler:

If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, you can email me at lisa@ drlisarhassler. com. Or visit my website at www. drlisarhassler. com and send me a message. If you like this podcast, subscribe and tell a friend. The more people that know, the bigger impact it will have. And if you find value to the content in this podcast, consider becoming a supporter by clicking on the supporter link in the show notes. It is the mission of this podcast to shine light on the good in education so that it spreads, affecting positive change. So let's keep working together to find solutions that focus on our children's success.

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