Disintegrating Support: Teachers are experiencing burnout due to district oversight, large class sizes, student disrespect and AI Usage

*Names are changed to protect identity

The blank stares of 25 students were the last thing she needed. For months, teacher *Amber Konrad had been struggling. Struggling with the question of: Does anyone care if I try? 

“I felt like no one saw me and no one recognized what I was going through,” Konrad said. “Admin tells us all these nice things about how much they like us and appreciate us, and blah, blah, blah, but [they've] actually never, ever come up to me and told me I'm doing a good job.”

Students? Treated her class as a chore. 

Her friends? Tried to convince her to quit. 

But she couldn’t. 

She wasn’t ready to walk away from the job she fell in love with more than a decade ago.

Konrad went into teaching thrilled about the idea of being paid to work with high-achieving students in a “community of expectations.”

But after more than 10 years of teaching a room of students who only wanted a grade, Konrad found herself meeting with a therapist and napping two to three hours every day after school to cope with the task of educating the uninterested.

Burnout has always been a part of teaching. Konrad said that in the past five years, it has become more common than ever.

A Google Form survey sent to all teachers and administrators received 30 responses and 28 teachers across all departments said burnout is an issue. These responses reflect national trends. According to a National Education Association teacher survey, over 90% of the teachers who responded said burnout is a serious problem.

Teachers are burnt out because district policy and curriculum changes don't reflect their perspective, according to multiple survey responses. 

Teachers are burnt out because large class sizes are forcing them to spend more time grading. 

Teachers are burnt out because students, instead of investing in their education, treat classes as something they have to do to graduate.

Teachers are burnt out because artificial intelligence is forcing teachers to police technology usage.

In her 25 years of teaching in the district, English teacher Kristin Anderson felt many district administration curriculum decisions were made without accurately representing teachers’ perspectives.

“[District Administrators] so [high] up at the beautiful CAA that has a living plant wall and a bistro, and they can't possibly understand,” Anderson said. “You can read all the educational theory books that you want, but until you're in front of the kids, a living room of 30 humans, it doesn't mean anything to me.”

Teachers have always valued their autonomy, according to Associate Principal Anna Thiele. As a former teacher, Thiele said one of the unique aspects of the job was that within the four walls of their classroom, a teacher knows their curriculum — and how to teach it — better than anyone.  

But teachers’ autonomy is often threatened by SMSD decisions, according to Konrad. More often than not, teachers feel the SMSD administrators don't understand a teacher's point of view. 

“I don't think the district cares to know what IB is,” Konrad said. “They treat it like an AP class or a college now class and it's not. It's just sort of like, oh, that really cool thing that we highlight students are doing and makes our district look good, but they're not getting into it. They're not seeing me.”

SMSD’s decisions are often top-down — created at the district office, the Center for Academic Achievement, and then implemented at all schools in the district, according to six teachers at SM East. Dr. Chris Kase, SMSD director of Secondary Human Resources, explained that before any curriculum decisions are made, the district asks its focus groups made up of teachers, administrators and principals for feedback.

Yet, teachers, like chemistry teacher Susan Hallstrom and Anderson, feel that these focus groups don’t understand students’ decreased interest in learning. 

According to the teacher survey, every time the district makes a decision, teachers take extra time to restructure their curriculum and rethink how to manage the classroom.

For example, when the district decided to add the Earth and space science class to satisfy a physical science graduation requirement, the science department advised against it, claiming it would hurt test scores.  

Instead of following the science teachers’ advice, the SMSD implemented the curriculum change, and according to Hallstrom, this is a main factor in a recent Kansas State Assessment score decline.

“Sometimes, I think there are so many people working at the CAA they have to make changes to justify their existence,” Hallstrom said. “On Earth and space science, you never pick up a calculator. If you don't give kids those higher-level thinking skill opportunities, they won't perform as well on [the KSA].”

The district doesn’t just determine what curriculum looks like and classroom phone usage. They control how many teachers are needed in each school, and with that, how much money each school has to hire teachers. 

Despite class sizes, SM East can’t hire more teachers, Kase said. 

In the survey, several teachers wrote that 18-23 students is the perfect class size to form a connection with each student and grade work on time. 

But adding more students now means more assignments to grade while decreasing student opportunities to add to class discussions. 

“The single most important thing that enables me to be a more effective teacher is a smaller class size,” Anderson said. “I will assure you that with class sizes of 30, every single kid in that room is getting less of an education.”

A third of the responding teachers believe the district needs to allocate funds towards hiring more teachers to balance out classes.

Otherwise, teachers are torn between keeping their sanity and their health or providing the best education possible for their students, according to Hallstrom. 

But how much effort students put into their learning is often beyond teachers’ control. Multiple teachers said they pour hours of work into lesson plans that students take for granted. 

When science teacher Jodi Stanley was too sick to teach her sixth hour environmental education class, substitute teacher DeAnn Smith filled in to supervise.

As Smith was grading worksheets, she felt a dense plastic cube slam into the back of her neck.

A student had thrown a Nee-Doh Nice Cube at her. 

The next day, after being diagnosed with a concussion and prescribed pain medication at an Urgent Care center, she still felt constant pain in her neck. Not even a get-well-soon letter signed “the senior in the corner by the turtle tank” in Stanley’s sixth hour could reestablish Smith’s peppy personality.

“I felt really disheartened,” Smith said. “It has really dampened my enthusiasm. And I haven't felt that way. I usually feel pretty energetic. I like being here. I like working here. I like the kids, and the majority of them are great. So why me?”

Since the accident, Smith said she has received several emails from teachers reaching out in support. 

Although she doesn’t know how she’s going to proceed legally, teachers have expressed concern about how administration disciplines students, according to Smith.

“The big joke on teacher social media [is], you send a kid to the office, they come back with a snack and a drink,” Hallstrom said. “We need consequences that are real and unpleasant. If there are no consequences for poor choices, then you expect the poor choices to continue.” 

Principal Jason Peres explained that while he can’t comment on specific disciplinary actions, SM East follows the district's disciplinary matrix. 

But it's much more than just administrators' role in keeping students accountable, according to Konrad. It’s the students. 

Konrad has observed students no longer feel the need to attend school or focus in class, with students’ increased reliance on technology since the COVID-19 pandemic. She’s heard students call the attendance policy “a joke,” and when they’re late, students say, “I never got in trouble for being this late with other teachers.” 

Learning extends beyond simply receiving a grade, and student motivation is key, according to Konrad. She explained that the problem is that teachers don’t know how to spark motivation and intellectual curiosity because they’re competing with screens.

“We look at you students, and we see apathy,” Konrad said. “We see a serious decline in critical thinking. We see a lack of intellectual curiosity. Nothing will kill a person's joy faster than trying to be excited about something and just being met with a wall of blank stares. It hurts.”

With the rapid development of generative AI, students' use of technology as an in-class distraction or a tool for bypassing work has been a trend in education. AI has forced teachers to reconsider not only what they teach, but also their grading practices, according to English teacher Amy Andersen. 

Since AI can complete assignments for students, teachers now have to take extra time to check them for AI-generated content but also ensure that AI wasn’t mistakenly flagged — a reality that has led to issues from middle school to post-graduate education, according to NBC. 

“I've encountered lots of AI usage as students are analyzing poetry, and poetry is a genre near and dear to my heart,” Andersen said. “I've come to love this job more and more, but AI is the thing that now has me, for the first time in maybe 10 years, asking harder questions about, can I stay?”

The technology has developed to the point where teachers are now having to build and structure assignments to be AI-proof — yet another responsibility teachers must manage.

In Andersen’s case, that means students can only write poetry analysis and essays in class only. For Hallstrom, it means more paper worksheets, labs and activities — adding another thing for teachers to grade and give feedback.

“I spent about 18 hours grading, and that was one lab and one test,” Hallstrom said. “Those [hours] are not sustainable. Yet, I see no other way to give my students what I feel like they deserve from me.”

Since AI and technology are constantly evolving, teachers and administrators can’t implement a strict policy, according to Thiele. This reality forces teachers to have to decide what’s acceptable technology usage and what’s cheating. 

In the past five years, teachers have been increasingly blamed for reduced test scores, expected to create and enforce their own AI policy, provide timely feedback and still have time for themselves and their families, according to the National Teachers Union.

“I joke with my husband, I say, ‘Can grading kill a person?’” Andersen said. “It's kind of the system we've built. I think oftentimes, for teachers, it's a burnout cycle.”