Teachers stuck in ‘living hell’

Best defined as educational institutions and buildings designed to provide learning spaces and environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers, schools are where learners should maximise their potential for the development of society for the greater good.

However, many educators have begun to question the teaching and learning process in the spaces available in Jamaica, and have formed the view that some schools have become battlegrounds for teenage combatants, whose deviant behaviours are mutating islandwide.

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In a chilling session with some educators during the last two weeks, they shared stories of the horror of their work environments, describing themselves as working in “low-security prisons with students who are high-security risk”.

The teachers, who spoke extensively with The Sunday Gleaner, describe many in different cohorts as “a cross breed of narcissists and terrorists” whose behaviours have forced many teachers to end their careers early. Among those who remain are some who are suffering from various forms of mental illness ranging from anxiety, depression, trauma and mental breakdown. The teachers say they are at war with students they teach and describe their work lives, most days, as “a living hell”.

In one school, the cohort that is wreaking havoc is a group of seventh-graders. At the end of the Christmas term, only one student averaged 70 or more in eight subjects. About 20 averaged 60 or over, and 100 averaged 30 and lower. The status of the remaining 77 could not be ascertained. It was explained that some may have disappeared, migrated, died, transferred or been expelled.

According to an official, they receive primary school leavers who are at the “developing or lower stage”.

Staff believe that at least 75 per cent of the children should be assessed via specialised tests, to empower teachers to better prepare work. Guidance counsellors and subject teachers are said to be overwhelmed with the high level of student illiteracy, which they believe is at the root of many of the deviant behavioural problems displayed. The vast majority of the cohort is reading at the primer (basic school) and pre-primer (pre-basic school) levels.

“Primer is the level you read at in basic school. So there is BPP which means reading below pre-primer (below basic school) which is the age you read at between age three and four. Primer is ages five and six. So it’s BPP, which is below pre-primer, where they can identify letter sounds and letters, and then grades one, two, three, etc… ,” the guidance counsellor explained.

“So you have kids reading at BPP, pre-primer, primer and a large number reading at grade-three level. We have a cohort of two classes who are reading at grades six and seven level which is the reading level for their age. But we have students who cannot recognise their names, because they do not know letters, nor sounds,” said a senior staffer at the institution.

According to him, “The tragedy of that at the end of their time here, they will sit exams that are uniformed across secondary schools while they should not even be in secondary school. But this is what the primary schools are sending to us.”

Linvern Wright is the president of the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools. He is very worried, and did not mince words. He warned that anxiety and depression will be minor psychological problems facing teachers if the help needed for students is not provided.

“We are not making any social investments. We are not building character, we are making buildings and that’s the problem. JAMAL worked very well because there was a yearning for literacy and there was a vision which people could see even though they were illiterate. Being able to read meant better. It is not so today. It’s earning money by whatever means and getting an education has nothing to do with it for many. And that is a fact,” said Wright, the principal of William Knibb High School.

JAMAL was a 1970s literacy initiative to reduce the high levels of illiteracy post-Independence.

“We have them on a carousel where we send them from one school to the other without addressing the psychosocial issues affecting them. So, we are just transferring the problems through the system year after year, and sending it to the teachers,” Wright explained.

Students urged to get help

Referencing Section 30, Clause 6 of the Education Code, he said principals can apply the section to insist that troubled students get help outside the school when constant disciplinary action have to be taken and they are suspended.

“If we do not help the students, teachers will continue to have problems and it will only get worse. Anxiety and depression will be minor to what they have told you about,” he explained.

“However, a majority of the clinicians no longer take the insurance cards because they say the company takes too long to pay them. So we have to pay upfront and claim it back,” a teacher outlined in pointing to current health insurance provisions, in light of the mental health strain on educators.

“And never mind what you hear about salary increase, when a psychiatrist is charging $15,000-$17,000 per session you have to pay that upfront and claim back. The insurance pays a little over half of that. Psychologists are a little cheaper, but you still have to pay out of pocket.”

According to the group, students often flatly refuse to do work, casually stating that they will “not be doing no work today”.

They take control of classes from teachers, walking in and out of classes without permissions, and breaking into groups conducting their own activities while the teachers are in class. They walk out of the school compound, abusing persons at the gate, whether security or gatemen. Confiscated materials, such as phones, are retrieved without permission and they threaten to hit teachers in (expletive deleted) parts and often with the invitation to “go s..k y..r m….r”, which is not unusual to Wright.

“This is the national bad word. Everybody tells everybody to do it and the students do it anywhere, anytime. So the trauma for teachers is real. One teacher who witnessed the stabbing death of another child recently was so traumatised that she resigned from the school immediately. She breaks into tears every time she passes the school. A lot of very good and caring teachers are being traumatised by students’ behaviour,” Wright told The Sunday Gleaner.

Citing what he called a “culture of collusion with horrible behaviour”, he said members of the association have bemoaned being criticised, “by past students, some in the ministry and many in society, for disciplinary action against the students, and all they are doing is colluding with looseness”.

Among principals, he said many have to “be calming traumatised, anxious and depressed staff”.

He added: “Teachers who have to be busting criminal gangs, homosexual rings [particularly lesbians] and bullies.”

Another principal concurred.

“My teachers are dealing with that. I have to be reassuring them, and I am left on my own. We beg for help. We beg. We beg. I have to pay for psychiatric help to help some of them. Now one-third of my staff going, and that third is less than five years in the profession,” he explained.

Jamaica loses hundreds of teachers per year to other jurisdictions offering better pay and conditions of service. In a desperate plea for something to be done, teachers at one school proposed punishing parents for the infractions committed by their children.

“We knew it was illegal but that is how frustrated we were. A child was expelled after repeatedly violating the Education Regulations. The education officer called and said we must take him back. That was the last straw. Other times it’s the alumni or other connected people because the child is part of sporting bodies in the school,” said another teacher.

“We do everything to keep our sanity and school do everything to mad yuh,” said the teacher.

Teachers desperate, support appears to be limited

“The support for teachers dealing with these tough students is very limited. The support for schools that want to help these students by referring them is not sustained. When students are referred, sometimes they do show up, and there is hardly any system to see if they show up. However, if you have a good CPFSA [Child Protection and Family Services Agency] officer, they will follow up. But they too are overwhelmed and guidance counsellors and principals are bearing the brunt of all this,” he explained.

A former guidance counsellor, who asked not to be named to protect the school and clients, said in addition to violent and indisciplined students, teachers were forced to work in toxic environments created by poisonous school administrators.

“I was in the system for 14 years, before I left in 2023. Many teachers leave the profession for a number of reasons and it’s not all about salary. Some of the most toxic persons are school administrators and they are equally guilty of causing stress, depression and trauma in teachers. It’s not just the students’ behaviour,” he told The Sunday Gleaner.

According to him, in one instance, “a teacher had a mental breakdown and as guidance counsellor I offered help. It became toxic when I was being asked to state the nature of the issues facing the teacher. I said I could not do that as it would breach confidentiality. And, after that my life at that institution became a living hell, and so I left.” Counselling sessions range between one or two hours per child, he said, but often guidance counsellors find themselves counselling teachers, and also the parents of the child. He said sometimes for hours the parents are there.

“It was too much. The system is actually set up for teachers to be traumatised and have mental breakdowns. Sometimes some of the incidents the children tell you about you must report to the police. When the matter goes to court, you and the accused are sitting metres apart; he lives in the same community you teach, and he is parked metres from your car at the court’s parking lot,” he said.

He said there was no protection for him in the situation, compared to his new dispensation where systems work, when administrators put the children’s needs first.

Rayon Simpson is the principal of Belmont Academy and a member of the general council of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association, the body that represents teachers.

He said for many teacher there was “real fear because the situation for them was a ticking time bomb, and they do not know when it will explode”.

“The mental health is certainly being discussed and it’s not just salaries, it’s one of the conditions of service. But, teachers are constantly being dumbed down when they speak about the maladaptive behaviours of the children, giving them almost a free rein in the way they behave and conduct themselves,” he charged in his contribution to the report.

“The hands of teachers are being tied in the public space as to how teachers and schools can treat them and this contributes significantly to the powerlessness that administrators feel. There is the need for a national parenting response to the whole issue, because what we have are things on paper that make absolutely no sense,” he stated.

He could not point to any substantial work of the national parenting committee and he said the parenting commission was “non-functional”.

There was no response from the minister of education or permanent secretary to an email two Friday’s ago for information to assist teachers impacted by school violence.

JTA Secretary General Dr Mark Nicely deferred comment to the association’s president, Leighton Johnson, who was up to yesterday yet to provide a response to queries via calls and voice note messages.

erica.virtue@gleanerjm.com