The impact

The increased levels of stress prevalent among teachers this year have not come without impact both personally and professionally.

Mousseau said the added demands brought about this year have made it difficult to put forth adequate time into his various commitments.

“There are so many ways that teachers and the work that we do day-to-day are already stretched pretty thin,” Mousseau said. “It’s been hard, especially to be involved in other parts of school and keep my commitments to those groups, but I’ve had to dial back what I can offer.”

Driscoll said spending time focusing on the schedule or the contract takes away from time that could be spent helping students.

“All these little things that take time away from what you normally would be focused on, whether it’s contract negotiations or trying to figure out how to fix the schedule, it’s all time that could be better spent elsewhere,” Driscoll said.

Gronlund-Jacob said the administration does not correctly understand the challenges of planning and teaching classes with the amplified stressors of this school year.

“I think [the] building administration has a sense that Brookline teachers are absolutely amazing and if they say ‘do this’ without any sort of plan, without any system in place to make it happen, we will still do it. Teachers make things happen regardless of what system or structure the administration supports,” Gronlund-Jacob said. “I do think that unfortunately the farther you get away from the classroom and the closer you get to the administration, the more you see less of an understanding of what actually happens in the classroom and what it takes to prepare for the classroom.”

According to Lantos, with all the challenges teachers are facing, it is important that the community is supportive. Yet, Lantos said he feels unsupported by parents.

“I think parents are acknowledging their children’s stress and anxiety, but I don’t feel like they’ve been supportive of us,” Lantos said.

Hayden said a central part of supporting each other is acknowledging the additional challenges individuals may be facing as a result of the pandemic, though this may mean slowing things down.

“We are still actually living with the emotional and social consequences of the pandemic and how much emotional and social support do we need to give our students and give ourselves?” Hayden said. “We need to get up and running again academically, and yet we’re not quite equipped to, for a lot of reasons.”

Hernandez said teachers are constantly doing much more than just teaching.

“I wish more people realized that teachers aren’t just teachers. We are guidance counselors, therapists, your parents away from your parents, or your cool aunt or uncle you can talk to about things. And it’s hard,” Hernandez said. “We love what we do, but we’re tired and we’re human.”

Contributed reporting by Zoe Brooks.