Well, this is an interesting thread.
The respect for teachers has been on a decline well before Covid. While I think there are still many teachers who are well respected, the list is getting smaller for several reasons in my opinion. I have been a teacher at two different schools and administrator at 2 others in the public sector and two as admin in the private sector. The one thing I learned quickly was how much influence the teachers union had in some districts. The smaller one I taught in didn't pressure me to join KNEA but chastised me when I gave up planning time to work with at-risk kids, like it was any of their business. Apparently made some look bad and they didn't like that. I was an administrator at one small and one larger district and they were like night and day. The kids at the smaller district loved their teachers for the most part, always has to be one exception and the teachers worked their butts off for the kids. The big district was all about ME as the teachers and I dreaded being on the Negotiations team every year there. It all seemed so selfish and there was little to no focus on students, it was all about more money, time off and teaching load.
After I retired, a local Special Ed Cooperative hired me to develop technology using iPads for students with disabilities. It was very rewarding and something pretty new at the time. I am sure Tuco sees this in his classroom of 8. Anyway, I was in the classrooms observing students in roughly 12 school districts including ours which has 2 5A high schools. I was in all grades, regular ed. I saw stuff that would make my head explode. Lazy teaching, kids would right in the middle of class start breaking out chips and salsa and donuts and some teachers would maybe teach 15 minutes out of 60 minute class. Again, there were some teachers that I would call "old school" who worked their buttss off to get more out kids, but few and far between. The teachers wanted to be liked as being nice it seemed.
Over the last 5 years I have subbed at pretty much every building and grade level and the reliance on technology as the teacher seems to be the model. If it can be on a smart board and loaded on a Chrome Book, that is how the student is going to learn. The teachers are frustrated because the students don't seem to care. duh The expectations are low and the students, generally are pretty disrespectful. I was subbing in 2nd or 3rd grade last year and walking around the room and reading a story out loud when I saw some kids passing notes. I slowly walked over and picked up the note and a girl had written "F_ _ _ _ You to a boy and some other stuff. They didn't care they got caught and might get in trouble. The teachers in this building shared with me how frustrated they are and want out.
Covid was mentioned and I do not discount that having kids at home all day was an issue for some. Add in that the kids couldn't really go anywhere like they would during the summer which made it worse. Our district went to on-line class meetings and each kid had a chromebook and a hot spot if they did not have internet. They told the kids their grades were frozen and could not go down, only up. Well, good grief, that's about the worst thing you can tell a kid - I don't have to do anything to get the grade I have now! Since I often worked with parents directly since I had teach them to use the technology for their special needs child, I heard all the complaining about how lazy some teachers were in preparation and classes were pretty basic. The parents didn't get an good warm fuzzies from most of the teachers. Granted it was a new deal for teachers so I get that. My wife worked at one of the High Schools and is a math tutor so she would contact kids who she thought needed help and surprisingly, only one or two replied whereas at school she might have 5 or 6 at time anywhere from Algebra on up. In short the teachers did not do themselves any favors during all of the plandemic.
I also believe a lot of this goes with the erosion of our society in general. My wife had kids in the high school that were Tommy one day and Tammy the next just to show power over the teachers and keep them guessing. You have teachers getting sued for not using the correct pronoun which we had one national news making case just down the road from us and the teacher won. There is a big push on the National level to take schools a certain direction and all you have to do is read the unions goals and student success is hard to find. There is porn everywhere in grade schools and teachers are powerless to do much with the kids, some try, some go along with it.
It would be nice to simply say it all happened because kids were driving parents mad at home during covid but the problems go much deeper and for much longer. I was blessed to be a principal at a small high school that had amazing test scores and teachers who worked their butts off and expected the same of students. The most amazing group I have ever been part of. They are all retired now and the schools test scores have leveled off to the average of the area. Human nature is what it is, parents with low expectations and students with the same combined with teachers who are not extremely motivated or reliant on technology and you have a mess.
Just my two cents. YMMV
