“We’re not sacrificial lambs.”
This was the message of a federation of teachers to the Department of Education (DepEd) as it urged the agency to review their workload following reports of “extreme exhaustion” due to heavier workload and longer hours under the remote learning scheme.
The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines, in a statement issued Tuesday, said that less than two weeks before the formal school opening on Oct. 5, it has been receiving reports of teachers “burning out, getting physically and/or mentally unwell.” Due to this, the group is urging the DepEd to look into this concern and implement appropriate measures for the protection of teachers’ welfare and labor rights.
ACT Secretary General Basilio said that teachers - as education frontliners - “naturally bear the brunt of the shift to remote learning” such as figuring out the modalities, coming up with new materials, teaching both students and parents, learning about Most Essential Learning Competencies (MELCs), writing, editing, and printing of Self-Learning Modules (SLMs) and attending multiple daily webinars - among others.
“There should be safety nets in place, to avoid draining our teachers,” Basilio said. He added that despite these, classes maintained their huge sizes and teachers are still expected to render daily a total of six hours of teaching time.
Basilio noted that lesson preps and other teaching-related tasks are “now way beyond the two-hour allocation” on top of their management of multiple classes employing blended distance modalities - with various sets of parents needing assistance on different matters.