Hartford teachers see hope for the future of their schools. Can you do the same?

I have spent the last three months living in Hartford while conducting qualitative research with teachers in West Hartford, Hartford, and the CREC school districts. I have spent dozens of hours listening to teachers’ stories, specifically regarding their definitions of sustainable futures for themselves and their students. I have asked questions like “What does a sustainable future for teaching and learning look like for you? How does hope manifest in your classroom? How does despair manifest in your classroom?”

Educators have poured their hearts out to me, telling me about their dreams for the future of teaching. Each teacher has told me stories of devastation and joy, hope and fear, and love and apathy. I have never known people who care so deeply for the collective children, nor who are so willing to put themselves in the line of metaphorical fire in order to take care of their students.

Every single teacher I have spent time with has an unbounded amount of love for teaching, and desperately wants the option to stay in the profession. And yet, many of them speak of their inability to do so, considering low pay, district abuse, and increasingly difficult student conditions post-pandemic.

While the teachers in all districts spoke of their struggles, many of which overlapped (like the need for more prep time, concern over their students’ social media access, fear about high need students’ access to services, and low pay), Hartford teachers’ fears were often more imminent and critical. Perhaps what is most striking, however, is less the specific difficulties that teachers are facing each day in the classroom, and more the disinvestment both educators and their students are up against.

I am reminded of the line from an eighth grade school support staff member, who, in a moment of near tearful frustration, exclaimed “Our working conditions are their learning conditions!”

As Hartford teachers continue to be placed in precarious positions, not knowing if their jobs are up for reconsideration in the fall given the approximately 300 positions that have been cut, they consistently express a feeling of instability and fear. Students feel it too — one eighth grade classroom educator tells me that her students blame themselves when their teacher leaves, thinking that they are too difficult for anyone to deal with. She detailed the self-fulfilling prophecy that takes place when students constantly feel as if their educators are leaving them.

Many teachers across the Hartford Public School district spoke of vacancies of nearly an entire grade level, often with one to two eighth grade teachers scrambling to cover for what should be a minimum of four positions. These students are given packets with state testing standards by district substitute teachers, often who the students only meet a handful of times, without any instruction. Disinvestment in teachers leads to disinvestment in students. This is true of the opposite as well. Disinvestment is cyclical and disinvestment is dangerous, both for our kids and for those that take care of them. Teachers desperately want to be able to provide the support and love that their students need, but are spread far too thin to be able to do so.

As I begin my final year before being in the classroom, I am searching for hope in the future of my profession. I want to know that teachers see things getting better. I want students to have everything they need. I want parents to feel confident that their children are seen as valuable. I want educators to feel honored in their work, which is selfless and most often unthankful.

Teachers see hope, in ways that I find remarkable and radical. “Hope happens all the time,” one support staff member tells me, in spite of the district and administration. She finds hope in her students, in their questions, their laughter, and the relationships they create with one another. Another classroom teacher shares with me that her hope for the future of education is that students “know that someone cares about them and loves them and supports them, not because I’m supposed to because it’s my job, but because it’s how I feel… [I hope I am] able to see past whatever crap choices [my students] made… and see a small human who is worthy.”

Hartford educators deserve the same level of investment they make in their students every single day — a world where hope and joy in the future is possible. I see it and so do our teachers. Can you see it too?

Isadora Goldman Leviton is a student at Wesleyan University in Middletown.