GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — The Green Bay school board plans to address pandemic impacts on staff members at its meeting on Monday.
Like other school districts, Green Bay is noticing increased stress and anxiety among staff and students.
For many educators, teaching amid a global pandemic has brought new challenges that haven’t been seen before.
“The stress and anxiety is at an all time high and again that applies to families and students and our staff…I think that a lot of that anxiety just comes from not being able to work in the way that we’re all accustomed to,” Green Bay school board president Eric Vanden Heuvel said.
Richard Schadewald, a former teacher, substitute and staff representative of the Green Bay Substitute Teacher’s Association has noticed it too.
“They’re facing stresses that in my 35 year career which ended in 2015, I never faced any of that,” Schadewald said.
Schadewald says the ripple effects of COVID exposures are weighing on teachers.
“I had to substitute last week for a teacher whose husband was exposed, and she was exposed, then her three kids were exposed. And so everybody goes into quarantine. You have these days that they need them. That’s stressful on the teacher,” Schadewald said.
Vanden Heuvel hopes to start conversations on mitigating stress and anxiety at Monday’s meeting.
“We felt like it would be a good time to have a conversation in public to sort of acknowledge the stress that people are having and then at the same time see if the board is interested in taking any steps to help alleviate that,” Vanden Heuvel said.
Vanden Heuvel says he hopes to hear different ideas from people about ways to manage stress in schools.
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