All the "solutions" proposed in this involve more unpaid work from faculty to manage our own feelings about being overstretched. I don't want a training, a coffee group, or a paid external speaker about about compassion fatigue. I want higher pay, admin support, & actual vacation time.
“educators can’t be expected to be compassionate to students if they are not being treated compassionately themselves.”
University managers must be committed to cultivating a compassionate culture and building trust in the workplace, says Andrew Woon
Oh, amen. Paying a keynote speaker the equivalent of a student worker’s annual salary to come talk to us for two hours about doing more with less is in no way helpful. Cancel convocation forever and give faculty a 10% raise (since top admin just got a 50% raise).
The associate vice deanlet who arranges the training, coffee and paid speaker gets to write about their material contributions to campus climate in their year-end productivity report. It gets them their raise and promotion.
Self-exploitation as vocation
Nurses are being offered exactly the same things. Raises, no; painted affirmation rocks, yes.
Sounds like you want a union?
Note: Compassion fatigue is being overwhelmed by secondary traumatization. What you’re describing here is burnout, which is caused by lack of what’s needed to do your job. This can be time (e.g. hours in the week), admin support as mentioned in the replies, etc. Framing it as C.F is gaslighting.
I fucking love teaching and I fucking hate everything that surrounds it. I’m never fatigued by the kids. I’m only ever stressed and exhausted by administrators demanding more and more of my time and energy for the same pay while they do fuck all to make the school better and make more money than me
classic that the study w/those it's-on-you-staff recs is coming out of QMUL frankly
Amen, so say we all
It's exhausting how many problems we face as a society that would be solved simply by paying people more.