Long-serving workers

How long is too long to do a single task?

Our navigator once taught Physics at the Naval Academy.  It was mostly the required Physics course, kinematics and mechanics for the first semester, electricity and magnetism second semester.  Students who failed the first semester had to retake it second semester, which of course put them behind schedule, and had to take an intensive version (crammed into eight weeks, eight hours a day) of E&M in the first half of the summer.  Students who passed the first semester, but failed the second semester, retook that course in the second half of the summer.  One can argue that a fast-paced, intensive course is exactly what a struggling student does not need in this situation; but there were other constraints.  One effect was that by August our navigator had gone through the E&M syllabus three times in succession, the latter two at high speed and elevated pressure.  By then he was ready to do anything else, as long as it was not intro E&M.

Most Physics teachers do not have this sort of summer pressure.  But his stint of classroom teaching only lasted four years, as it turned out, and afterward he was glad of the opportunity to do some research and reflect on what he might do when he returned to teaching.  Permanent teachers, however, have to go back immediately, and for decades (with the occasional sabbatical) cover the same material in pretty much the same way, with (a cynic might say) the same equivocal results.  Our consultants have had much more varied careers, and find it hard to understand such a situation.  How can you maintain your own morale in the face of the same mistakes and incomprehension, again and again?

Our tutor is now mulling over something similar.  It’s not so much the repetition of the same material, as a doubt whether he’s doing any good.  He has a regular student who hates math, does as little as possible, and forgets a lesson after a week or two, so they have to go over it again from the beginning.  There is also a student at a much higher level, doing Physics; but often this one is incapable of starting or working through a moderately complex problem, so the tutor spends twenty minutes setting things up, working through the details, and interpreting the answer.  For a couple or a few examples this wouldn’t be a problem, but done over and over again our tutor wonders just what’s the point.

On the other hand, there are certainly teachers who are comfortable with their subjects and their mode of presentation and no doubt would be dismayed at being dropped into a new situation.  It can be especially hard having to relearn everything; as, for instance, our navigator went from teaching Physics to sailing as Second Mate on a merchant ship.

It is true, of course, that every student is different.  Our tutor has a chance to interact with his students more closely than classroom teachers do, and that adds extra variety and interest to his work.  But the question remains: how do you deal with the threat of burnout in permanent jobs?