Tag Archives: teacher retention

Lumen Touch Supports Teacher Work-Life Balance

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Demands on teachers over the past few years have grown to insurmountable levels, causing many to reconsider their career choices. According to NPR, there are 300,000 open positions for teachers in the U.S. This means that those who have decided to remain in their jobs will have larger class sizes and more responsibilities to shoulder.

Lumen Touch Is Designed to Lighten their Burden

Lumen Touch’s all-in-one school system is designed to lighten teachers’ workload and make it easier for them to do what they went to school for: teach. By automating assessments and assignments, teachers can spend more time delivering instruction and spending one-on-one time with students who need extra help.

Love Your Job Again

Lumen Touch’s all-in-one student information system, Bright SUITE™, has a measurable impact in terms of reducing the amount of time teachers work outside the classroom. The all-in-one school system creates efficiencies that help teachers with routine tasks and allow them to focus on teaching. Teachers don’t want to leave the field, but they often feel compelled to do so when there are few, if any, tools and technology in place that help make their jobs more efficient.

Better Reporting and Visibility

The best part about an all-in-one school information system is the transparency. Teachers can readily see student history, sync grades, and create reports that meet compliance for IEPs and 504s; with a visual on where students are struggling, teachers can tailor their education plans and help improve their students’ chances of being successful. With access to special education modules, a full library, and modules for individual user data dashboards, Bright SUITE allows teachers to save time, improve student success rates, and benefit from access to real-time data, to make the best decision for every student. 

Improved Collaboration

With Bright SUITE, teachers can share resources, lesson plans, and ideas – not only throughout their own school but with other schools as well.  The system also provides a centralized location for teachers to organize and store course materials, such as lecture notes, assignments, and multimedia resources, making it easier for students to access and review course content from any location and reducing the workload for teachers in subsequent years.

Lumen Touch was established in 2000 and has been diligently listening to educators and school leaders, in order to build a meaningful and effective all-in-one solution that is unparalleled in the education arena. We focus on improving the learning opportunities for children with measurable outcomes. Request more information by emailing us at sales@lumentouch.com or keep reading here to learn more.

Teacher Retention: Keeping Valued Educators in the Profession

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There is a teacher retention crisis. This situation is not one that is new, and it is not entirely due to the pandemic. In fact, in the two years before the pandemic, 55% of teachers were leaving after only two years in the profession because of stress and low pay. And at present, 92% of teachers surveyed by EdWeek say the stress has only become worse since the pandemic.

Why Teachers Are Leaving

The top reason that teachers are leaving the profession is stress. And teachers are more than twice as likely to leave as a result of stress than they are for low pay or any other reason. Other struggles at the top of the list include poor school management, lack of respect, lack of voice in the direction of education, and overwhelming duties. The stories of what teachers are enduring are heartbreaking and frustrating. TALIS 2018, a major international survey of more than 260,000 teachers and 15,000 school leaders, found that only about one-third of them feel appreciated.

What Teachers Need Now

Teachers are spending an average of 70-80 hours a week working – and less than half of that time is spent with the students. The biggest change that must happen to improve retention is to remove the burden of such an unbalanced workload. Reducing the workload and number of hours required to do their job is the first step. Increasing pay is the next. But teachers – the actual education experts to whom we entrust our children – should also have input on safety policies, and most certainly should have a voice in the direction of the curriculum and how resources are allocated.

TALIS 2018 identified many other ways to support teachers, including these policy goals:

  • provide novice teachers and newly appointed school leaders with tailor-made support
  • make the most of teachers’ time to support quality teaching and the use of effective teaching practices
  • foster a school and classroom climate conducive to student learning and well-being
  • develop a collaborative culture within schools
  • foster mentoring and peer feedback as key attributes of professional work
  • make the most of school leaders’ time to foster instructional leadership
  • improve working conditions

How EdTech Can Improve Teacher Retention

EdTech can play a significant role in improving teacher retention. Not only can automated grading and testing reduce the workload with which teachers are burdened, but it can also make it easier for teachers to engage with students and spend one-on-one time with those in need. As well, teachers can enjoy the ability to personalize education to meet the students’ individual needs.

Lumen™ Touch Empowers Teachers

Bright LEARNING™ is a powerful resource that puts teachers back in control of achieving standards, by aligning student achievement and standards-based grading. This resource provides teachers with a “command center” from which they can map standards to curriculum, assess students, and evaluate progress easily and simply. With an integrated gradebook and lesson planner, teachers save time, aggravation, and stress while better meeting mandates – and having more class time to truly engage with students on a more personal level.

At Lumen Touch, we know that there are no simple answers to solving the big challenges that face educators. But there are systems you can implement that can make a difference. Bright LEARNING is one such system. To learn more, get in touch.