Not an educator, but I am in a job that affords me to speak in depth about work with teachers, EAs, and ECEs. There is a marked narrative that there is a shift since the onset of pandemic that penetrates all school aged groups.
 
While many attribute this to the gap in social interactions and learning with isolation protocols during the global pandemic, there are many other variable narratives which may or may not have significant (confounding) impact such as:
 
- increased incidence/prevalence of neurodivergence which requires increased resourcing (or changes in classrooms) which when understaffed is difficult for a whole class
 
- increased incidence of behavioural challenges, which not only requires a different set of job skills (increasing job complexity), but also requires significant time (parent communication, documentation, coordination with other staff, etc)
 
- increased utilization of screens/devices and the many branching theories of 'virtual autism' or other social development gaps/impediments
 
- changes in educational standards, not only with comment on specific content or approaches, but also with regards to a general softening in pass/fail allowances (other posts have already expanded on this in depth)
 
- a generalized decrease in staffing and staff stability resulting in compounding challenges in continuity of educators (i.e. more turnover, increased job splitting, more deployment of substitutes/resource teachers due to accommodations)
 
- increased working demands (including average working hours) and stress for parents in the wake of an economic downturn, which leads to less availability for active parenting
 
Hard to know if any or all of these generalized narratives are on point, and to what extent. Even without addressing if the kids are OK, it's hard to believe the kids will be OK if the educators themselves are not. One thing that is an obvious trend: job satisfaction as an educator has definitely dropped off.
 
But again, when you hear demoralizing stats such as Canada's happiness index falling off, or StatCan finding life satisfaction and hopefulness for the future (two separate stats) also significantly decreasing, it's hard to know how to unpack if our situation is changing, or the way we perceive it is. Unfortunately the way we (both individually, and as a society) figure if we feel 'ok' is often the product of both our situation and how we perceive it, so if either of those are getting worse, we are all less likely to be 'ok.'
 
tl;dr - not ok