When working in my large, urban school district, we went through maybe 5 teachers per year. We were a good school, with caring adults, nice students and parents, and supportive administration. Some retired, some quit, some didn't make it, and some left for other opportunities. This is a national crisis now, with a looming teacher shortage and no one stepping in to take their place.
To be fully upfront: I taught from 2005-2019 in an urban magnet school, then tried a few years at two separate suburban schools. I now work at Upward Bound as a mentor, and online as a tutor for students who require at home services. I am still education adjacent, but I am no longer in a classroom teaching mathematics.
What drew me to education in the first place was helping students. I loved it when I started in the magnet, because I felt like the students, other staff and the administrators truly appreciated what I was doing for the students. Because of that, I was willing to work. I probably put too much into it - teaching a full load of courses with 3 or 4 preps, coaching 2 or 3 seasons, and saying yes every time I was asked to chaperone a dance or activity on the weekends. I was definitely prioritizing my work life over my social life or family life, and it eventually burned me out.
Here is what burned me out:
a) Students over my 17 year career became less and less motivated, and seemed to need more positive feedback and immediacy of reward in order to continue to work.
b) Parents raised expectations about communication, individualized feedback about their child, and shifted blame from their students' lack of work ethic or apathy about their grades to me, the teacher, for not making their student interested enough or good enough at my subject.
c) Principals and administrators forced me to reduce my high standards for student achievement. In the worst case scenario, I was told that I had to pass students during the pandemic who did not show up to meets, come to school, do a single assignment or even reply to any emails or calls. I literally did not know whether or not they were alive, and I was expected to pass them.
d) Maybe 3 of my 17 years in the classroom, I had enough supplies to do my job well. My technology needs were never met, and there was no upgrade plan. A few years I used donorschoose.org and because I have generous friends and family, I got a new printer and a few calculators, one year a laptop. But I should NOT have to ask friends and family for supplies.
e) Trust. I was hired to teach mathematics, but instead of being allowed to do so in the way I thought best, I was forced to use district curriculum and do things in a certain, prescribed way that I knew was not as effective as what worked for my students.
There are many other reasons why I do what I do now - I am able to work one on one with students to help them achieve mastery of whatever topic they'd like to work on, I can give them career and college advice, and I'm not standing at the front of a room trying to entertain students with a lesson about math (which they hate) and convince them my subject is important.
But it can't just be me. There has to be some real change in educational policy and the system has to adapt to meet the needs of our new learners, as well as to think about the needs of teachers, in order to survive.
