The 2023 academic year began with some 300,000 teaching and staff positions vacant across U.S. schools and classrooms. With the next school year now on the horizon, so many educators are suffering burnout as a result of myriad crises affecting our profession. They include, but are not limited to: gun violence on campuses, prohibition and censorship of educational materials, inadequate labor conditions and the energy required for sustained collective action, and on and on. It is not the greatest time to be a teacher in the United States.
And yet millions of us are planning to return to the classroom in the fall (with the real masochists like myself also working summer school). As a third-year teacher who began her career teaching through distance learning during a pandemic, I’m often astonished that I am still here. More so when I consider that it is new teachers and teachers working in “high-poverty, high-minority, urban” districts like mine (as well as those in rural public schools) that are most likely to leave. But I also know that I am not the exception. At a time like this, when the work is so hard and the demands only continue to grow, it is not only understandable, but completely reasonable that so many teachers are leaving. The real question, I wonder, is why are so many of us staying?
The first answer, predictable as it may be, is, of course, our students. Over the past few years, hundreds of thousands of children have watched their family members fall ill and pass away from COVID, experience job loss and housing insecurity, and suffer under the weight of a rise in domestic violence and substance abuse. They have watched their peers wrestle with anxiety, depression and acute mental health crises, all while the adults around them panic around the clock about how much academic learning they have lost. Through all of these challenges, I have gotten to watch, first-hand, the resilience of children in a way that makes me hopeful for society even on the worst days.
As a kindergarten teacher, I have had the privilege of seeing the glow in a students’ eyes as they sound out the amalgamation of symbols in front of them and realize that they have just read a word. I have watched in real time as students take deep breaths in the middle of conflict, to calm themselves down and prepare to use their words to vocalize their feelings when feeling stressed. I have gotten hugs and cards from babies who have no idea about all the threats coming against their education, but who are just ecstatically overjoyed to be at school with their friends, learning something new that they didn’t know before, like how syrup comes from trees or how hearts aren’t actually shaped like they are in cartoons. We’re staying not just because our kids need us, but because we need our kids, and we’re going to stay with them as much as we can.
But ask any teacher you know and they’ll tell you students are only one part of the school equation. Since the start of the pandemic, teachers and families have found themselves inhabiting a new dynamic between the two. We needed families to be our co-teachers, supporting their children with getting on to the online platforms where learning was taking place; monitoring and holding their children accountable to complete assignments and assessments; and building and growing essential social-emotional skills such as resilience, motivation, and grit, all of which were central to making sure that students were able to learn through a two-dimensional computer screen.
The experience transformed the relationship between teachers and families with profound effects that we are only truly beginning to scratch the surface of today. Families used the insight they gleaned to rethink their engagement with schools, from school board participation to more collaboration and involvement with their teachers. For some teachers who leave, their decision can be attributed to the negative side effects of “helicopter” parents badgering their professional choices or parent “activists” dictating what all students should be taught based on their personal beliefs. For the teachers who stay, however, a strong sense of partnership and mutual feelings of respect is what allows us to keep working. I have had hour-long conversations with families where we come up with a plan of action for how to get their child to read at grade level. I have had families donate cheese and juice for our art gallery and cater hot links and ribs for our post-field trip lunch. I have had families ask me repeatedly about my multiple attempts to pass my driving test and celebrate me when I finally did. And that’s what helps teachers stay. School communities where teachers and families refuse to succumb to the forces that antagonize us and pit us against each other for political gain — where we instead come together to find mutual ground for students and show up for each other because we all need it.
Lastly, for many of us, we remain in the field because it remains professionally rewarding and engaging. Valorizing teachers for their altruism helps conceal a selfish reason many of us became educators, which is that we like the brain work of teaching, if anything for us and us alone. I love the time I spend planning a lesson before I am set to introduce it to my students, trying to figure out how to define certain terms and ways that I can connect it to previous concepts. I like brainstorming how to make class time fun through play, art and my students’ other interests. It took me weeks to figure out how to define the word “Black” during Black History Month, even as a Black teacher with almost a class made up of almost all Black students. We learned about Black historical figures and connected their stories to larger themes, like Harriet Tubman within the context of the Civil War and Bessie Coleman within the context of Jim Crow segregation. We finished the month with an art exhibit where we presented works in the style of Kehinde Wiley, Alma Woodsey Thomas, and Faith Ringgold.
I am lucky that I have been able to cultivate a sense of joy within my profession, because this is not always the case. We are losing teachers with scripted curriculums, computerized teaching programs, and narrow academic priorities that start and stop with math and reading standardized test scores. I get to stay and others will stay too for the love of the job, but only for as long as we’re able to do it with the trust of those who believe in our skill and autonomy. I’m going to stay and teach because I love to teach.
There are about one hundred reasons to leave teaching, and one hundred more reasons to stay. Narratives providing insight into the challenges plaguing education are salient, but they should not exist in isolation. They should be told alongside narratives of joy and hope because that is what our schools are too. Many will leave, many will stay, many will join us too. Don’t give up on schools just yet.
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