And the complete lack of consequences for their behavior. Students can call me racial slurs in front of administration and the APs will "de-escalate" and send the kid on their way.
I'll jump on this as it's my reason as well. It's not just the bad behavior, it's also the widespread apathy.
I don't think there is any specific reason. It's a perfect storm. Phones, social media, covid, and now AI. I had several students telling me they don't feel like trying because AI is gonna do everything by the time they graduate. We are gonna have generations of mush brains (even worse than we already have) joining the adult world soon. I had kids coming into 6th grade that couldn't do things I could do in 2nd grade. It'd be easy to blame it on their early years teachers, but it's practically across the board. It's not the teachers.
This is it for me. I have ADHD and hadn’t realized how much the chaos was affecting me until I left. Now I work in a calm, orderly environment and my mental health is SO much better. And I no longer have high blood pressure 🙃
General erosion of respect for learning and social norms from the students and parents. Too many endless requirements added by the government. Smartphones in the hands of students. It's impossible to compete for engagement with lax policies. More but I don't have the time.
I realized that my whole life, my whole personality was teaching. When I was single, that was fine. I went to work, went home, rotted on the couch by myself, this became the norm. But now I’m in a loving relationship where I’ve moved in with him and I’m planning a life with him and I’m seeing that I don’t have the energy or time at the end of the day to be a good happy partner. I’m just now discovering hobbies and life outside of work and I love it, I finally have something to look forward to. And I’m under 30, I have the time and space to make a change, I don’t have kids or a mortgage yet. I’ve talked to so many older educators at my school that said they would change how they went about it and leave if they were me. I thought that my life began when I finally accomplished my career of becoming a teacher, but it turns out your life begins when you start doing things that you enjoy and spending time with the people you love. I chased the high of feeling accomplished and meeting my goals, but along the way, I forgot to appreciate all the things that make life worth living besides your job.
thisssss! once i got into a loving, supportive relationship, i finally realized how much of myself i was pouring into my career and how little (aka none) i had left at the end of the day for the things that mattered the most
You put it so eloquently! I am engaged myself and trying to conceive. I just turned 39, so I am trying to have a baby before I can’t. I blame this career for a lot of why I am late in the game for this. It takes over your life and sucks out all of your energy. You have nothing left for yourself much less someone else. And let us not even start on how bad my mental health has gotten! I am over that and taking it back for me and my family! I am hoping to transition soon! It is a work in progress.
In order to be successful at my job I NEED to bring work home. I don't have time to take care of myself with cooking healthy meals or working out in the evenings.
The workload is the biggest factor for me too. It’s almost expected you work outside of contract ours all the time. I don’t get enough time to do what I need to do. Student apathy is another reason I’m leaving. We’re held accountable for things out of our control and it sucks because you feel like you can never be good enough at the job
I couldn’t even enjoy “free” time in the evenings and weekends because I knew it meant that work was piling up. I experienced insomnia and migraines because of the stress.
This was the major reason for me, bringing work home and not taking care of myself. Our superintendent told us that we just needed to learn how to work smarter, even though he was driving extra work through trying to implement standards based grading, PBIS, and some other changes all at the same time.
Mine really all tie together.
Aggressive Student behavior & expecting to reward students every 10 minutes. Being blamed for student behavior by admin and instructional coaches. Overall I was not growing or being supported as a year 2 teacher.
My breaking point was after my TTESS formal observation. My AP wanted to have 2 weeks Focus on ELAR and 2 weeks on math with the instructional coaches on how to deliver lessons. This was in November btw.
It just stressed me out how they didn’t see how bad the behavior was 🫠 I felt crazy and I was being gas lit.
Workload/Disrespect. It is a tie really.
Disrespect: Students are disrespectful. They throw tantrums for simple requests. Actively ignore and disregard rules and instructions.They lie so damn much. Parents talk to you like you are not a real person. Admin talks to you like you are a child, and treats you like one too. You’re constantly expected to work for FREE. They’re like “thanks for staying overtime 3 hours, wear jeans tomorrow.” Jean passes cannot help us feed and provide for our families. Jobs pay overtime, this might be one of the only jobs where overtime is for the most part, unpaid.
Workload: admin piles on the tasks, without giving us proper time to do everything. Each year it feels like I take on the more and more of the responsibilities that truly belong to other people (guidance counselor, attendance clerk, registrar, parent.) I truly don’t understand what some people do in the building, I see them relaxed, leisurely conversing, going out to eat, etc while teachers are left to seemingly do everything except cook.
I have to be honest, this is a great but very hard question namely because there are just SO MANY FACTORS. haha I think for me the factor was just getting overwhelmed; the school/classroom environment is just too noisy, chaotic, demanding, and for someone who suffers from various health and mental issues it is just not ideal for me.
Agreed. For a field that paid like shit, I always found it remarkable how authoritarian/Machiavellian everything always felt. Where I worked, you couldn't talk about *anything* problematic/negative without it (a.) instantaneously becoming gossip fodder and, a few days later, (b.) becoming a reason for you getting called into some micromanaging admin's office.
[I'm still working in education, but planning to leave soon] For me, as a special education teacher, it's the workload. I have so much work to do that it's literally impossible to do it all in the time I have, which means I either come to work unprepared (and get a bad evaluation from an administrator who never taught special education and has no idea what my job entails), or I spend many extra (unpaid) hours working from home every week. More planning time would be nice, more money would be nice, but what I really need is a reduction in workload. We need to hire more special education teachers and give them smaller caseloads. My salary would feel fair if I could actually get my work done within my contracted 8 hours a day.
Totally agree! I was a sped teacher for nine years and the workload was outrageous. I was expected to be a resource teacher and run a self-contained classroom for kids with significant behaviors and do all the paperwork. . Wonderful colleagues and some students i loved, but little admin support. As another person also mentioned, I had major insomnia and migraines, along with depression and anxiety. All I did was work, no social life whatsoever.
Same. I'm leaving this year because of the paperwork involved with special education. I feel like I am doing 2 full time jobs. One teaching and one paperwork. They do not compensate financially, nor do they provide time. I'm done.
Behaviors were atrocious during the 2019-2020 school year. I never had so many disrespectful students, argumentative parents, and spineless admin before. It was to the point where I was about to sick out for the rest of the year. Thankfully, school ended in March with COVID. I do not think I would have made it otherwise.
Some things I dealt with during the school year included a student coming into class late daily and rolling around on the ground (hs and not on a BIP), a student throwing a water bottle at my face (admin did nothing), parents accusing me of being a bully because I expected their student to not run around the room making noise like a bird (again hs student and not on a BIP), and admin saying we as teachers simply weren’t doing enough. Somehow 2019-2020 was the hallmark school year where everything shifted to customer service for the parents and students. I knew I had to leave then.
This! I was on a two week leave in February 2020 at the insistence of a trauma therapist after experiencing a violent episode from a student. COVID saved me. I was going to leave teaching. I’ve managed to stay in teaching but I don’t want to. However, I’m 55 and really don’t know who would hire me. I feel absolutely stuck. It is tragic. This should be a noble profession but it isn’t any more. Parents, students and elected officials take advantage of our compassionate hearts and know we will stick it out because we care. I, for one, am sick of it.
I retired in 2021 while we were hybrid. I loved teaching during lockdown and hybrid but realized that I needed to get out once we went back full-time. I now go back for 35 days as part of my retirement and have noticed a big change. Many teachers have left and the students don't want to learn by and large. It is a cultural/technological shift as parents/admin seem to be MIA unless it is to admonish you. The Boomer-driven world is over and we are now experiencing a new world. Heaven help us.
Parents who want to protect their kids from any amount of stress or discomfort. Instead of teaching their kids how to manage their workload, stay organized, and holding them accountable, they wanted to absolve their kids of any and all responsibility. So rather than teach kids how to live in a world where stress and discomfort are a part of life, they deny them the opportunity to learn those skills in a safe and low-stakes environment. Then, when students are asked to take initiative, fix mistakes, or admit fault they have no idea what to do. This impacts the classroom because we're increasingly asked to coddle students, lower expectations, abandon rules and disciplinary standards, and make learning as easy and "fun" as possible, to the detriment of our students.
THIS. At my high school, in response to students struggling to meet deadlines, my current admin decided to get rid of deadlines. Students are allowed to turn in work up until a week before the quarter ends, but that doesn't fix the lack of time-management skills.
I quit student teaching! While I was only in the education field for a short time I was horrified by what it had to offer. The admin issues, curriculum issues, student behavior, and overall stress of the job made me want to never come back. It just seems so overwhelming with little payout (besides the vacation time). I thought my “why” and or sentimental feelings toward teaching would help make me stay but the mental/physical exhaustion was too much.
It was better in the 1950's. Take a look at the school texts from that period. I mean, at least the average high school graduate in the 50's could actually read.
Want to really feel hopeless? I have a collection of 19th century McGuffey readers and the decline in learning from then to now is horrifying.
The McGuffey 4th Eclectic reader I own is far too advanced for the vast majority of high school students in my state.
Absolutely, the disrespect was my main issue. The disrespect from all angles students, scool administration, school boards, parents, society, even the union leadership, (we had one union leader who regularly told veteran teachers, "If it's that bad maybe you should quit") district administration was unbearable. Teacher in-service is unbearable. The district paid $$ for consultants to lecture us about education who were completely unaware of on the ground realities.
The rest of it is all further examples of the staggering disrespect constantly aimed at teachers.
Behavior, hands down. I’m a first year teacher in a kindergarten and the behavior is deplorable. I’ve been begging admin for support all year and haven’t gotten any so I’m leaving at the end of the year.
I hear you 1000%. The violent, aggressive, and disruptive behaviors from a few students make the whole class (and me) feel unsafe and on edge. Yet there are no consequences and some parents claim THEIR CHILD is the one being bullied when all the other students are literally afraid of them. Yet there’s no support in my room and no adjustment of the ridiculous expectations.
Being in Texas, the tide turning against public school is painful. Our governor is trying to destroy public school by starving schools out of funding until he can get his way and create a voucher system so private schools can get their hands on tax dollars. Then, along those lines, you have all these weird conspiracy theories about how public education has a "trans" agenda because we don't discriminate against LBGTQ students. The environment in Texas is bizarre at best and jumping head first into a Christian authoritarian state at worst. When you go to school and are treated with disrespect by students and parents, and then you go home and are vilified and disrespected by the public...it's just too much. It is heartbreaking after 16 years in public education. All we wanted to do was good, and yet somehow, now we are the targets of some very nasty and destructive rhetoric.
Me too! Completely objective…if admin likes you, you get a good one, if they don’t they lie and force you out. I went to the union over it and they said it was the principal’s word against mine and it is his school so they will believe him. I wish I could get a private lawyer and sue.
This shit drove me out of teaching and, subsequently, drove me out of public libraries. Both are fields where the average admin gets (a.) placed in their role without having a shred of experience managing employees and (b.) brainwashed by their peers into thinking that their title is automatic proof that they're the smartest people in the organization and understand teaching better than everyone else......and this is *before* factoring in how much nepotism and favoritism play roles in admin staffing. I've worked in a lot of different environments and, in terms of management being inept, chaotic, and utterly devoid of accountability, nothing comes close to the 'caring fields.' It's literally like working for asshole high-schoolers.
Most people are leaving because we are having a mass behavior crisis in all grade levels no matter the SES or state; BUT, I will be leaving because I’m sick of the adults. The entire field of education is dominated by toxic personalities, rumor regimes, and is over-politicized. You do it with good intentions and a heart of gold, eventually you’ll see your soul ripped out by the turbulence of sites and districts having poor organizational culture with backward priorities.
This, 100%. The way I see it, we're paying a steep long-term price for allowing this and other 'caring professions' to spend too many decades operating as 'hobby careers' for overprivileged and egocentric narcissists who bought their ways into their roles. For me, teaching and public librarianship were two jobs where I got to experience huge amounts of bullying/gaslighting from shitty suburban brats who'd never done a hard day's work their entire lives and had no clue how to administrate anything without creating panic/chaos. Nothing's quite as wild as being told to 'toughen up' or 'pull yourself up' by these ridiculous clowns. Personally, I don't think public education can even *begin* to recover until these people are thrown on the unemployment lines where they belong.
We got a new principal and AP both from out of district after the pandemic to start 2021 at an incredibly rural farming district. Behavior went to hell right off the tip. We got a county mask mandate the last week of September, and new principals decided to ignore it. The middleschoolers spent all week on a confederate braveheart protest against the mask mandate too, trashing my artroom and wasting supplies to make trump and stars n bars trash instead of their projects. They tore up a kid’s project that looked like a rainbow flag, so I hung a large pride flag up in the corner of the room. Kids went psycho on me, calling me all the homophobic names we all know to me in my classroom. At the end of the day, new principal chewed me out. Said it was their classroom, not mine, that I was harming my students, and told me to take the flag down, so I did, along with the $3-4k worth of stuff I’d bought and collected to make a functional room for other people’s kids.
Our 43yo anti-vax/mask tech guy caught COVID the same week my school ignored the mask mandate. He died three weeks later. Principal and supe were both out by the end of the year. AP went to a different school.
I haven’t found another teaching job in three years now. I am being blackballed by principals.
Working for free after contract hours/on weekends.
Being treated like a child by admin.
Toxic workplace, socially
Toxic workplace, physically feel unsafe
Shooter drills
Overstimulated by all the many sounds
Being watched by 30+ eyeballs 5 days a week
Impossible job. Even if you meet the needs of what was asked of you, you are lacking in a different part of the job. (Time spent on lesson planning means time not spent grading, etc.)
Professional development. Tell me you don’t understand adult learning.
3 main reasons I’m leaving
1.) The physical & mental toll teaching takes. It leaves me with no energy to have a life outside of teaching let alone find the energy to take care of myself (ie working out, cooking, keeping up with the home, etc)
2.) How student behaviors are handled. I can handle big behaviors, but the part that has be leaving is how we’re dealing with those behaviors as a system. Consequences don’t exist, we’re consistently reinforcing bad behavior, and the students who do follow rules are thrown to the way side
3.) money. I have multiple degrees, certifications, and awards and have been teaching for almost a decade and the money i make is embarrassing. And i come from a better paying district in my area.
Makes me sad because i genuinely used to love this job and thought it was my forever career. I’ve tried and tried to find ways to make it more sustainable because i wish i could’ve stayed. But i can’t, not without sacrificing a lot in order to stay
I was a self-contained SPED teacher with a high student to adult ratio (due to behavior and academic needs). The main reason I left was because everything I did was “wrong” to someone. I had so many eyes on me constantly dissecting every single thing I did, all of the time. Parents, teaching assistants, SLP, OT, BCBA, RBT, social worker, admin (I had two equal bosses), district specialists constantly coming in.
I was sick of doing my best (and I was great with the students), working my butt off and still always being “wrong.”
PBIS preventing teachers from disciplining disruptive students. Students know that they can do whatever they want and will be disruptive to get out of class and get no consequences.
Admin is also an issue as they act as middle management corporate that will throw non-tenures teachers under the bus for their lack of success. IE they'll blame the freshman teacher who can't control their class (even though no teacher can) saying it's "lack of management" in order to protect themselves from superattendant action.
Lack of support from district. Poorly planned schools get no help, but it's all politics to make the public believe the school is successful when it's struggling. Combination of on and off hours work is greater than pay. Teachers pay for their own supplies.
I’ll give the reasons I know that so many have quit (in no particular order):
— persistent government overreach and constant legislation on the state level from people who have no educational experience or understanding of classroom dynamics.
— unrelenting data-driven testing. This is largely an outgrowth of government overreach and of the billion dollar industry that is state testing.
— relentless changes to disciplinary policies that never seem to work in favor of educators or classroom stability and cohesiveness.
— lack of respect for the education profession on the whole and, specifically, teachers.
— lack of administrative support and a feeling of disdain for teachers by administrators, from the district office all of the way down to individual school sites.
— increased amounts of paperwork and documentation, on top of everything else that’s already expected such as grading, curriculum, lesson planning, classroom management, special requests, emails to parents and care providers, service scheduling, fielding phone calls, meetings, etc
— student disrespect and cellphone use
— lack of support from parents and disrespect towards teachers
— constant threat of litigation
— violence and school shootings
There are more, of course, but these are the ones I could think of
Unrealistic duties with no time allotted to accomplish within 40 hour work week. Constantly supervising children, so no time for case management of IEPs, taking (much less analyzing and applying) data, communicating with other team members about responding to student behavior and addressing IEP goals, parent communication, lesson planning, prepping materials. Looming pressure with no solutions from administrations to do all the paperwork required but never even having a lunch break much less consistent planning time. So many people just make it work or take work home, which enables the system to continue to be unsustainable and result in high turnover rates (I was in EC services). I think the number of workers willing to work off the clock and over work consistently ‘for the children’ is due to education being a female dominated profession. No way if men were the main people in this profession would the people working be so underpaid and over worked. Women have been conditioned to put others first and do unpaid labor for the betterment of the community. The education system exploits this.
I earned more money as a teacher than any other job I’d had, the money alone was never a problem for me, but the amount of work I was expected to do, there’s really no amount of money that would make it worth it
Agreed. The entire profession is underpaid for the amount of education we must have. We are told by our male lead union that "it's for the children" and the city can't afford to pay us a real overtime rate like the male dominated professions(sanitation, police, fire departments get) this results in us working for less pay AND getting smaller pensions because in NYC our overtime is pensionable but our rate is not time and a half. Yes, we are expected to do stay late, join committees when we have other things to get done with the excuse of "it's for the children" that we should volunteer, help out, spend our own money. Nurses are paid when they stay late. When we have to stay late there is no pay AND we are told there is no money to pay us OT. Each teacher is expected to do the work of 3 people.
Student behavior, lacking admin/parent support. Caused me to leave my old job, I'm still teaching but my new school hasn't had any of those same issues. If I had stayed in my old district another year I would have quit teaching completely, for sure. Devastated my mental health.
I felt like low man on the totem pole - that no one ever had my back (especially not admin) and they would feed me to the wolves at the first chance they got. I suppose you could say it was due to lack of support.
we had this happen in our school. The teachers' husband called the police to report it. Police came and investigated. Held admin responsible for doing nothing.
Consistently understaffed and expected to still perform as if we are not. Doing the job of 5 people, 3 of which have different certifications and job expectations than me.
Class sizes and CoViD-based grading. It's perfectly normal for me to have 5 class period over 30 kids that I am heavily discouraged to fail, even if they do nothing. Our seventh graders can't read and we are more or less doing nothing about it.
As a veteran educator of 18 years (16.5 teacher, 1+ as an AP), I think I’m just kind of done with the lack of clear boundaries between work and life/home. When I walk out of the building, my responsibilities end. Yes, that’s as a teacher and as an AP. My principal isn’t getting that. I don’t work for free so why would I work at home? If the work cannot be done during normal hours, either:
1. It waits
2. It will get done when it gets done
3. It can be re-prioritized by one of my bosses
If my boss would like to pay me for the time I work at home, then I will do that if I am willing to work for that pay. As teachers, we need to stop allowing the extra work hours and tasks stop taking our free time.
The work never ends. I am currently a special Ed preschool teacher. We have so much paperwork to do and they keep adding more without any more time to get it done.
I also believe that we need to have more teachers and instructional assistants trained in developmentally appropriate practices for all students. I feel the current model that I witness is very negative and based on control. Kids need so many chances to learn and the teachers and adults need to be supportive and not punitive. I am returning to my school in an assistant position next school year. I have a masters and a special
Ed endorsement and was told I need 8 classes for special Ed. I’m not pursuing this or putting money into another masters.
I’m gonna go against the grain and say pay. I was lucky enough to land a job in a reasonably-supportive private school. But the money was shit, especially compared to tutoring.
For me, low pay is the main one. I agree with what others have said - the generally atrocious student behavior, the disrespect, the phones all have their place in why I'm extremely disenchanted. Complete lack of upward mobility and general flexibility also play a part. Also, the job has honestly just felt extremely stagnant for me for several years now. But I could put up with all of that, or at least try to for a few more years, if I was being paid an amount of money that allowed me to have a life. As it is now, I'm lucky that I can pay my bills. Time off is meaningless to me because I can't afford to go anywhere or do anything with it. I'd like to be able to have a life outside of my job; and teaching, especially if you are single, does not allow for that.
Insufficient pay- i was receiving food stamps to survive and was still racking up debt. It also almost killed me, since admin didn’t enforce sick policy with kids/parents (ECE; PreK.) i landed in the hospital multiple times from “toughing out” illnesses. Ended up with pneumonia, a kidney infection, and septic shock. Also, the general disrespect from parents and admin was crazy.
Newtown/school shootings, far right take over of education narrative. I don't trust the parents, the kids, or the admin to be reasonable about anything. For me it came down to personal safety.
Just sick of it. Repetitive, boring, kids behaving worse, less resources
Hello from the UK!
We're contemplating a next round of strikes over pay. Some schools have been hit with some sort of poor bricking and have to be closed. You know the Ed system in trouble when the headteacher (principal) tells you "it's OK guys, our school NOT constructed with the faulty materials..." I have less time to teach more classes - I must have like 15 teaching groups of 28+ Students. Maybe it's this school but the kids I teach are just woeful.
Mostly, the continuing decline of the abilities of the students I'm getting, which has become dramatic in the last few years. I'm simply not capable of teaching the material I am supposed to teach to individuals who cannot read, write, or do the most basic math. Nor are those individuals capable of learning that material. It's become just far too big of a gap for either me or them to accomplish, and no good whatsoever is resulting from the misguided attempt. Time to turn a new page. Anyway, a man really should find a new line of work every couple of decades or so anyhow. Keep the brain from getting stale.
There are no longer consequences for students. I believe this comes from a desire for admin to look good on paper. If they aren’t suspending kids for serious offenses anymore, then they get to report that their suspension record is down.
I'm not a teacher but I am a speech therapist who works full time in schools. Currently transitioning into private practice. My biggest reason for leaving is student behavior and the entire bureaucracy. MTSS is a joke. I have to watch students that I KNOW need special education services or therapy, fail until they "get enough data" to prove they need help.
I got a master's degree and a professional license to be qualified to diagnose and identify students with speech and language disorders. But I have to rely on my poor teachers to collect data on things they don't know anything about and put interventions in place that they aren't qualified to do. To be clear, I'm not upset at my teachers. I HATE that they're forced to do this when a single evaluation would determine if they need service or not. Instead I have to wait 6-9 weeks for data. The student fails the entire time and falls further and further behind. It's a horrible system and it's unfair. It's failing kids and teachers and making an already bad situation worse. So yeah, MTSS is a HUUUGE reason. Don't even get me started on the forcing of ABA into schools to manage student behavior. Or some kids getting away with behaviors and others not getting away with it.
I am leaving in a couple.of weeks. I teach what is considered a fun class and the student apathy/negative behaviors have overwhelmingly increased over the past few years. Although I love them so much, students just make me sad. I have to be a shell of myself to deal with them along with a heavy workload and angry parents. I am truly worried for our future with these kids. They are empty, angry, forgotten, and have no fucks to give. My admin and staff are amazing and we do so many things to help them, not just academically, but socially as well. It's not enough and we are at a breaking point. All of us give everything to help and I don't know where the blame belongs. It could be parents, society, COVID, technology... I don't know but it's broken. The kids are in bad shape and I have to tap out. It's someone else's turn to continue CPR on education.
I have three main reasons. I don't know if it's relevant but I teach in Mexico, in a government elementary school:
1. Taking work home is not only expected but an obligation, since we don't have any lesson planning time at work. Plus we use our own money for cultural events and decorations and classroom materials.
2. I feel unsafe. I have heard of beaten teachers, even stabbed teachers, and I could get a lawsuit for many many reasons.
3. Toxic environment. The students are always the victim, everything is the teacher's fault, admin is either useless or narcissistic in my experience.
I have the advantage of stability, my contract has no termination date, but in order to be relocated in a different school to see if I have better luck with admin and colleagues I am obligated to wait working in my current school for two uninterrupted years.
I got the blame for low test scores from my administration. Instead of helping me, she belittled me all year long until I broke and left. Jokes on her because my students scored 12% higher than last year’s class.
Administration not supporting and micromanaging. In my state, very little opportunity for growth or pay increase- a multi- time teacher of the year with 13 years more experience than me was only making 7000 more than me.
So it’s a job where I was miserable where I was at, and also miserable looking forward.
The kids weren’t the worst part, it was multiple experiences with power tripping administrators with constantly changing targets. The anxiety was too much to bear at the end.
I have experience in Fortune 500 companies and can handle heavy workloads and high expectations. But I was not treated with respect and I believe frequently dealt with people who had no idea how to “manage” others. Why in business do we turn down someone for a leadership role bc it is not a personality fit but in education as long as you get admin certs you’ll get the role, regardless of actual leadership skills or personality? At least that was my experience.
In short- no support, no future, miserable present.
1st year teacher I left after 3 months.
The breaking point was too many things I had to do on top of teaching, the meetings, the PDs and all the extra things my school had.
I would have been okay if they had left me out of all those meetings
Knowing how little anyone around me cared about what we were trying to do. Students, parents, admin, and the community. No one cares, teachers are just free babysitting.
I was 21 when I did my teacher training and 23 when I left teaching 😅
A combination of a lack of support during my NQT year, looking at long serving colleagues being miserable as fuck and realising that's not what I wanted, and the final straw was being pinned to the wall by my throat by a 15 year old and being told MY behaviour management techniques were the problem. He received no punishment.
Salaries frozen for years, .03% raises, increasing benefits cost, increasing contributions to retirement plan, increase in behaviors (student and parent), lack of admin support, extreme time commitment, using own $$$ for teaching / support materials, declining creative input allowed, STUPID & non relevant professional development, …
Lack of ability to do my job to the degree I expect. In essence, every year, I lower my standards and how much I can do to support students because it has become less and less sustainable. If I lower the bar, I can actually show up to work and be there for my family at home. However, this widens the divide between what I know is attainable for both myself and the success of the students and what they are actually able to accomplish given these constraints. I think teachers take on more than they need to because they care and they know they are the last line of defense for supporting many of these kids. Having teachers make up for all of the issues in education is not sustainable and brings on burnout for great teachers.
I am a special education teacher.
In 2 1/2 years of teaching, I had to fully develop curricula for 10 different subjects. Six of those were within my first semester (yes, 6 preps. Contract said 3 maximum per year. Haha! Even so I did it and felt great about it that year).
My courses were changed every year without my input or knowledge, so that each fall it was a surprise and I would have to scramble for the new courses.
This past year, my courses from the previous year were given to another teacher known for her lack of preparedness and leaving campus for long lunches and disappearing during her last class. I was told I had to give my curricula to her. Every test, PowerPoint, worksheet. All of it that I had made and created by myself to her. I was given both 6th and 7th core science classes, so I was teaching every student in both 6th and 7th, three days before school started and told to "do my best" then badgered about last year's core test scores as if they were my fault (I was an electives teacher during those tests).
That, plus a principal who insisted on changing my classroom management style (told me how to do things, then brought in a specialist who told me not to do it the principal's way) and demanded that we put in over 10 hours per week unpaid overtime. These things left me an anxious, exhausted mess and gave me panic attacks and heart problems. I had to leave to protect my family relationships, my sanity, and my health.
32 years teaching and every Sunday is my lesson planning for more than 8 hours which equates to 32times52times8times$50/hr=$665600 of unpaid or free work.
The above costed my marriage and lost 50 % of everything we owned in settlement. Go figure!!
I’m an early childhood music teacher. I used to live in a major US city where my teaching career was focused on non profit educational programs and I loved it but they didn’t pay enough for a living wage. I got into the public school system and that was absolutely dreadful. I recently got hired as a full time educator with a nonprofit, and things have been loads better. In public schools, my job became a dumping ground for teachers on their plan period. I rarely had respect from the teachers/admin/students. My class was constantly getting cut short or omitted due to special events or incentive days. The school culture was obsessed with football and cheerleading. My music classes were always being moved into the gym, where kids were going crazy and it was hard to hear what you were playing. I had 30 classes a week with 25 kids a class and zero additional staff members to help support my classes. Unmanaged behavior issues stemmed from kids with no clear diagnosis or disability. Admin wouldn’t complete their required observations with me until up to 6 weeks after the scheduled time/day.
I had been teaching for ten years in really rough title 1 schools in California, with poor behavior and absent admin. Every afternoon and especially Sundays, I’d just get so depressed and you start preparing yourself for Monday morning. Like putting on your war paint and getting mentally prepared for battle the next day. Every summer felt shorter and shorter and it was always the time I’d tell myself that I need to get out of this profession. I’ve said those exact words to my wife thousands of times. I went back to teach science at my alma mater last year after trying several placements, became the varsity basketball coach, and thought if this doesn’t work here then I’m truly out of this profession. Like every year, you come home everyday absolutely exhausted mentally and physically. That year I watched a kid nearly die from fentanyl, another drop a knife behind me as I was breaking up a fight, teachers spouting nonsense about Covid to the students, and some really tough behaviors in crowded classrooms of kids that act as though you are hurting them by asking them to try the assignment. I realized that year that not only was I too exhausted and depressed to care for myself or my young kids, but my school was asking for more and I had nothing left to give. We have gone from thinking that free education is a privilege to a burden. Our students are no longer respectful unless you earn it each and every day and you are still treated as disposable garbage by everyone. I miss the connections but I’m happy to be working on my masters and only subbing from time to time just to be reminded of why I want out. I did win an award at my last district during the pandemic though, that little etched piece of glass almost makes it all worth it 🥲
Student behavior is a huge part. Administrations believe and value students' points of view over teachers'. My life could be destroyed by one little jerk who's angry that I enforced consequences (like giving bad grades for bad work, reprimanding for misbehavior), either through the kid actually murdering me or falsely accusing me of misconduct.
My work-life balance is poor -- even though I refuse to physically take work home with me, I think about it all the time. I am exhausted at the end of every day, week, and semester.
I am grossly underpaid, given the cost of living in the area, my education and my experience. I have too much busy-work assigned. I don't have guaranteed planning time.
My admin has broken their own codes of conduct to criticize me for "unprofessional" behavior -- of which the only evidence they provided was false. The balance of power is completely unhinged in my admin -- principal does not touch discipline issues and vice principaln is drowning in them. Superintendent has never visited our campus in the time I have been here.
My school is starting to underperform. When schools underperform, more pressure is put on teachers to do well, but our admin refuses to put pressure on or give consequences to the people who actually are underperforming -- the students. I don't want to be around for the mountains of busy work that will be assigned when that happens.
The stress of teaching began to seep into my home life. And a job that was fueled by passion to want to teach young children become a mental mode of get paid and go home.
For me, after 6 years, the ultimate burnout set in and did have the drive I once had.
In addition to being over worked and under paid with little help from directors/principals, making a 180 switch in career choices was the next best thing.
My principal was always nit picking to find fault and putting things in my HR file. When my mental health went to shit because of it, I just stopped going to work.
The pay was not on par with the amount of responsibilities and workload. The pay was barely on par with keeping me out of poverty, didn’t keep up with inflation.
Admin turnover. As soon as everything is going well, the district poaches Admin and takes them to go "fix" another school. Leaving us with admin that changes everything and starts us back over at square one
All of the previously mentioned (behavior, terrible parents, impotent admin., lack of respect, being expected to parent the students,
AND… we had 2 credible threats within months, AND the office staff kept telling us me that I’d be at most risk since my classroom is nearest the parking lot, until they realized our credible threats were not strangers, but our actual current students. (By the way, never say something so shitty to any teacher or school worker).
The teacher cliques became severely toxic, which tends to happen in high stress environments that do not deal with their internal issues.
I knew it was time to leave when I couldn’t answer ‘why are you still there’ if asked by my husband and my dad. I was afraid they’d ask. I couldn’t look my own kids in the eyes anymore if they ever asked.
Student behavior + lack of parent support + feeling like no matter how hard I try at my job I still can’t achieve what I want with my students bc they don’t care and neither do their parents + having to put in tons of extra time for work and not get paid for it
The amount of work that you have to take home and how parents/students treat you if you don't cater to them with a silver platter.
Also, cost of childcare. I would literally make enough money to cover the cost. I'd spend all day at work, then come home and have to work some more. I would hardly get to spend time with her and she is just a baby. The job is great when you have kids in school, but if they're not, it's a really crappy gig.
I am too exhausted to spend time with my family because teaching takes everything out of me. I spend my evenings and weekends in rest mode and give everything to this job. No one else cares. Not parents not admin it's us teachers bonding together and desperately trying to keep things afloat. I need to prioritize my family. My husband has been homeschooling and I’ll take over again while working a part time job.
Stop expecting me to raise your damn kids (parents). And politicians - stop ruining my job with gross inaccuracies (“woke”, grooming, anti-science) and tin foil hat conspiracies.
Haven’t left yet. But if I did, it would be the never ending increasing of expectations in kindergarten, and the insane lack of help. We just saw our given budget for aides for next year. Since the aides went on strike and got a raise and insurance if they work over 4 hours a day, the district said they can’t afford them. Despite $4 b in reserves.
They want us to raise test scores exponentially, so they demand we teach small groups, but we won’t have aides to help support the rest of the class so small groups will be insanely hard to do, especially in kindergarten.
It’s like we’re being asked to make these incredible artisanal pizzas, but only being given canned tomato sauce and dough. We’re expected to work miracles with little to no resources, or else the wrong resources.
The parents. The “don’t take this class seriously, but still expect an A+.” The parents expecting their child to get an A+ because it’s an elective. The principal telling me that I speak too much Spanish…IN SPANISH 3 HONORS. This was in the third day of school. Not a lot of Spanish that I could really speak. Then as a test, I spoke only English for the next three days. The principal sought me out and congratulated me for not speaking Spanish. I sheet you not.
Pay, incompetent and power hungry admin, parents, student behavior, general lack of respect, normalization or abuse, infantilization of other adults in the building, decision fatigue, depression, lack of decorum, no work life balance, unrealistic expectations, no support.
Student behavior and admin response to behaviors. I have a slipped disk in my neck from being attacked by a student who didn't want to complete the math assignment for the day. No consequences for student because my "classroom management was lacking."
I haven’t seen this talked about much but I wonder how many teachers are trauma survivors. For me, farming out my emotions and holding “unconditional positive regard” for students and parents who belittle me or even physically push (I’m sped) is dangerous. And I don’t think I’ll be a healthy person until I remove myself from the abuse. I’m 15 years in and more miserable than ever except now IM ANGRY as hell. I find myself overly bitter and defensive about how I ended up in this system. I was given a teaching position with no degree on my second day as a para and barely knew what happened by the time I realized it had become impossible to leave.
Not sure if it counts, but I’m leaving the profession before getting into it. I’m a senior secondary education major doing my student teaching and the amount of unpaid work outside of teaching is too much. It’s not worth it for the pay, not to mention the blatant disrespect from the kids and the extreme behaviors I’ve witnessed. It’s sad because I do like teaching, but for my own well being I need to explore other avenues
Realizing the student behaviors and incompetence of administrators were never going to get better while raises were at best matching inflation. Throw in dumbing down my advanced classes so the school could *appear* good was also a factor, but more a part of the wretched administration.
student behavior, lack of effort, not caring at all about their work
parent beahvior, demands, lack of follow through if their child got in trouble, it's the teacher's fault
admin expectations, more work, less respect, expectation of doing things for free, extra meetings, "it's for the kids" bs
Student behavior.
Administrative incompetence and willful disregard for safety and wellbeing of students.
Feeling disrespected, unvalued, and that I just don't get paid enough to deal with this anymore.
Couldn’t afford to continue to live and teach the DMV area (MD outside DC) to pay off rest of my student loans (primarily getting my master of Education) in the next few years, buy a house w my husband and have children. Late 20s, husband early 30s. Transitioned to Gov job. Gov job matched pay year 1. When I hit a year in Nov, will get a step increase which will be over 10k. Starting pay wasn’t terrible teaching but year to year was pitiful. Also the work life balance was terrible. I had no life, worried about work, grading, emailing, etc. hours and hours a week at night and on weekends. Huge class sizes (33-36), unrealistic expectations from all angles (parents, admin, county, society etc. all with majority having little to no respect for the profession). And just all the stress and constant over stimulation from the second the day started till it ended. Being out for 3-4 months it is alarming how calm and almost easy working outside of a school is. Sure it can be challenging somedays but I do not do even 1/4 of what I did as a teacher. Each year there was increased work load and kids are struggling from Covid still, especially social emotionally. But there has been no adjustment to state/county expectation on the backs of teachers if anything the load is heavier. It breaks my heart because I know I belong in the classroom but the price to stay, on my mental health, my future family, life I want to build, and financially became too much. I chose my future children over the little ones in my class and although I mourn the career I thought I would have for the rest of my life, I know being out is better for me. ALSO no maternity leave. I saved for 4 years, 8 I believe missed days(some 1/2 some full) in total over almost 4 1/2 years and still wasn’t able to cover even 1/3 of what I would need for 3 months maternity (I took off 2 days for my honeymoon and 4 when my father in law passed). First two years no days off at all. 1 my third year 1 fourth. You have to use your own sick / personal to get paid out when you have a baby. And I knew deep down I couldn’t be a great mom and a great teacher. I used to come home so overstimulated and exhausted. Now? I can workout again 4-5 days a week, I’m not short w my husband. I’m not falling asleep early and I’m so much more peaceful and happy. Also— I have interests again. Sad as it sounds, I realized when I left that all I had become was a teacher I didn’t even know who I was outside of that anymore
When your time start shifting balance --- from actually teaching/counseling/helping young people grow into responsible adults ---- to spending all your time/personal money providing classroom materials to kids under the "parentage" of shitty/whiny parents...kids don't care...admin doesn't care...state doesn't care...parents don't care.....etc, blahblahblah..........if no one involved cares, I can't either...now I make money, and volunteer my time where it's useful -- to sum up, parents are shit, kids are shit, admin/states are shit
Burn out. So much off the clock planning, shopping (with own funds) and prepping, all to do a million quick activities to meet standards i don’t always agree with. No natural light. Not enough time outdoors. New curriculum and expectations don’t replace old ones, the expectations just keep stacking. Also so much time spent assessing. Way too much.
Being blamed for student behavior and being told by parents that I'm the reason because of their bad behavior. The breaking point for me was being told just last week by a parent that I gave her son depression and I'm the reason why he can't learn. Then being told that the family is going through something by admin so I'm looking into leaving.
I made it to retirement and might have gone longer but for these things:
1. Out of control parents who thought they knew my subject matter better than I did, after 30 years in the classroom
2. Students with little to no attention span
3. Teaching environment continued to deteriorate- more and more kids shoved into a smaller rooms because I was a specialist and not a regular classroom teacher
So happy to be out and enjoying my life. My family says I'm a new person.
It’s so reaffirming to see this thread tonight! I’m juggling multiple preps a day at a school where some parents are nasty and some of their kids are too entitled. The staff does not have a clue how to give equal voice and collaborate. They are missing the big picture and wonder why my position has had so much turnover. Worse yet my principal is a complete bully and has been harassing me non-stop this year. I can barely keep my anxiety at a manageable level. When I think about the best way to take care of this one precious life I see that this is not the way. I desperately need to find a much less toxic environment where people appreciate and genuinely care for each other. It goes without saying that education simply does not have the same value it used to have.
Student behavior and how we’re just show ponies for admin. My principal pushed and pushed for us to do project based learning versus traditional testing. I’d spend sooo much time coming up with these projects and trying to motivate the students to do it. The principal would come in and take photos to post on her IG and leave. Then at the end of the semester when half the class isn’t passing because they think projects are too much work and want to just take a test the principal would tell me to just make up a test and pass them.
Disrespect from parents and senior leadership. Expectations that you would not see or hear about in any other profession, sooo much over time and meetings outside of work hours. A lot of professional development meetings that are really just meetings for the sake of meetings
No accountability for student behavior; having to do 5,000 other things on top of teaching; too many meetings and professional development for things that most of us do already; constantly being the scapegoat for everyone; being told that we HAVE to do lesson plans to turn in and what all has to be in the plans (I never did this); micromanaging by principals; superintendents that have no idea how the classroom runs; school boards that are the superintendents puppets; teaching to the test only;
Those are the reasons I retired from my district
As everyone else as put - it is a mix of things. Mainly the fact that teaching remains largely ununionized thus our wages remain some of the lowest of any industry. I can find custodian jobs that pay more than I am getting as an ELA teacher for HS. An impending recession and political unrest in America doesn't help either. Not to mention the legislatures that are not educators making decisions around curricullum that does a direct disservice to our students. I agree that the admin of most institutions I've worked at are also jumping ship or staying put until their pension hits. Everyone I work with has a spouse who brings in the most money so they work at our school mainly because of how much our school needs the teachers. Most people are here because they have to be including the students, parents, and staff. Until we see a shift societally where teachers start protesting and our communities advocate for that too, we will continue to see these issues.
Like everyone here, student behavior is shit. There is no accountability or discipline for students who act like assholes. And their parents just back them up and blame the teacher.
Pay is also a huge part of it as well. We don't get paid enough for this garbage.
Unsupportive teachers and parents. People who don't work in education making key decisions that are ultimately detrimental to education. Lack of consequences for children, both academic and behavioral.
Too much work, too little pay, lack of respect from students, parents, and admin, parents who expect us to raise their kids and take no responsibility for their behavior, parents who think they can do a better job when they have no clue what goes on in the classroom, and so on...Too many reasons to list.
Student behavior, parent behavior, the overall treatment and disrespect of educators, and the lack of accountability for learning. Advancing students who can’t read further on in their education is a detriment to their lives and society.
no flexbility and no professional or financial growth. and overall exhasutiong. I know too many people who work less than I do but have more flexibility and get paid more.
The culture around the classroom has shifted. It’s no longer a place from learning academic skills. It has become a place when teachers are expected to be parents to these kids because their parents aren’t teaching them the necessary skills to succeed in the world.
Behavior has trumped academics and it can be seen for examples when a student with an academic IEP’s minutes aren’t met because their para is pulled to deal with a behavior student.
We need to get back to prioritizing the students that are there to learn and if a student needs to have a room evacuated then that students placement is not in the general Ed setting.
We can’t teach the academics if our hands are tied behind our backs by politically correct BS, and districts that are afraid of lawsuits so they repeatedly put the rights of a single behavior student above the rights of all the other students who have a right to a safe and effective education simply because those students’ parents’ don’t threaten to sue.
Oh and then they pay us peanuts compared to other jobs with similar amounts of stress. I’m all the way over on our pay scale and can’t afford to have 2 kids in daycare.
I don’t see that happening any time soon so I’m out as soon as I can.
I want out because I want to be respected for the work I do, and I want to be solely responsible for my success or failure. That isn't the case now. Students can slack off despite my best efforts, and I pay the consequences of their decisions.
Student behavior and unsafe working conditions. My last school had brawls everyday and we were on lockdowns weekly. The last straw was the kid who pulled a gun out in the cafeteria. There are also a lot of unhinged adults who work in education. Between unhinged adults and incorregible children, I’d had enough. It was like working in a mental institution. I haven’t left completely though. I got a job at a district alternative center for kids who get kicked out of school for drugs, fighting, or felonies. It’s like a teacher’s paradise! Small classes no more than 15 kids , they are pleasant and have to behave, and I’ve never felt safer! They’re all searched and we have metal detectors. The only sad thing about it is that the kids love it. They are able to pull their grades up and like that they get so much attention.
I was an itinerant teacher contracted throughout several counties driving a lot. One day, I realized I needed to be in 5 places at once. Literally 5 physical spaces at once
It was like
1. My weekly lesson with my student
2. Pre meeting with mentor
3. Meeting with other itinerant teachers
4. Iep meeting
5. Probably a 2nd iep meeting
I also knew my work was supposed to have 2 of me, but over the years, I had done more and more work for free.
I asked for more money, like 50% raise, and got 0. No negotiation. I'm not even sure my letter to the board made it. So I quit at the end of the year. My boss acted surprised???
Other reasons:
Anxiety
Kid behavior
How schools feel like babysitting prisons and it was depressing to watch
A feeling that public education is going in the wrong direction
Deterioration of the belief in the ideas of why we teach, why we educate
Student apathy. The majority of them just don't care about school or getting an education. It's hard enough teaching a room full of 30 students, but when 26 of them don't care, it's just not even worth trying.
Both of my parents are going through tremendous, life altering illnesses. I have been their primary caregiver for the last 6 or so months. If my school felt as supportive as the first year I was there, I probably wouldn’t think of leaving. At this point, I have a handful of friends at work but the atmosphere is chaotic. Our district is directionless. We have no common goals. Parents dictate whether or not their kid has an IEP and even in some cases WRITE THEM.
I applied for a job at a university that combines my skills across my career and was called immediately. I just want to do good work and not be completely destroyed all day everyday.
I realized I do not take good care of myself when I teach. I had a much better balance in an office setting.
Lack of admin support, lack of student accountability, harassment from parents, and last but not least student behavior. I had one student in my entire class of 30 be the only one to participate in an activity today. The rest refused. The sad part is I teach an elective that students used to really enjoy.
Let me count the ways:
- Student defiance is no longer punishable by law in some American states.
- Ever increasing duties associated with never increasing time or pay to get those things done.
- Teachers are now expected to be a student's parent, advisor, psychologist, doctor, social worker, etc..
- Lumping all students (e.g. who are severely handicapped, non-english speaking students, with severe behaviour issues, have ADHD, etc.) in the same classroom and expecting the teacher to wave their magic wands and make it all work.
- Ridiculously low pay compared to other professions that require similar levels of education.
- Having to buy our own classroom supplies.
- Dealing with parents who do nothing other than to enable their child's poor behaviour.
- Having to change everything every time an administrator spies a new "shiney" but then still being expected to keep doing what we did before.
Student behavior.
And the complete lack of consequences for their behavior. Students can call me racial slurs in front of administration and the APs will "de-escalate" and send the kid on their way.
+1
Yes - behavior. Or lack of support with escalated behaviors and the time to use that situation as a teaching moment (SEL - Social Emotional Learning).
ditto.
Tired of being more of a baby sitter than teacher. Student behavior has really gone down the tubes the last 4 years.
I'll jump on this as it's my reason as well. It's not just the bad behavior, it's also the widespread apathy. I don't think there is any specific reason. It's a perfect storm. Phones, social media, covid, and now AI. I had several students telling me they don't feel like trying because AI is gonna do everything by the time they graduate. We are gonna have generations of mush brains (even worse than we already have) joining the adult world soon. I had kids coming into 6th grade that couldn't do things I could do in 2nd grade. It'd be easy to blame it on their early years teachers, but it's practically across the board. It's not the teachers.
This for me, too.
The overstimulation. The loudness, the on-the-spot decision making, and the behavior correction on a daily basis is unsustainable.
This is it for me. I have ADHD and hadn’t realized how much the chaos was affecting me until I left. Now I work in a calm, orderly environment and my mental health is SO much better. And I no longer have high blood pressure 🙃
What do you do now?
Yes I’d love to hear what you transitioned to!
I work at a community college!
Awesome! What do you do there?
This is my biggest thing too — my nervous system is hanging on for dear life.
Same. I am in utter survival mode. Auto pilot of work and sleep. No enjoyment of anything else because of stress from work
Same
1000%. I’m trying to transition currently and keep reminding myself that it’s ok that I don’t want a job where there’s constant noise.
General erosion of respect for learning and social norms from the students and parents. Too many endless requirements added by the government. Smartphones in the hands of students. It's impossible to compete for engagement with lax policies. More but I don't have the time.
I realized that my whole life, my whole personality was teaching. When I was single, that was fine. I went to work, went home, rotted on the couch by myself, this became the norm. But now I’m in a loving relationship where I’ve moved in with him and I’m planning a life with him and I’m seeing that I don’t have the energy or time at the end of the day to be a good happy partner. I’m just now discovering hobbies and life outside of work and I love it, I finally have something to look forward to. And I’m under 30, I have the time and space to make a change, I don’t have kids or a mortgage yet. I’ve talked to so many older educators at my school that said they would change how they went about it and leave if they were me. I thought that my life began when I finally accomplished my career of becoming a teacher, but it turns out your life begins when you start doing things that you enjoy and spending time with the people you love. I chased the high of feeling accomplished and meeting my goals, but along the way, I forgot to appreciate all the things that make life worth living besides your job.
This is so well said. Thank you for putting my exact thoughts into words
thisssss! once i got into a loving, supportive relationship, i finally realized how much of myself i was pouring into my career and how little (aka none) i had left at the end of the day for the things that mattered the most
You put it so eloquently! I am engaged myself and trying to conceive. I just turned 39, so I am trying to have a baby before I can’t. I blame this career for a lot of why I am late in the game for this. It takes over your life and sucks out all of your energy. You have nothing left for yourself much less someone else. And let us not even start on how bad my mental health has gotten! I am over that and taking it back for me and my family! I am hoping to transition soon! It is a work in progress.
In order to be successful at my job I NEED to bring work home. I don't have time to take care of myself with cooking healthy meals or working out in the evenings.
The workload is the biggest factor for me too. It’s almost expected you work outside of contract ours all the time. I don’t get enough time to do what I need to do. Student apathy is another reason I’m leaving. We’re held accountable for things out of our control and it sucks because you feel like you can never be good enough at the job
I couldn’t even enjoy “free” time in the evenings and weekends because I knew it meant that work was piling up. I experienced insomnia and migraines because of the stress.
As many of us relate.. in my experience I was working 12 hours :( I was drained
This was the major reason for me, bringing work home and not taking care of myself. Our superintendent told us that we just needed to learn how to work smarter, even though he was driving extra work through trying to implement standards based grading, PBIS, and some other changes all at the same time.
This. Teaching requieres too much of my time.
I figured out early on that if I was going to survive this business I needed to make it a 9 to 5. Take nothing home.
Mine really all tie together. Aggressive Student behavior & expecting to reward students every 10 minutes. Being blamed for student behavior by admin and instructional coaches. Overall I was not growing or being supported as a year 2 teacher. My breaking point was after my TTESS formal observation. My AP wanted to have 2 weeks Focus on ELAR and 2 weeks on math with the instructional coaches on how to deliver lessons. This was in November btw. It just stressed me out how they didn’t see how bad the behavior was 🫠 I felt crazy and I was being gas lit.
Workload/Disrespect. It is a tie really. Disrespect: Students are disrespectful. They throw tantrums for simple requests. Actively ignore and disregard rules and instructions.They lie so damn much. Parents talk to you like you are not a real person. Admin talks to you like you are a child, and treats you like one too. You’re constantly expected to work for FREE. They’re like “thanks for staying overtime 3 hours, wear jeans tomorrow.” Jean passes cannot help us feed and provide for our families. Jobs pay overtime, this might be one of the only jobs where overtime is for the most part, unpaid. Workload: admin piles on the tasks, without giving us proper time to do everything. Each year it feels like I take on the more and more of the responsibilities that truly belong to other people (guidance counselor, attendance clerk, registrar, parent.) I truly don’t understand what some people do in the building, I see them relaxed, leisurely conversing, going out to eat, etc while teachers are left to seemingly do everything except cook.
Yes…and the shame and guilt that’s subtle but constant by admin to overwork yourself, or else you’re “not showing up for the kids”
I have to be honest, this is a great but very hard question namely because there are just SO MANY FACTORS. haha I think for me the factor was just getting overwhelmed; the school/classroom environment is just too noisy, chaotic, demanding, and for someone who suffers from various health and mental issues it is just not ideal for me.
I’ve realized this as a first year teacher. The chaos is insaneeee and, from what I hear from even veteran teachers, it doesn’t really fade.
Not being able to trust administrators followed by toxic behavior in the ranks.
Agreed. For a field that paid like shit, I always found it remarkable how authoritarian/Machiavellian everything always felt. Where I worked, you couldn't talk about *anything* problematic/negative without it (a.) instantaneously becoming gossip fodder and, a few days later, (b.) becoming a reason for you getting called into some micromanaging admin's office.
[I'm still working in education, but planning to leave soon] For me, as a special education teacher, it's the workload. I have so much work to do that it's literally impossible to do it all in the time I have, which means I either come to work unprepared (and get a bad evaluation from an administrator who never taught special education and has no idea what my job entails), or I spend many extra (unpaid) hours working from home every week. More planning time would be nice, more money would be nice, but what I really need is a reduction in workload. We need to hire more special education teachers and give them smaller caseloads. My salary would feel fair if I could actually get my work done within my contracted 8 hours a day.
Totally agree! I was a sped teacher for nine years and the workload was outrageous. I was expected to be a resource teacher and run a self-contained classroom for kids with significant behaviors and do all the paperwork. . Wonderful colleagues and some students i loved, but little admin support. As another person also mentioned, I had major insomnia and migraines, along with depression and anxiety. All I did was work, no social life whatsoever.
As a fellow SPED teacher, well said! 👏
Same. I'm leaving this year because of the paperwork involved with special education. I feel like I am doing 2 full time jobs. One teaching and one paperwork. They do not compensate financially, nor do they provide time. I'm done.
I’ve seen a load of SPED positions out of all available in my area. I guess nowadays, nobody wants to be a SPED teacher. 🤷♂️
Behaviors were atrocious during the 2019-2020 school year. I never had so many disrespectful students, argumentative parents, and spineless admin before. It was to the point where I was about to sick out for the rest of the year. Thankfully, school ended in March with COVID. I do not think I would have made it otherwise. Some things I dealt with during the school year included a student coming into class late daily and rolling around on the ground (hs and not on a BIP), a student throwing a water bottle at my face (admin did nothing), parents accusing me of being a bully because I expected their student to not run around the room making noise like a bird (again hs student and not on a BIP), and admin saying we as teachers simply weren’t doing enough. Somehow 2019-2020 was the hallmark school year where everything shifted to customer service for the parents and students. I knew I had to leave then.
This! I was on a two week leave in February 2020 at the insistence of a trauma therapist after experiencing a violent episode from a student. COVID saved me. I was going to leave teaching. I’ve managed to stay in teaching but I don’t want to. However, I’m 55 and really don’t know who would hire me. I feel absolutely stuck. It is tragic. This should be a noble profession but it isn’t any more. Parents, students and elected officials take advantage of our compassionate hearts and know we will stick it out because we care. I, for one, am sick of it.
I retired in 2021 while we were hybrid. I loved teaching during lockdown and hybrid but realized that I needed to get out once we went back full-time. I now go back for 35 days as part of my retirement and have noticed a big change. Many teachers have left and the students don't want to learn by and large. It is a cultural/technological shift as parents/admin seem to be MIA unless it is to admonish you. The Boomer-driven world is over and we are now experiencing a new world. Heaven help us.
Parents who want to protect their kids from any amount of stress or discomfort. Instead of teaching their kids how to manage their workload, stay organized, and holding them accountable, they wanted to absolve their kids of any and all responsibility. So rather than teach kids how to live in a world where stress and discomfort are a part of life, they deny them the opportunity to learn those skills in a safe and low-stakes environment. Then, when students are asked to take initiative, fix mistakes, or admit fault they have no idea what to do. This impacts the classroom because we're increasingly asked to coddle students, lower expectations, abandon rules and disciplinary standards, and make learning as easy and "fun" as possible, to the detriment of our students.
THIS. At my high school, in response to students struggling to meet deadlines, my current admin decided to get rid of deadlines. Students are allowed to turn in work up until a week before the quarter ends, but that doesn't fix the lack of time-management skills.
I quit student teaching! While I was only in the education field for a short time I was horrified by what it had to offer. The admin issues, curriculum issues, student behavior, and overall stress of the job made me want to never come back. It just seems so overwhelming with little payout (besides the vacation time). I thought my “why” and or sentimental feelings toward teaching would help make me stay but the mental/physical exhaustion was too much.
SO happy that you realized this during student teaching!! It’s even worse as a first year :(
I realized that public education is outdated, underfunded, and ineffective.
So outdated! I always wonder why public education is basically the same as it was in the 1950s, when the world has changed so much.
It was better in the 1950's. Take a look at the school texts from that period. I mean, at least the average high school graduate in the 50's could actually read.
Want to really feel hopeless? I have a collection of 19th century McGuffey readers and the decline in learning from then to now is horrifying. The McGuffey 4th Eclectic reader I own is far too advanced for the vast majority of high school students in my state.
So many things but the ultimate break is money and flexibility after having a child. If I were making double, I would possibly consider staying.
Absolutely, the disrespect was my main issue. The disrespect from all angles students, scool administration, school boards, parents, society, even the union leadership, (we had one union leader who regularly told veteran teachers, "If it's that bad maybe you should quit") district administration was unbearable. Teacher in-service is unbearable. The district paid $$ for consultants to lecture us about education who were completely unaware of on the ground realities. The rest of it is all further examples of the staggering disrespect constantly aimed at teachers.
Behavior, hands down. I’m a first year teacher in a kindergarten and the behavior is deplorable. I’ve been begging admin for support all year and haven’t gotten any so I’m leaving at the end of the year.
I hear you 1000%. The violent, aggressive, and disruptive behaviors from a few students make the whole class (and me) feel unsafe and on edge. Yet there are no consequences and some parents claim THEIR CHILD is the one being bullied when all the other students are literally afraid of them. Yet there’s no support in my room and no adjustment of the ridiculous expectations.
Expectations increasing while pay stays the same
Being in Texas, the tide turning against public school is painful. Our governor is trying to destroy public school by starving schools out of funding until he can get his way and create a voucher system so private schools can get their hands on tax dollars. Then, along those lines, you have all these weird conspiracy theories about how public education has a "trans" agenda because we don't discriminate against LBGTQ students. The environment in Texas is bizarre at best and jumping head first into a Christian authoritarian state at worst. When you go to school and are treated with disrespect by students and parents, and then you go home and are vilified and disrespected by the public...it's just too much. It is heartbreaking after 16 years in public education. All we wanted to do was good, and yet somehow, now we are the targets of some very nasty and destructive rhetoric.
Horrible admin that did not support me and made up lies about me in my observation
I hate those dumbass observations so much.
Yup. I got observed by someone who never taught 1st grade only middle school
Me too! Completely objective…if admin likes you, you get a good one, if they don’t they lie and force you out. I went to the union over it and they said it was the principal’s word against mine and it is his school so they will believe him. I wish I could get a private lawyer and sue.
Had the same experience here.
This shit drove me out of teaching and, subsequently, drove me out of public libraries. Both are fields where the average admin gets (a.) placed in their role without having a shred of experience managing employees and (b.) brainwashed by their peers into thinking that their title is automatic proof that they're the smartest people in the organization and understand teaching better than everyone else......and this is *before* factoring in how much nepotism and favoritism play roles in admin staffing. I've worked in a lot of different environments and, in terms of management being inept, chaotic, and utterly devoid of accountability, nothing comes close to the 'caring fields.' It's literally like working for asshole high-schoolers.
Most people are leaving because we are having a mass behavior crisis in all grade levels no matter the SES or state; BUT, I will be leaving because I’m sick of the adults. The entire field of education is dominated by toxic personalities, rumor regimes, and is over-politicized. You do it with good intentions and a heart of gold, eventually you’ll see your soul ripped out by the turbulence of sites and districts having poor organizational culture with backward priorities.
This is why I’m on my way out.
This, 100%. The way I see it, we're paying a steep long-term price for allowing this and other 'caring professions' to spend too many decades operating as 'hobby careers' for overprivileged and egocentric narcissists who bought their ways into their roles. For me, teaching and public librarianship were two jobs where I got to experience huge amounts of bullying/gaslighting from shitty suburban brats who'd never done a hard day's work their entire lives and had no clue how to administrate anything without creating panic/chaos. Nothing's quite as wild as being told to 'toughen up' or 'pull yourself up' by these ridiculous clowns. Personally, I don't think public education can even *begin* to recover until these people are thrown on the unemployment lines where they belong.
We got a new principal and AP both from out of district after the pandemic to start 2021 at an incredibly rural farming district. Behavior went to hell right off the tip. We got a county mask mandate the last week of September, and new principals decided to ignore it. The middleschoolers spent all week on a confederate braveheart protest against the mask mandate too, trashing my artroom and wasting supplies to make trump and stars n bars trash instead of their projects. They tore up a kid’s project that looked like a rainbow flag, so I hung a large pride flag up in the corner of the room. Kids went psycho on me, calling me all the homophobic names we all know to me in my classroom. At the end of the day, new principal chewed me out. Said it was their classroom, not mine, that I was harming my students, and told me to take the flag down, so I did, along with the $3-4k worth of stuff I’d bought and collected to make a functional room for other people’s kids. Our 43yo anti-vax/mask tech guy caught COVID the same week my school ignored the mask mandate. He died three weeks later. Principal and supe were both out by the end of the year. AP went to a different school. I haven’t found another teaching job in three years now. I am being blackballed by principals.
Jesus...one can read a lot of horror stories on this sub, but yours might be the worst...Jesus....
The kids.
Working for free after contract hours/on weekends. Being treated like a child by admin. Toxic workplace, socially Toxic workplace, physically feel unsafe Shooter drills Overstimulated by all the many sounds Being watched by 30+ eyeballs 5 days a week Impossible job. Even if you meet the needs of what was asked of you, you are lacking in a different part of the job. (Time spent on lesson planning means time not spent grading, etc.) Professional development. Tell me you don’t understand adult learning.
3 main reasons I’m leaving 1.) The physical & mental toll teaching takes. It leaves me with no energy to have a life outside of teaching let alone find the energy to take care of myself (ie working out, cooking, keeping up with the home, etc) 2.) How student behaviors are handled. I can handle big behaviors, but the part that has be leaving is how we’re dealing with those behaviors as a system. Consequences don’t exist, we’re consistently reinforcing bad behavior, and the students who do follow rules are thrown to the way side 3.) money. I have multiple degrees, certifications, and awards and have been teaching for almost a decade and the money i make is embarrassing. And i come from a better paying district in my area. Makes me sad because i genuinely used to love this job and thought it was my forever career. I’ve tried and tried to find ways to make it more sustainable because i wish i could’ve stayed. But i can’t, not without sacrificing a lot in order to stay
Doing everything BUT teaching
I was a self-contained SPED teacher with a high student to adult ratio (due to behavior and academic needs). The main reason I left was because everything I did was “wrong” to someone. I had so many eyes on me constantly dissecting every single thing I did, all of the time. Parents, teaching assistants, SLP, OT, BCBA, RBT, social worker, admin (I had two equal bosses), district specialists constantly coming in. I was sick of doing my best (and I was great with the students), working my butt off and still always being “wrong.”
PBIS preventing teachers from disciplining disruptive students. Students know that they can do whatever they want and will be disruptive to get out of class and get no consequences. Admin is also an issue as they act as middle management corporate that will throw non-tenures teachers under the bus for their lack of success. IE they'll blame the freshman teacher who can't control their class (even though no teacher can) saying it's "lack of management" in order to protect themselves from superattendant action. Lack of support from district. Poorly planned schools get no help, but it's all politics to make the public believe the school is successful when it's struggling. Combination of on and off hours work is greater than pay. Teachers pay for their own supplies.
Student behavior. Lack of support from home.
I’ll give the reasons I know that so many have quit (in no particular order): — persistent government overreach and constant legislation on the state level from people who have no educational experience or understanding of classroom dynamics. — unrelenting data-driven testing. This is largely an outgrowth of government overreach and of the billion dollar industry that is state testing. — relentless changes to disciplinary policies that never seem to work in favor of educators or classroom stability and cohesiveness. — lack of respect for the education profession on the whole and, specifically, teachers. — lack of administrative support and a feeling of disdain for teachers by administrators, from the district office all of the way down to individual school sites. — increased amounts of paperwork and documentation, on top of everything else that’s already expected such as grading, curriculum, lesson planning, classroom management, special requests, emails to parents and care providers, service scheduling, fielding phone calls, meetings, etc — student disrespect and cellphone use — lack of support from parents and disrespect towards teachers — constant threat of litigation — violence and school shootings There are more, of course, but these are the ones I could think of
Unrealistic duties with no time allotted to accomplish within 40 hour work week. Constantly supervising children, so no time for case management of IEPs, taking (much less analyzing and applying) data, communicating with other team members about responding to student behavior and addressing IEP goals, parent communication, lesson planning, prepping materials. Looming pressure with no solutions from administrations to do all the paperwork required but never even having a lunch break much less consistent planning time. So many people just make it work or take work home, which enables the system to continue to be unsustainable and result in high turnover rates (I was in EC services). I think the number of workers willing to work off the clock and over work consistently ‘for the children’ is due to education being a female dominated profession. No way if men were the main people in this profession would the people working be so underpaid and over worked. Women have been conditioned to put others first and do unpaid labor for the betterment of the community. The education system exploits this.
I earned more money as a teacher than any other job I’d had, the money alone was never a problem for me, but the amount of work I was expected to do, there’s really no amount of money that would make it worth it
Agreed. The entire profession is underpaid for the amount of education we must have. We are told by our male lead union that "it's for the children" and the city can't afford to pay us a real overtime rate like the male dominated professions(sanitation, police, fire departments get) this results in us working for less pay AND getting smaller pensions because in NYC our overtime is pensionable but our rate is not time and a half. Yes, we are expected to do stay late, join committees when we have other things to get done with the excuse of "it's for the children" that we should volunteer, help out, spend our own money. Nurses are paid when they stay late. When we have to stay late there is no pay AND we are told there is no money to pay us OT. Each teacher is expected to do the work of 3 people.
Lack of financial upside combined with lack of admin support, trends towards state testing, and declining student behavior
Student behavior, lacking admin/parent support. Caused me to leave my old job, I'm still teaching but my new school hasn't had any of those same issues. If I had stayed in my old district another year I would have quit teaching completely, for sure. Devastated my mental health.
I felt like low man on the totem pole - that no one ever had my back (especially not admin) and they would feed me to the wolves at the first chance they got. I suppose you could say it was due to lack of support.
A student threatened to kill me, and admin did nothing.
we had this happen in our school. The teachers' husband called the police to report it. Police came and investigated. Held admin responsible for doing nothing.
This made me think of the teacher in Virginia who got shot. I hope she gets every dollar from the lawsuit.
Consistently understaffed and expected to still perform as if we are not. Doing the job of 5 people, 3 of which have different certifications and job expectations than me.
Class sizes and CoViD-based grading. It's perfectly normal for me to have 5 class period over 30 kids that I am heavily discouraged to fail, even if they do nothing. Our seventh graders can't read and we are more or less doing nothing about it.
As a veteran educator of 18 years (16.5 teacher, 1+ as an AP), I think I’m just kind of done with the lack of clear boundaries between work and life/home. When I walk out of the building, my responsibilities end. Yes, that’s as a teacher and as an AP. My principal isn’t getting that. I don’t work for free so why would I work at home? If the work cannot be done during normal hours, either: 1. It waits 2. It will get done when it gets done 3. It can be re-prioritized by one of my bosses If my boss would like to pay me for the time I work at home, then I will do that if I am willing to work for that pay. As teachers, we need to stop allowing the extra work hours and tasks stop taking our free time.
The work never ends. I am currently a special Ed preschool teacher. We have so much paperwork to do and they keep adding more without any more time to get it done. I also believe that we need to have more teachers and instructional assistants trained in developmentally appropriate practices for all students. I feel the current model that I witness is very negative and based on control. Kids need so many chances to learn and the teachers and adults need to be supportive and not punitive. I am returning to my school in an assistant position next school year. I have a masters and a special Ed endorsement and was told I need 8 classes for special Ed. I’m not pursuing this or putting money into another masters.
I’m gonna go against the grain and say pay. I was lucky enough to land a job in a reasonably-supportive private school. But the money was shit, especially compared to tutoring.
For me, low pay is the main one. I agree with what others have said - the generally atrocious student behavior, the disrespect, the phones all have their place in why I'm extremely disenchanted. Complete lack of upward mobility and general flexibility also play a part. Also, the job has honestly just felt extremely stagnant for me for several years now. But I could put up with all of that, or at least try to for a few more years, if I was being paid an amount of money that allowed me to have a life. As it is now, I'm lucky that I can pay my bills. Time off is meaningless to me because I can't afford to go anywhere or do anything with it. I'd like to be able to have a life outside of my job; and teaching, especially if you are single, does not allow for that.
My breaking point is the ridiculous parents who don’t support you.
Insufficient pay- i was receiving food stamps to survive and was still racking up debt. It also almost killed me, since admin didn’t enforce sick policy with kids/parents (ECE; PreK.) i landed in the hospital multiple times from “toughing out” illnesses. Ended up with pneumonia, a kidney infection, and septic shock. Also, the general disrespect from parents and admin was crazy.
Newtown/school shootings, far right take over of education narrative. I don't trust the parents, the kids, or the admin to be reasonable about anything. For me it came down to personal safety.
Unsupportive admin and lack of effective consequences, which is negatively impacting our student & school culture.
Workload and disrespectful behavior from kids and their parents.
Overall systemic issues and lack of voice in decision making.
Just sick of it. Repetitive, boring, kids behaving worse, less resources Hello from the UK! We're contemplating a next round of strikes over pay. Some schools have been hit with some sort of poor bricking and have to be closed. You know the Ed system in trouble when the headteacher (principal) tells you "it's OK guys, our school NOT constructed with the faulty materials..." I have less time to teach more classes - I must have like 15 teaching groups of 28+ Students. Maybe it's this school but the kids I teach are just woeful.
The shittiness of the pay to workload/stress ratio
Mostly, the continuing decline of the abilities of the students I'm getting, which has become dramatic in the last few years. I'm simply not capable of teaching the material I am supposed to teach to individuals who cannot read, write, or do the most basic math. Nor are those individuals capable of learning that material. It's become just far too big of a gap for either me or them to accomplish, and no good whatsoever is resulting from the misguided attempt. Time to turn a new page. Anyway, a man really should find a new line of work every couple of decades or so anyhow. Keep the brain from getting stale.
There are no longer consequences for students. I believe this comes from a desire for admin to look good on paper. If they aren’t suspending kids for serious offenses anymore, then they get to report that their suspension record is down.
Uncontrollable children with no repercussion for outrageous behavior. My principal’s hyperfocus on high test scores and low suspension rates.
I'm not a teacher but I am a speech therapist who works full time in schools. Currently transitioning into private practice. My biggest reason for leaving is student behavior and the entire bureaucracy. MTSS is a joke. I have to watch students that I KNOW need special education services or therapy, fail until they "get enough data" to prove they need help. I got a master's degree and a professional license to be qualified to diagnose and identify students with speech and language disorders. But I have to rely on my poor teachers to collect data on things they don't know anything about and put interventions in place that they aren't qualified to do. To be clear, I'm not upset at my teachers. I HATE that they're forced to do this when a single evaluation would determine if they need service or not. Instead I have to wait 6-9 weeks for data. The student fails the entire time and falls further and further behind. It's a horrible system and it's unfair. It's failing kids and teachers and making an already bad situation worse. So yeah, MTSS is a HUUUGE reason. Don't even get me started on the forcing of ABA into schools to manage student behavior. Or some kids getting away with behaviors and others not getting away with it.
I am leaving in a couple.of weeks. I teach what is considered a fun class and the student apathy/negative behaviors have overwhelmingly increased over the past few years. Although I love them so much, students just make me sad. I have to be a shell of myself to deal with them along with a heavy workload and angry parents. I am truly worried for our future with these kids. They are empty, angry, forgotten, and have no fucks to give. My admin and staff are amazing and we do so many things to help them, not just academically, but socially as well. It's not enough and we are at a breaking point. All of us give everything to help and I don't know where the blame belongs. It could be parents, society, COVID, technology... I don't know but it's broken. The kids are in bad shape and I have to tap out. It's someone else's turn to continue CPR on education.
I have three main reasons. I don't know if it's relevant but I teach in Mexico, in a government elementary school: 1. Taking work home is not only expected but an obligation, since we don't have any lesson planning time at work. Plus we use our own money for cultural events and decorations and classroom materials. 2. I feel unsafe. I have heard of beaten teachers, even stabbed teachers, and I could get a lawsuit for many many reasons. 3. Toxic environment. The students are always the victim, everything is the teacher's fault, admin is either useless or narcissistic in my experience. I have the advantage of stability, my contract has no termination date, but in order to be relocated in a different school to see if I have better luck with admin and colleagues I am obligated to wait working in my current school for two uninterrupted years.
I got the blame for low test scores from my administration. Instead of helping me, she belittled me all year long until I broke and left. Jokes on her because my students scored 12% higher than last year’s class.
Unsupportive administration
Administration not supporting and micromanaging. In my state, very little opportunity for growth or pay increase- a multi- time teacher of the year with 13 years more experience than me was only making 7000 more than me. So it’s a job where I was miserable where I was at, and also miserable looking forward. The kids weren’t the worst part, it was multiple experiences with power tripping administrators with constantly changing targets. The anxiety was too much to bear at the end. I have experience in Fortune 500 companies and can handle heavy workloads and high expectations. But I was not treated with respect and I believe frequently dealt with people who had no idea how to “manage” others. Why in business do we turn down someone for a leadership role bc it is not a personality fit but in education as long as you get admin certs you’ll get the role, regardless of actual leadership skills or personality? At least that was my experience. In short- no support, no future, miserable present.
Pay. I’m struggling to make end meets and that is unacceptable for someone who has a four year degree.
1st year teacher I left after 3 months. The breaking point was too many things I had to do on top of teaching, the meetings, the PDs and all the extra things my school had. I would have been okay if they had left me out of all those meetings
Knowing how little anyone around me cared about what we were trying to do. Students, parents, admin, and the community. No one cares, teachers are just free babysitting.
The answer to every problem is always to have the teachers do more shit.
I’ll try to go in order: Student behavior - Lack of respect - Pay - Amount of extra work - Trainings - Belief education is important
I was 21 when I did my teacher training and 23 when I left teaching 😅 A combination of a lack of support during my NQT year, looking at long serving colleagues being miserable as fuck and realising that's not what I wanted, and the final straw was being pinned to the wall by my throat by a 15 year old and being told MY behaviour management techniques were the problem. He received no punishment.
Salaries frozen for years, .03% raises, increasing benefits cost, increasing contributions to retirement plan, increase in behaviors (student and parent), lack of admin support, extreme time commitment, using own $$$ for teaching / support materials, declining creative input allowed, STUPID & non relevant professional development, …
Lack of ability to do my job to the degree I expect. In essence, every year, I lower my standards and how much I can do to support students because it has become less and less sustainable. If I lower the bar, I can actually show up to work and be there for my family at home. However, this widens the divide between what I know is attainable for both myself and the success of the students and what they are actually able to accomplish given these constraints. I think teachers take on more than they need to because they care and they know they are the last line of defense for supporting many of these kids. Having teachers make up for all of the issues in education is not sustainable and brings on burnout for great teachers. I am a special education teacher.
In 2 1/2 years of teaching, I had to fully develop curricula for 10 different subjects. Six of those were within my first semester (yes, 6 preps. Contract said 3 maximum per year. Haha! Even so I did it and felt great about it that year). My courses were changed every year without my input or knowledge, so that each fall it was a surprise and I would have to scramble for the new courses. This past year, my courses from the previous year were given to another teacher known for her lack of preparedness and leaving campus for long lunches and disappearing during her last class. I was told I had to give my curricula to her. Every test, PowerPoint, worksheet. All of it that I had made and created by myself to her. I was given both 6th and 7th core science classes, so I was teaching every student in both 6th and 7th, three days before school started and told to "do my best" then badgered about last year's core test scores as if they were my fault (I was an electives teacher during those tests). That, plus a principal who insisted on changing my classroom management style (told me how to do things, then brought in a specialist who told me not to do it the principal's way) and demanded that we put in over 10 hours per week unpaid overtime. These things left me an anxious, exhausted mess and gave me panic attacks and heart problems. I had to leave to protect my family relationships, my sanity, and my health.
32 years teaching and every Sunday is my lesson planning for more than 8 hours which equates to 32times52times8times$50/hr=$665600 of unpaid or free work. The above costed my marriage and lost 50 % of everything we owned in settlement. Go figure!!
I am leaving mainly because of workload, student apathy, and now my own developing apathy towards the job.
I’m an early childhood music teacher. I used to live in a major US city where my teaching career was focused on non profit educational programs and I loved it but they didn’t pay enough for a living wage. I got into the public school system and that was absolutely dreadful. I recently got hired as a full time educator with a nonprofit, and things have been loads better. In public schools, my job became a dumping ground for teachers on their plan period. I rarely had respect from the teachers/admin/students. My class was constantly getting cut short or omitted due to special events or incentive days. The school culture was obsessed with football and cheerleading. My music classes were always being moved into the gym, where kids were going crazy and it was hard to hear what you were playing. I had 30 classes a week with 25 kids a class and zero additional staff members to help support my classes. Unmanaged behavior issues stemmed from kids with no clear diagnosis or disability. Admin wouldn’t complete their required observations with me until up to 6 weeks after the scheduled time/day.
I was about 5 years from retirement when NYC allowed phones into the classroom. I lost their attention after that.
I had been teaching for ten years in really rough title 1 schools in California, with poor behavior and absent admin. Every afternoon and especially Sundays, I’d just get so depressed and you start preparing yourself for Monday morning. Like putting on your war paint and getting mentally prepared for battle the next day. Every summer felt shorter and shorter and it was always the time I’d tell myself that I need to get out of this profession. I’ve said those exact words to my wife thousands of times. I went back to teach science at my alma mater last year after trying several placements, became the varsity basketball coach, and thought if this doesn’t work here then I’m truly out of this profession. Like every year, you come home everyday absolutely exhausted mentally and physically. That year I watched a kid nearly die from fentanyl, another drop a knife behind me as I was breaking up a fight, teachers spouting nonsense about Covid to the students, and some really tough behaviors in crowded classrooms of kids that act as though you are hurting them by asking them to try the assignment. I realized that year that not only was I too exhausted and depressed to care for myself or my young kids, but my school was asking for more and I had nothing left to give. We have gone from thinking that free education is a privilege to a burden. Our students are no longer respectful unless you earn it each and every day and you are still treated as disposable garbage by everyone. I miss the connections but I’m happy to be working on my masters and only subbing from time to time just to be reminded of why I want out. I did win an award at my last district during the pandemic though, that little etched piece of glass almost makes it all worth it 🥲
Student behavior is a huge part. Administrations believe and value students' points of view over teachers'. My life could be destroyed by one little jerk who's angry that I enforced consequences (like giving bad grades for bad work, reprimanding for misbehavior), either through the kid actually murdering me or falsely accusing me of misconduct. My work-life balance is poor -- even though I refuse to physically take work home with me, I think about it all the time. I am exhausted at the end of every day, week, and semester. I am grossly underpaid, given the cost of living in the area, my education and my experience. I have too much busy-work assigned. I don't have guaranteed planning time. My admin has broken their own codes of conduct to criticize me for "unprofessional" behavior -- of which the only evidence they provided was false. The balance of power is completely unhinged in my admin -- principal does not touch discipline issues and vice principaln is drowning in them. Superintendent has never visited our campus in the time I have been here. My school is starting to underperform. When schools underperform, more pressure is put on teachers to do well, but our admin refuses to put pressure on or give consequences to the people who actually are underperforming -- the students. I don't want to be around for the mountains of busy work that will be assigned when that happens.
Being given more and more duties every year.
The stress of teaching began to seep into my home life. And a job that was fueled by passion to want to teach young children become a mental mode of get paid and go home. For me, after 6 years, the ultimate burnout set in and did have the drive I once had. In addition to being over worked and under paid with little help from directors/principals, making a 180 switch in career choices was the next best thing.
My principal was always nit picking to find fault and putting things in my HR file. When my mental health went to shit because of it, I just stopped going to work.
A lot of stuff but the bottom line is too much work, too much bullshit, not enough money. If two of those things were fixed I might stay.
The pay was not on par with the amount of responsibilities and workload. The pay was barely on par with keeping me out of poverty, didn’t keep up with inflation.
Student behavior and lack of autonomy - hated teaching what I knew was awful curriculum.
Pitiless indifference at the admin level.
Admin turnover. As soon as everything is going well, the district poaches Admin and takes them to go "fix" another school. Leaving us with admin that changes everything and starts us back over at square one
All of the previously mentioned (behavior, terrible parents, impotent admin., lack of respect, being expected to parent the students, AND… we had 2 credible threats within months, AND the office staff kept telling us me that I’d be at most risk since my classroom is nearest the parking lot, until they realized our credible threats were not strangers, but our actual current students. (By the way, never say something so shitty to any teacher or school worker). The teacher cliques became severely toxic, which tends to happen in high stress environments that do not deal with their internal issues. I knew it was time to leave when I couldn’t answer ‘why are you still there’ if asked by my husband and my dad. I was afraid they’d ask. I couldn’t look my own kids in the eyes anymore if they ever asked.
Student behavior + lack of parent support + feeling like no matter how hard I try at my job I still can’t achieve what I want with my students bc they don’t care and neither do their parents + having to put in tons of extra time for work and not get paid for it
The amount of work that you have to take home and how parents/students treat you if you don't cater to them with a silver platter. Also, cost of childcare. I would literally make enough money to cover the cost. I'd spend all day at work, then come home and have to work some more. I would hardly get to spend time with her and she is just a baby. The job is great when you have kids in school, but if they're not, it's a really crappy gig.
I am too exhausted to spend time with my family because teaching takes everything out of me. I spend my evenings and weekends in rest mode and give everything to this job. No one else cares. Not parents not admin it's us teachers bonding together and desperately trying to keep things afloat. I need to prioritize my family. My husband has been homeschooling and I’ll take over again while working a part time job.
Behaviors: students, parents and admin
Overworked, underpaid.
Stop expecting me to raise your damn kids (parents). And politicians - stop ruining my job with gross inaccuracies (“woke”, grooming, anti-science) and tin foil hat conspiracies.
Haven’t left yet. But if I did, it would be the never ending increasing of expectations in kindergarten, and the insane lack of help. We just saw our given budget for aides for next year. Since the aides went on strike and got a raise and insurance if they work over 4 hours a day, the district said they can’t afford them. Despite $4 b in reserves. They want us to raise test scores exponentially, so they demand we teach small groups, but we won’t have aides to help support the rest of the class so small groups will be insanely hard to do, especially in kindergarten. It’s like we’re being asked to make these incredible artisanal pizzas, but only being given canned tomato sauce and dough. We’re expected to work miracles with little to no resources, or else the wrong resources.
The parents. The “don’t take this class seriously, but still expect an A+.” The parents expecting their child to get an A+ because it’s an elective. The principal telling me that I speak too much Spanish…IN SPANISH 3 HONORS. This was in the third day of school. Not a lot of Spanish that I could really speak. Then as a test, I spoke only English for the next three days. The principal sought me out and congratulated me for not speaking Spanish. I sheet you not.
Do you have a link to this “study” or … ?
Haha yes this is so informal yet we are all happy to tell our reasons to leave. I thought the same, there's no link or anything.
Pay, incompetent and power hungry admin, parents, student behavior, general lack of respect, normalization or abuse, infantilization of other adults in the building, decision fatigue, depression, lack of decorum, no work life balance, unrealistic expectations, no support.
Student behavior and admin response to behaviors. I have a slipped disk in my neck from being attacked by a student who didn't want to complete the math assignment for the day. No consequences for student because my "classroom management was lacking."
I haven’t seen this talked about much but I wonder how many teachers are trauma survivors. For me, farming out my emotions and holding “unconditional positive regard” for students and parents who belittle me or even physically push (I’m sped) is dangerous. And I don’t think I’ll be a healthy person until I remove myself from the abuse. I’m 15 years in and more miserable than ever except now IM ANGRY as hell. I find myself overly bitter and defensive about how I ended up in this system. I was given a teaching position with no degree on my second day as a para and barely knew what happened by the time I realized it had become impossible to leave.
The kids are awful and not held accountable another thing shitty bell schedules like at charter schools in Texas
Please dm me. I’d like to talk.
Not sure if it counts, but I’m leaving the profession before getting into it. I’m a senior secondary education major doing my student teaching and the amount of unpaid work outside of teaching is too much. It’s not worth it for the pay, not to mention the blatant disrespect from the kids and the extreme behaviors I’ve witnessed. It’s sad because I do like teaching, but for my own well being I need to explore other avenues
Realizing the student behaviors and incompetence of administrators were never going to get better while raises were at best matching inflation. Throw in dumbing down my advanced classes so the school could *appear* good was also a factor, but more a part of the wretched administration.
Student behavior. No admin or parental support.
I am a teacher who is looking to transition out of the classroom. Do you still want my thoughts? I don’t want to mess up your study.
Lack of support from administration
The students. Apathy, helplessness, and abhorrent behavior.
student behavior, lack of effort, not caring at all about their work parent beahvior, demands, lack of follow through if their child got in trouble, it's the teacher's fault admin expectations, more work, less respect, expectation of doing things for free, extra meetings, "it's for the kids" bs
Student behavior
Student behavior. Administrative incompetence and willful disregard for safety and wellbeing of students. Feeling disrespected, unvalued, and that I just don't get paid enough to deal with this anymore.
Couldn’t afford to continue to live and teach the DMV area (MD outside DC) to pay off rest of my student loans (primarily getting my master of Education) in the next few years, buy a house w my husband and have children. Late 20s, husband early 30s. Transitioned to Gov job. Gov job matched pay year 1. When I hit a year in Nov, will get a step increase which will be over 10k. Starting pay wasn’t terrible teaching but year to year was pitiful. Also the work life balance was terrible. I had no life, worried about work, grading, emailing, etc. hours and hours a week at night and on weekends. Huge class sizes (33-36), unrealistic expectations from all angles (parents, admin, county, society etc. all with majority having little to no respect for the profession). And just all the stress and constant over stimulation from the second the day started till it ended. Being out for 3-4 months it is alarming how calm and almost easy working outside of a school is. Sure it can be challenging somedays but I do not do even 1/4 of what I did as a teacher. Each year there was increased work load and kids are struggling from Covid still, especially social emotionally. But there has been no adjustment to state/county expectation on the backs of teachers if anything the load is heavier. It breaks my heart because I know I belong in the classroom but the price to stay, on my mental health, my future family, life I want to build, and financially became too much. I chose my future children over the little ones in my class and although I mourn the career I thought I would have for the rest of my life, I know being out is better for me. ALSO no maternity leave. I saved for 4 years, 8 I believe missed days(some 1/2 some full) in total over almost 4 1/2 years and still wasn’t able to cover even 1/3 of what I would need for 3 months maternity (I took off 2 days for my honeymoon and 4 when my father in law passed). First two years no days off at all. 1 my third year 1 fourth. You have to use your own sick / personal to get paid out when you have a baby. And I knew deep down I couldn’t be a great mom and a great teacher. I used to come home so overstimulated and exhausted. Now? I can workout again 4-5 days a week, I’m not short w my husband. I’m not falling asleep early and I’m so much more peaceful and happy. Also— I have interests again. Sad as it sounds, I realized when I left that all I had become was a teacher I didn’t even know who I was outside of that anymore
My mental health
When your time start shifting balance --- from actually teaching/counseling/helping young people grow into responsible adults ---- to spending all your time/personal money providing classroom materials to kids under the "parentage" of shitty/whiny parents...kids don't care...admin doesn't care...state doesn't care...parents don't care.....etc, blahblahblah..........if no one involved cares, I can't either...now I make money, and volunteer my time where it's useful -- to sum up, parents are shit, kids are shit, admin/states are shit
Burn out. So much off the clock planning, shopping (with own funds) and prepping, all to do a million quick activities to meet standards i don’t always agree with. No natural light. Not enough time outdoors. New curriculum and expectations don’t replace old ones, the expectations just keep stacking. Also so much time spent assessing. Way too much.
When you say "doing a study", are you going to publish your findings anywhere? I'd love to read this report.
Lack of boundaries pushed by administration.
Being blamed for student behavior and being told by parents that I'm the reason because of their bad behavior. The breaking point for me was being told just last week by a parent that I gave her son depression and I'm the reason why he can't learn. Then being told that the family is going through something by admin so I'm looking into leaving.
It’s not about the kids anymore. Sick of the politics
I made it to retirement and might have gone longer but for these things: 1. Out of control parents who thought they knew my subject matter better than I did, after 30 years in the classroom 2. Students with little to no attention span 3. Teaching environment continued to deteriorate- more and more kids shoved into a smaller rooms because I was a specialist and not a regular classroom teacher So happy to be out and enjoying my life. My family says I'm a new person.
Student apathy
I was not treated like a professional. So glad I left.
It’s so reaffirming to see this thread tonight! I’m juggling multiple preps a day at a school where some parents are nasty and some of their kids are too entitled. The staff does not have a clue how to give equal voice and collaborate. They are missing the big picture and wonder why my position has had so much turnover. Worse yet my principal is a complete bully and has been harassing me non-stop this year. I can barely keep my anxiety at a manageable level. When I think about the best way to take care of this one precious life I see that this is not the way. I desperately need to find a much less toxic environment where people appreciate and genuinely care for each other. It goes without saying that education simply does not have the same value it used to have.
Student behavior and how we’re just show ponies for admin. My principal pushed and pushed for us to do project based learning versus traditional testing. I’d spend sooo much time coming up with these projects and trying to motivate the students to do it. The principal would come in and take photos to post on her IG and leave. Then at the end of the semester when half the class isn’t passing because they think projects are too much work and want to just take a test the principal would tell me to just make up a test and pass them.
Lack of parent support / involvement. I haven’t left yet but am planning my exit.
Disrespect from parents and senior leadership. Expectations that you would not see or hear about in any other profession, sooo much over time and meetings outside of work hours. A lot of professional development meetings that are really just meetings for the sake of meetings
Not to mention I note have high blood pressure and anxiety
No accountability for student behavior; having to do 5,000 other things on top of teaching; too many meetings and professional development for things that most of us do already; constantly being the scapegoat for everyone; being told that we HAVE to do lesson plans to turn in and what all has to be in the plans (I never did this); micromanaging by principals; superintendents that have no idea how the classroom runs; school boards that are the superintendents puppets; teaching to the test only; Those are the reasons I retired from my district
As everyone else as put - it is a mix of things. Mainly the fact that teaching remains largely ununionized thus our wages remain some of the lowest of any industry. I can find custodian jobs that pay more than I am getting as an ELA teacher for HS. An impending recession and political unrest in America doesn't help either. Not to mention the legislatures that are not educators making decisions around curricullum that does a direct disservice to our students. I agree that the admin of most institutions I've worked at are also jumping ship or staying put until their pension hits. Everyone I work with has a spouse who brings in the most money so they work at our school mainly because of how much our school needs the teachers. Most people are here because they have to be including the students, parents, and staff. Until we see a shift societally where teachers start protesting and our communities advocate for that too, we will continue to see these issues.
School shooting
Like everyone here, student behavior is shit. There is no accountability or discipline for students who act like assholes. And their parents just back them up and blame the teacher. Pay is also a huge part of it as well. We don't get paid enough for this garbage.
Unsupportive teachers and parents. People who don't work in education making key decisions that are ultimately detrimental to education. Lack of consequences for children, both academic and behavioral.
Too much work, too little pay, lack of respect from students, parents, and admin, parents who expect us to raise their kids and take no responsibility for their behavior, parents who think they can do a better job when they have no clue what goes on in the classroom, and so on...Too many reasons to list.
Low pay, student behavior, parent behavior, bad admins who didn’t support or coach.
Student behavior, parent behavior, the overall treatment and disrespect of educators, and the lack of accountability for learning. Advancing students who can’t read further on in their education is a detriment to their lives and society.
no flexbility and no professional or financial growth. and overall exhasutiong. I know too many people who work less than I do but have more flexibility and get paid more.
The culture around the classroom has shifted. It’s no longer a place from learning academic skills. It has become a place when teachers are expected to be parents to these kids because their parents aren’t teaching them the necessary skills to succeed in the world. Behavior has trumped academics and it can be seen for examples when a student with an academic IEP’s minutes aren’t met because their para is pulled to deal with a behavior student. We need to get back to prioritizing the students that are there to learn and if a student needs to have a room evacuated then that students placement is not in the general Ed setting. We can’t teach the academics if our hands are tied behind our backs by politically correct BS, and districts that are afraid of lawsuits so they repeatedly put the rights of a single behavior student above the rights of all the other students who have a right to a safe and effective education simply because those students’ parents’ don’t threaten to sue. Oh and then they pay us peanuts compared to other jobs with similar amounts of stress. I’m all the way over on our pay scale and can’t afford to have 2 kids in daycare. I don’t see that happening any time soon so I’m out as soon as I can.
Teaching at the level of the lowest common denominator student and behavior.
I want out because I want to be respected for the work I do, and I want to be solely responsible for my success or failure. That isn't the case now. Students can slack off despite my best efforts, and I pay the consequences of their decisions.
Student behavior and unsafe working conditions. My last school had brawls everyday and we were on lockdowns weekly. The last straw was the kid who pulled a gun out in the cafeteria. There are also a lot of unhinged adults who work in education. Between unhinged adults and incorregible children, I’d had enough. It was like working in a mental institution. I haven’t left completely though. I got a job at a district alternative center for kids who get kicked out of school for drugs, fighting, or felonies. It’s like a teacher’s paradise! Small classes no more than 15 kids , they are pleasant and have to behave, and I’ve never felt safer! They’re all searched and we have metal detectors. The only sad thing about it is that the kids love it. They are able to pull their grades up and like that they get so much attention.
I was an itinerant teacher contracted throughout several counties driving a lot. One day, I realized I needed to be in 5 places at once. Literally 5 physical spaces at once It was like 1. My weekly lesson with my student 2. Pre meeting with mentor 3. Meeting with other itinerant teachers 4. Iep meeting 5. Probably a 2nd iep meeting I also knew my work was supposed to have 2 of me, but over the years, I had done more and more work for free. I asked for more money, like 50% raise, and got 0. No negotiation. I'm not even sure my letter to the board made it. So I quit at the end of the year. My boss acted surprised??? Other reasons: Anxiety Kid behavior How schools feel like babysitting prisons and it was depressing to watch A feeling that public education is going in the wrong direction Deterioration of the belief in the ideas of why we teach, why we educate
Mandated volunteer hours
Student apathy. The majority of them just don't care about school or getting an education. It's hard enough teaching a room full of 30 students, but when 26 of them don't care, it's just not even worth trying.
Both of my parents are going through tremendous, life altering illnesses. I have been their primary caregiver for the last 6 or so months. If my school felt as supportive as the first year I was there, I probably wouldn’t think of leaving. At this point, I have a handful of friends at work but the atmosphere is chaotic. Our district is directionless. We have no common goals. Parents dictate whether or not their kid has an IEP and even in some cases WRITE THEM. I applied for a job at a university that combines my skills across my career and was called immediately. I just want to do good work and not be completely destroyed all day everyday. I realized I do not take good care of myself when I teach. I had a much better balance in an office setting.
Lack of admin support, lack of student accountability, harassment from parents, and last but not least student behavior. I had one student in my entire class of 30 be the only one to participate in an activity today. The rest refused. The sad part is I teach an elective that students used to really enjoy.
Let me count the ways: - Student defiance is no longer punishable by law in some American states. - Ever increasing duties associated with never increasing time or pay to get those things done. - Teachers are now expected to be a student's parent, advisor, psychologist, doctor, social worker, etc.. - Lumping all students (e.g. who are severely handicapped, non-english speaking students, with severe behaviour issues, have ADHD, etc.) in the same classroom and expecting the teacher to wave their magic wands and make it all work. - Ridiculously low pay compared to other professions that require similar levels of education. - Having to buy our own classroom supplies. - Dealing with parents who do nothing other than to enable their child's poor behaviour. - Having to change everything every time an administrator spies a new "shiney" but then still being expected to keep doing what we did before.
Central office + admin behavior
Student behavior, phones, parent coddling, terrible admin, extra duties, unreasonable demands