Memoir of a Dying Teacher

Destroying the teaching profession, one victim at a time.

Disclaimer: this article is specific to the trials and tribulations associated with education within a general perspective. Consideration of educational endeavors within special needs classrooms, although philosophically similar to the experienced stressors of any classroom environment, deserve specific analysis, especially historically, to better address the added stressors within that teaching community.

“You would make such a great teacher,” is what was said to me by countless people.

“You have a special knack for connecting with students,” is another acute observation.

“You have a gift,” better sums up the special ability so many teachers have for educating our future.

The desire to teach, to be apart of the solution, to make a difference in the lives of others is a true calling.

So…are teachers really leaving the profession?

The teaching profession is experiencing the worst shortage in over 30 years. The numbers vary based on the scope and depth of statistical research, but current estimates indicate there are somewhere between 200,000 to 300,000 teacher and education support staff vacancies in the US, and growing. While the Covid pandemic ushered in a new wave of vacancies, school districts have been struggling with teacher shortages for over three decades, or more. Yes, Covid made matters worse, but the problem has been around for far too long.

A recent survey conducted by the We Are Teachers foundation indicates that 45% of teachers plan to leave the profession in the next two years. That’s approximately 135,000 teachers. In June of 2023, just over 51,000 teachers quit the teaching profession. That doesn’t include attrition due to mass retirements, nor does that include the number of teachers who left the profession midyear at the end of 2022. Regardless, the loss of total talent is staggering.

Not to worry, say some, as there will always be a new generation of teachers to fill the void. Or…NOT. The Pew Research Center, which conducted a study on teacher education programs found that many universities and colleges are struggling to find teaching candidates. In fact, some university programs have had to suspend courses or close down programs altogether due to a lack of interest. To put it bluntly, with so many teachers leaving and no one to take up the banner, the education system is in major crises mode, with no viable solution to resolve the many problems.

So…why are so many teachers leaving the profession?

Pay! Well…sorta. A majority of teachers, approximately 53%, hold advanced degrees (master’s or a doctorate), yet the average teacher salary in the US is a meager $68k. Some states are paying their teachers an average of just $43k. That’s simply an average, which means some teachers are making far less salary than they paid for their degree, just so they can teach your kid.

On the bright side, a few school districts and state legislators across the country, prompted by community concerns over the sheer number of vacancies, have made modest improvements in teacher salaries. Unfortunately, the reactive actions of a few have come too little, too late. Out of the 23 states where legislators proposed increases to teacher salaries, only six states were successful in passing the initiatives. Yes…some districts in the other 17 states were able to realign their budgets to offer their teachers a slight raise, but in the end, the average increase was no more than 2.6%. In addition, manipulating district budgets required cuts in other areas, such as support mechanisms that directly benefited students. Adding insult to injury, like so many Americans and countless others across the globe, inflation nullified any progress towards increasing teacher salaries to the degree that teachers are now making 11% less than those in the profession 30 years ago.

So, yes, compensation matters, but the real reasons teachers are leaving the profession involves a far more sinister scenario.

Yes…but the benefits are really good, so why are teachers leaving the profession?

School safety is another major issue for teachers and staff. Many teachers are becoming increasingly concerned about their safety, and the safety of their students. School violence is on the rise, and teachers are literally caught in the middle. In addition to an uptick in the number of student-to-student aggression, teachers are increasingly becoming the victims of student-to-teacher (staff) violence.

School shootings, as well, are occurring more frequently across the nation. While some level of gun violence has occurred in US schools throughout its history, the sheer scale of this category of violence, and the type of weaponry being used to carry out these attacks, has intensified exponentially. The numbers are getting worse. Incidents of school shootings are on the rise, and the number of victims per incident are also rising. The 1970’s recorded an average of 17 school-related shootings per year, compared to 22 per year throughout the 1980’s. In the 1990’s, that number grew to 29 shootings per year, and the early 2000’s experienced 36 shooting per year. By 2010, the US witnessed 52 school shootings per year. If current projections hold out, there will have been well over 400 school shootings in 2023.

As if school violence wasn’t enough of a stressor, the unforgiving torrent pace of never-ending multitasking and crowd controlling is negatively impacting many teachers’ mental health. A staggering number of teachers are suffering from anxiety, chronic fatigue, and/or PTSD. Simply put, the education system is killing its teachers, in one way or another. According to the National Institute for Health (NIH), 11% of teachers suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) directly related to teaching. Keep in mind that this percentage only represents those individuals who sought help, resulting in diagnosis.

PTSD is a tricky thing. Mental health professionals aren’t in the habit of seeking out patients. The NIH indicates that most people who suffer from mild to chronic symptoms of PTSD never seek help. Often, PTSD goes un-noticed or misdiagnosed…until its too late.

Teachers, by nature, are those who selflessly take care of others before taking care of themselves. As such, the teacher is a problem-solver…for others. They’re so busy taking care of other people’s children (and parents) while living in self-denial about their own well-being. Also, let us be reminded that teachers are human beings, often with families of their own to take care of. So…recognizing symptoms of PTSD in oneself, and seeking help, isn’t in the teacher DNA, indicating that 11% is just the tip of the iceberg.

So…school district leaders can fix this…right?

Today’s teaching expectations are unsustainable! As expected, teaching has changed a great deal from the 1950’s. Sixty-eight years ago, teacher responsibilities included, well…teaching. Teachers were the keepers and dispensers of knowledge, with 80% of their time dedicated to teaching. Oh sure, classroom management, grading, and curriculum planning were part of the job description, but the emphasis was primarily on teaching children. Teachers taught, and children learned…or not.

In the 1950’s the teacher taught the class, rather than focusing on the individual student. This isn’t to say that teachers in the 1950’s didn’t help individual students. They did! And that’s what teachers have always done…help the struggling students while teaching the masses. The difference between then and now is the mandated expectations of the teacher. As an example, the choice to make the most of one’s learning experience and graduate was the responsibility of the student as a young adult. In the 1950’s, the high school graduation rate was approximately 65–68%. Having a foundational education without having graduated high school was acceptable because success wasn’t contingent on a diploma, but rather on a good paying job with a pension plan.

Okay…but why are teachers leaving the profession in mass, today?

By the early 2000’s, teacher responsibilities had drastically changed. Today, the teacher workload is absolutely unsustainable. Teachers are required to wear many hats. In addition to the ever-expanding range of differentiated instructional practices, in which the teacher plans and facilitates engaging lessons to meet the growing needs of each and every student under his or her charge, teachers are bound to address the mounting social-emotional well-being of each child during every moment of the day.

Teacher-parent communications has also changed, for the worse. There was a time when calling home to address student concerns was actually about the student’s actions, or inactions. A call home resulted in a certain level of parental embarrassment. The teacher, as the educational authority, was respected by the community for their service to teach.

Today, societal entitlement has drastically altered the teacher-parent relationship. Calling home often renders a teacher susceptible to incrimination in which the parents accuse the teacher of dereliction of duty or for being the antecedent (cause) of the child’s poor behavior. One student punching another student in the face, according to many entitled parents, occurred because the teacher was not sufficiently attentive, or because the seating chart was too restrictive, or because the teacher assigned too much homework, or because the teacher failed to address their child’s social-emotional well-being, or because…etc.

Regardless, the teacher becomes the target, and the assailing student gets a free pass to act out. To compound the situation, many school districts now require a superfluous amount of teacher generated documentation, including either parent contact via email or phone, or a face-to-face parent conference, and the time-consuming submittal of a behavioral referral before administration will intervene. This often leaves the teacher further distracted from actual planning and teaching, which is what they were hired to do in the first place.

Currently, the academic process, the actual teaching of the student, accounts for approximately 20–25% of a teacher’s time, at best, in the classroom. The rest of the time is typically spent on classroom management and student discipline. Okay, who am I kidding? In today’s classroom, classroom management involves dealing with disruptive and distracting behavior, especially since the invention of the smartphone and social media.

Yes…there were disruptive students back in the 1950’s, but the differences lie in the fact that teachers in the 1950’s bore a certain level of educational authority, which came with a heightened level of professional respect. In short, disrupting class and disrespecting the teacher resulted in swift, sometimes punitive actions, often by the parents.

Another generational consideration was that until recently, students who, for whatever reason, sabotaged their learning and the learning of others were likely to fall academically behind his or her peers, resulting in grade retention. The possibility of your child repeating a grade for the third time could result in societal humiliation. As a very conservative generation, most parents of the 1950’s worked with the teacher and school, and not against them, to ensure their child was not the individual stealing the teacher’s right to teach and the other students’ right to learn. The solution was for schools and parents, and in fact communities, to work together to help students progress to the next grade. This level of cooperation and mutual respect especially benefited those students who were already behind their peers but continued to learn at or near grade level with community intervention. It takes a village!

Today, retention is off the table in most states, accounting for only 1.9% of the total student population, regardless of the academic and social progress of the child. Somewhere along the years, parents fought to remove the threat of having their child retained a grade or more. On that note, parental accountability wasn’t the only cause for change. Studies on grade retention found that doing so is monetarily expensive for school districts. Once more, research has determined that grade retention does more harm than good, both academically and socially.

Retention isn’t the point. By some obtuse means, retention in the 1950’s afforded a more academically homogenous grade level student body. Those teachers were responsible for teaching to the grade. End of story. That was their job.

In today’s classroom, teachers are required to teach across all grade levels, in the same class. It is not uncommon for teachers to have 30–40 students in a class academically functioning anywhere from 3–4 grades below and 3–4 grades above grade level in which all of the students are of the same/similar age. The instructional compliance trigger phrase that many educational pontiffs like to use is “differentiated instruction.” The idea is simple. Start with a baseline of instruction, then stretch a little below and a little above the given grade to accommodate each student with the opportunity to achieve grade level proficiency. Sounds like a wonderful teacherly this to do as a professional educator, but in today’s classroom, “differentiated instruction” is requiring teachers to teach across several grade levels at the same time. To add salt to the gushing wound, many districts are using “differentiated instruction” as an evaluation criterion that handicaps teacher professional growth.

As if using evaluation tactics associated with egregiously ridiculous differentiated mandates wasn’t enough, most districts are now using standardized test results to leverage compliance initiatives within the teaching ranks, either officially through evaluations, or unofficially through acts of intimidation and censorship. It’s a simple process. Better test scores result in a higher rating for both the school and the district from the likes of organizations such as Goodschools. Higher ratings can result in administrative advancements or favorable placements, but rarely reflects the difficult work of the individual teacher. I know…I’ve been there.

Other than finals and associated subject tests, teachers in the 1950’s were not accountable for standardized testing. The first official standardized test was the American College Test (ACT), which was first administered in 1959. Today’s teachers are required to administer a plethora of mandated standardized testing regiments throughout the school year, of which the most infamous test is the Smarter Balance Assessment (SBA). Teachers have an finite number of hours in which to teach and instill knowledge in their students, but standardized testing results in approximately 20–25 hours in lost instruction…for each test. Instructional schedules do not account for the number of hours in lost instruction due to standardized testing, but it is the teacher who is responsible for testing outcomes. Granted, testing accountability is a core subject issue that directly impacts English, mathematics, and the occasional science or history class, but the testing process typically interrupts the learning schedule across the school.

Society is asking today’s teachers to do the impossible. Teachers don’t get promoted (other than going into administration) even for doing an outstanding job. Teachers don’t earn bonuses for going above and beyond. Teachers are expected to work an unimaginable number of hours under the most stressful conditions while being overlooked as worthy enough to earn a living wage. Society at large doesn’t respect the teacher, or the person.

Yes, yes, yes, but why are so many teachers leaving the profession?

Substandard pay, unsupportive incompetent educational leadership, growing parental admonishment, off the chart’s student behavior, exceptionally long hours, volume testing resulting in loss of instruction, unparalleled contempt towards both the teacher and the profession, insufficient consideration for the time constraints associated with task completion, and abject disregard for the well-being of the individual teacher as a human being are all contributing factors to the demise of the teaching profession and public education as a whole. In short, teachers are experiencing mass burnout.

Psychologists Maslach, Schaufeli, and Leiter (2001) conducted a study on the subject of occupational burnout, published in the Annual Review of Psychology, indicating that “Burnout is a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job, and is defined by the three dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy. Burnout happens when you’re overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to keep up with life’s incessant demands.”

Another clinical observation, published in WebMD, concluded that “ burnout is a form of exhaustion caused by constantly feeling swamped. It’s a result of excessive and prolonged emotional, physical, and mental stress.”

People leave their profession in search of other types of work for varying reasons other than burnout, but teachers who are experiencing burnout are not being provided sufficient support enough to keep them in the classroom. Too many teachers are experiencing burnout symptoms such as chronic headaches, fatigue and body aches, frequent illness, a sense of helplessness and/or failure, a feeling of detachment or aloneness, loss of motivation, withdrawal, reduction in performance, and momentary outbursts as associated with anger, just the name a few.

The causes of burnout are somewhat more insidious and include a sense of lack of control at work, lack of recognition, demanding expectations, overbearing responsibilities with no support, excessive working hours, sleepless nights, and frequent ambiguity associated with altering expectations.

Teachers are working in a high stakes environment with little to no appreciation, respect, or support. Both their physical and mental well-being are in jeopardy. The warning signs regarding teacher burnout and impending vacancies have been around for decades, but nobody’s listening. For many, the damage is done. Once burnout sets in, the likelihood of reparation is, well…unlikely.

What’s needed now, to save our children’s educational opportunities, is for the system to be completely redesigned from the ground up. But…that’s a subject for another article.