Why We're Leaving

No one ever told me that teaching would be easy.

No one told me a lot of things about teaching. That's one of the hallmarks of this profession; you never really know what it's like until you've experienced it for yourself. Been in a classroom, with students in front of you, waiting for you to lead them through the experiences of learning.

My first year of teaching, a 6th grade girl fell in love with me and began stalking me and members of my family on social media, even going so far as to privately send my mom a decidedly off-color note with her assumptions that I reciprocated her feelings.

I don't think that anything could have prepared me for that.

The next year I moved to a new state and a new grade and loved it; I was exposed to children and families with cultures far different from the ones I'd grown accustomed to in my southern hometown. I felt like I was growing as a teacher and as a person.

But slowly, I became aware of, what I think, is one of the things that makes teaching extremely hard - even if this element is supposed to be a helpful one.

Parents.

A majority of parents are the kind that make your job easier; they believe in holding their kids accountable, asking them if they were paying attention in class and listening when the teacher called or emailed about untoward behaviors.

They always say, however, that the smallest group can make the loudest noise.

These were the parents who would question my every move, look behind their student not to see if they had been doing their work, but what I as the teacher had done to make sure that their student succeeded. When their student got bad grades, they tried to convince me to change it or give extra chances (though those chances had often already been given). I was constantly covering my tracks, looking over my shoulder to make sure that I dotted every "i" and crossed every "t." I began an internal fight to not treat children differently because I knew that their parents were the ones making my life hard. When the principal began to side with the parents over me, however, I decided it was time to go.

At my new school, the parents are largely supportive and don't give me issues; if they have concerns, they bring them to me and we discuss it and handle things. But this year, in the midst of this pandemic, it's not my students' parents that are making me want to leave.

If you've watched the news at all lately, you'll realize that many parents have taken a very strong "us vs. them" mentality when it comes to teachers and unions fighting for safe reopening plans for school buildings. "Figure it out!" They scream. "Teachers are lazy! They've gotten comfortable at home and don't want to go back!"

Then there are the parents who claim that they deserve part of the teacher's pay because they've been homeschooling their students all year during virtual learning.

Let me pause here and assure you, as a formerly homeschooled person, that what these parents are doing is NOT homeschooling. Teachers have turned into curriculum writers this year, reinventing the wheel to adapt previously purchased curricula and create virtual learning experiences for students, as well as turning worksheets and assignments into digital formats so that their students can access them. We spend countless hours, more than the usual unpaid overtime hours that many teachers worked before the pandemic, creating all of these lessons and resources. All that we're asking parents to do is to support their students; the bulk of the work was already done for you. This isn't homeschooling.

I can practically guarantee you that teachers will be leaving en masse at the end of the year; if not sooner, forced to use their leave time to avoid going back into the buildings without being vaccinated or being afraid that their loved ones or students may be contaminated by them.

I've never been that teacher who planned on staying in the profession for fifty years; my passion is writing fiction, and teaching was, originally, just a job to pay the bills. But as I got deeper into the profession and became a better teacher, and learned more about the reward it is to see a student's eyes light up when something clicks for them, and genuinely enjoyed learning about the different students and their personalities and backgrounds, I realized that it was a job that I enjoyed. I developed a passion for teaching Black and Brown kids, educating them not just about "Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic," but helping them to develop the skills that anyone not white needs to succeed in America. I decided to use my passion for reading and writing books to advocate for more books that show characters that looked more like my students. I even plan to pursue a doctorate on the subject.

The 2020 - 2021 school year, however, has beaten me down in a way that I never thought possible. I have never felt so undervalued as a person in my entire life; between the schools trying to continue "business as usual"; students either not logging in at all or logging in and not participating or turning in their work; parents complaining about their students not learning; parents treating teachers like glorified (and grossly underpaid) babysitters, and the world at large discussing "learning loss," I have this ever-present sense of despair. I feel like I'm failing my babies, that any passion that I ever had for teaching is just fading away.

Other teachers are feeling similarly, as evidenced by social media posts in teacher groups. People are considering their options. Do you realize how defeated someone must feel to push aside years of schooling and experience to begin a new career? Sure, many teachers try to find something education-adjacent when searching for a new job, but sometimes it just isn't in the cards.

No one ever told me that teaching would be easy.

But no one ever told me that these feelings of being overwhelmed, underworked, and underpaid would push me away from the classroom, either.

This is why we're leaving.

Teaching ain't easy.