Why I left the US, and why so many teachers leave the profession
I've read a few news articles recently about how many people are leaving the teaching profession in the United States. As someone who recently did just that, I have a lot to say about it. I love teaching. I can't imagine doing anything else. I think it's the most important job in the world. I can't imagine going back to doing it in the United States.
Why do passionate and dedicated teachers leave the profession?
Teaching in the United States sucks, and it's not likely to get better any time soon.
Why am I qualified to talk about this? I was an elementary school teacher for 12 years. I taught at the Kindergarten, 3rd grade, and 5th grade levels. I mentored new teachers and served on district curriculum adoption committees. I was a site representative for my teacher's union during and after contract negotiations. I've seen the ways the sausage is made up close from multiple perspectives.
I worked in the Berkeley Unified School District, and my experiences should be judged based on that. It's a well-funded district that pays its teachers well, in a rich city with a world-class University. It has active PTAs that help fund plenty of valuable programs. While I was there I had all the textbooks and materials I needed to do my job.
And teaching there still sucked. It would have been so much worse in a district that has few or none of those things. Take what I say about the challenges of teaching and multiply them manyfold for poorer districts.
So let's get into it, shall we?
1. Teaching in the US sucks because teachers aren't respected
"Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach"
Have you ever heard this quote? It illustrates the attitude the majority of people in the United States have towards teachers, and it's nonsense.
Teachers are highly trained professionals and experts in their field. Any teacher who has cleared their credential (which takes about two years) has the equivalent of a Master's degree in teaching pedagogy and child development. They'll go through dozens of hours of continuing education each year to stay up to date on the latest techniques and theory. They'll spend even more time learning their curricula and adapting it for their students' use.
They know what they're talking about. They're educated professionals. They're subject matter experts.
Non-doctors would never think to tell a heart surgeon how they should fix a defective valve on their patient.
Non-Lawyers wouldn't dare to tell someone how to argue a complicated case in front of a judge.
Non-plumbers won't tell them what they need to do to replace the piping on a house.
You see where I'm going with this, right?
Everyone thinks that because they've been in school that they have some special insight into learning and teaching. Parents think that because they've raised their children that they know what works in a classroom.
I'm going to be blunt: you don't. You have no idea what it takes to teach a classroom of students with wildly different educational, emotional, and social needs. You don't have any clue how to manage the interpersonal relationships of 30 adolescents who may or may not have the social skills or coping strategies to deal with the many problems they face on a daily basis. You don't understand what it takes to run a classroom until you've tried it.
You could go a long way towards attracting and retaining great teachers if you treated them like the trained professionals that they are.
2. Teaching in the US sucks because teachers aren't paid what they're worth
Teachers are criminally underpaid for the work that they do. It's true that we get good benefits, vacation time, and a defined benefit pension. We get regular pay increases as we get more years of service. Those are important and extraordinarily rare in the workplace today.
They don't mean much if you can't afford to live, though.
A first year teacher in Berkeley will make about $53,000 in a county where the average price of a studio apartment is over $2000 a month. Even if you share that with one other person, you're still going to have trouble saving any substantial amount of money. You'll be living paycheck to paycheck for a long while. Want to start a family? I hope you have a partner who makes a lot more than you do, or you're going to struggle to make ends meet.
I did a lot of research on teacher pay while writing this. I could show you data from plenty of other districts that reinforce this point. Teachers are not paid enough to live in the areas they teach. It's no wonder so many people leave the profession in the first few years.
As a point of comparison, I'm making just slightly less now than I did in my last year teaching in Berkeley. My employer pays my rent and I get an additional allowance for food and health care. I've saved more in the last six months than I did in the last five years.
3. Teaching in the US sucks because we're expected to solve all the social problems in the country and blamed when we don't
Public schools are supposed to give a high-quality education to anyone without regard to a student's race, gender, religion, ethnicity, or wealth. Every teacher tries to do this despite the overwhelming challenges against them, in a country where racial and economic inequality is deeply entrenched.
If they don't, they're "failing our kids" and sanctioned.
How are schools supposed to solve structural inequality? How can a school that's inadequately funded because it's in a poor neighborhood compete with a lavishly funded school from a rich neighborhood? How can a child who comes to school hungry, cold, and tired expect to achieve at the level of one who doesn't?
The social problems of the United States run far deeper than schools' ability to fix, but schools are blamed when they can't do it. It's frustrating and demoralizing.
Even more frustrating is the fact that there's a regular crop of "schools are failing our kids" stories every year despite the fact that national achievement keeps rising and national achievement gaps keep narrowing. Look at NAEP data year over year and you'll see this.
It's never good enough. We're never good enough.
4. Where do we go from here?
I don't pretend to have the solutions to any of the things I talked about. I'm not even sure that they can be solved. The issues are complicated and messy and they've been around for a long time.
I could have written more. A lot more. There are plenty of things I didn't talk about at all, like inadequate training, indifferent administration, and the ever-increasing responsibilities teachers are burdened with. I could write an entire post on the heart-wrenching reality of active shooter drills and I might do that in the future.
I salute anyone that stays in despite everything. You deserve much more than you get, and I hope one day you'll actually get it.
Why do passionate and dedicated teachers leave the profession?
Teaching in the United States sucks, and it's not likely to get better any time soon.
Why am I qualified to talk about this? I was an elementary school teacher for 12 years. I taught at the Kindergarten, 3rd grade, and 5th grade levels. I mentored new teachers and served on district curriculum adoption committees. I was a site representative for my teacher's union during and after contract negotiations. I've seen the ways the sausage is made up close from multiple perspectives.
I worked in the Berkeley Unified School District, and my experiences should be judged based on that. It's a well-funded district that pays its teachers well, in a rich city with a world-class University. It has active PTAs that help fund plenty of valuable programs. While I was there I had all the textbooks and materials I needed to do my job.
And teaching there still sucked. It would have been so much worse in a district that has few or none of those things. Take what I say about the challenges of teaching and multiply them manyfold for poorer districts.
So let's get into it, shall we?
1. Teaching in the US sucks because teachers aren't respected
"Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach"
Have you ever heard this quote? It illustrates the attitude the majority of people in the United States have towards teachers, and it's nonsense.
Teachers are highly trained professionals and experts in their field. Any teacher who has cleared their credential (which takes about two years) has the equivalent of a Master's degree in teaching pedagogy and child development. They'll go through dozens of hours of continuing education each year to stay up to date on the latest techniques and theory. They'll spend even more time learning their curricula and adapting it for their students' use.
They know what they're talking about. They're educated professionals. They're subject matter experts.
Non-doctors would never think to tell a heart surgeon how they should fix a defective valve on their patient.
Non-Lawyers wouldn't dare to tell someone how to argue a complicated case in front of a judge.
Non-plumbers won't tell them what they need to do to replace the piping on a house.
You see where I'm going with this, right?
Everyone thinks that because they've been in school that they have some special insight into learning and teaching. Parents think that because they've raised their children that they know what works in a classroom.
I'm going to be blunt: you don't. You have no idea what it takes to teach a classroom of students with wildly different educational, emotional, and social needs. You don't have any clue how to manage the interpersonal relationships of 30 adolescents who may or may not have the social skills or coping strategies to deal with the many problems they face on a daily basis. You don't understand what it takes to run a classroom until you've tried it.
You could go a long way towards attracting and retaining great teachers if you treated them like the trained professionals that they are.
2. Teaching in the US sucks because teachers aren't paid what they're worth
Teachers are criminally underpaid for the work that they do. It's true that we get good benefits, vacation time, and a defined benefit pension. We get regular pay increases as we get more years of service. Those are important and extraordinarily rare in the workplace today.
They don't mean much if you can't afford to live, though.
A first year teacher in Berkeley will make about $53,000 in a county where the average price of a studio apartment is over $2000 a month. Even if you share that with one other person, you're still going to have trouble saving any substantial amount of money. You'll be living paycheck to paycheck for a long while. Want to start a family? I hope you have a partner who makes a lot more than you do, or you're going to struggle to make ends meet.
I did a lot of research on teacher pay while writing this. I could show you data from plenty of other districts that reinforce this point. Teachers are not paid enough to live in the areas they teach. It's no wonder so many people leave the profession in the first few years.
As a point of comparison, I'm making just slightly less now than I did in my last year teaching in Berkeley. My employer pays my rent and I get an additional allowance for food and health care. I've saved more in the last six months than I did in the last five years.
3. Teaching in the US sucks because we're expected to solve all the social problems in the country and blamed when we don't
Public schools are supposed to give a high-quality education to anyone without regard to a student's race, gender, religion, ethnicity, or wealth. Every teacher tries to do this despite the overwhelming challenges against them, in a country where racial and economic inequality is deeply entrenched.
If they don't, they're "failing our kids" and sanctioned.
How are schools supposed to solve structural inequality? How can a school that's inadequately funded because it's in a poor neighborhood compete with a lavishly funded school from a rich neighborhood? How can a child who comes to school hungry, cold, and tired expect to achieve at the level of one who doesn't?
The social problems of the United States run far deeper than schools' ability to fix, but schools are blamed when they can't do it. It's frustrating and demoralizing.
Even more frustrating is the fact that there's a regular crop of "schools are failing our kids" stories every year despite the fact that national achievement keeps rising and national achievement gaps keep narrowing. Look at NAEP data year over year and you'll see this.
It's never good enough. We're never good enough.
4. Where do we go from here?
I don't pretend to have the solutions to any of the things I talked about. I'm not even sure that they can be solved. The issues are complicated and messy and they've been around for a long time.
I could have written more. A lot more. There are plenty of things I didn't talk about at all, like inadequate training, indifferent administration, and the ever-increasing responsibilities teachers are burdened with. I could write an entire post on the heart-wrenching reality of active shooter drills and I might do that in the future.
I salute anyone that stays in despite everything. You deserve much more than you get, and I hope one day you'll actually get it.
One factor not mentioned is that unequal societies encourage all the conditions you enumerate. Plutocrats don't want an educated opposition. Childhood poverty is a far better predictor of educational outcomes than all the merit pay, charter school and test 'em 'till their eyeballs bleed tactics to "improve outcomes."
ReplyDeleteImmiserating the population does not stop with de-funding public education (federal funding for higher education has diminished 55% since 1972, and even more in states...gee, I wonder why tuition keeps rising...?).
Attacks on any form of social welfare spending insure "labor discipline." That means workers had better take whatever crappy job is on offer, or suffer poverty, homelessness and even starvation.
That is the state of play, unfortunately, and until the population realizes this (i.e. gets educated), we'll get catastrophes like those you describe. In fact it was H.G. Wells who said "Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe."
This is the curse of "wealth..."