Thankful for Teachers? Do Something.
/By Adam W. Jordan, Ph.D. & Todd S. Hawley, Ph.D.
Teachers are leaving the profession at an alarming rate.
If you tune in even occasionally to trends in public education, you already know this to be true. You might also know it’s truer for new teachers, those with less than five years of classroom experience.
Data from the National Center for Education Statistics suggest that 8 percent of teachers in any year will leave the profession altogether. Retirements factor into that number, but a more recent, 2016 report from the Learning Policy Institute (LPI) shows 70 percent of those who leave education every year do it for reasons other than retirement.
For new teachers, the numbers are much grimmer. Upwards of 30 percent of new teachers will not teach more than five years before calling it a career and moving on to new pastures. Researchers attribute these trends to many things: stress, public perception of public education, and teacher pay, to name a few. The LPI report reveals other alarming trends. Not only do new teachers leave at higher rates, so do teachers of color and teachers in schools with the highest needs. Teachers of color are more likely to change schools — and are more likely to teach in schools that serve high-poverty communities, where the demand for good teachers is highest.
In short, we lose great teachers faster in the communities that need them most.
Regionally, the South sees the highest turnover rate: 16 percent, according to the 2016 LIP report. In fact, when you’re finished reading here, do a quick Google search: “best states to teach in.” You’ll find many reports, but none shows a Southern state in the top 10. In some, you’ll be lucky to find one in the top 25, usually Kentucky or Texas.
The deeper into the South you go, the grimmer the data become.
The well-publicized phenomena of “teacher burnout” is real. We take no issue with that.
We take issue with how the public — and parents — respond to that problem.
Do a little background research if you are unfamiliar with the teacher-burnout literature. You quickly discover calls for teachers to “take time for themselves,” “take a mental-health day,” “join a yoga class,” or … our personal favorite … “mindfulness training!”
Have any of the people offering these suggestions ever been classroom teachers? Do they know what “time to yourself” looks like when you’re responsible for the well-being of 30 children? Do they realize that “take a day off,” in the real world, means “find a substitute, prep the entire day for that substitute, and brace yourself for chaos upon return”? Even worse than the stress of taking a day off is the reality that in North Carolina, if teachers take a personal day, they often have to pay for the substitute teachers themselves.
Trust us: There are no “mental-health days” in teaching.
Mindfulness is a good thing, of course, and empirical evidence proves it. But when we push mere lifestyle tweaks to stressed-out, aren’t we treating our teachers the way coal miners treated canaries?
Until we got fancy with technology, a caged canary accompanied every crew of coal miners. They released the bird into the mine first, because a canary would more quickly succumb to the dangers of poisonous gases than a miner would. If the bird never flew out, it was time to go. It was time to evacuate and improve the conditions of the mine, rather than add one more danger to those a coal miner faced every day. Now, imagine if we just told those miners to keep working and suggested they be “mindful,” to try some yoga, to take a day off tomorrow before they “burned out.”
Teachers are not burning out. They’re being burned. Teachers are not quitting the profession because they don’t love teaching. They quit because their profession is being devalued by exploitative public policies and a lack of fundamental investment — both monetary and societal. Teachers are not failing. The public is. We are.
Our problem is not burnout. Our problem is lack of political action. Government’s neglect of education has so soured the soil that newly planted teachers cannot flourish. We act as if teachers are to blame because they do not persist, despite the ridiculously bad conditions. We act as if teachers should just “focus” their way out of situations in which they cannot thrive.
We have not tended the garden where teachers can flourish.
Instead of trying to revive the canary, can we suggest reforming the coal mine? We offer a simpler path:
Listen. To. Teachers. Ask them to talk about why they or their colleagues leave the profession. They will tell you. And when you finish listening, act. Write the letters and make the phone call until those you elect understand that you intend to hold them accountable for what they do — or fail to do — to keep our teachers in the classroom.
The more we let teachers persist in unnecessary and oppressive environments, the more we all become a little more like that canary, just flying blindly into the inevitable.
If you are you a teacher, and working conditions have you considering a departure from teaching, we want to hear from you. If you know a teacher who is struggling to stay engaged and motivated, message us on Twitter, and we can set up a time to talk. We believe that by telling the personal stories of struggling teachers, we will prompt folks to take action aimed at making things better. We love to hear from teachers, and always appreciate your feedback.
Connect with Dr. Jordan on Twitter @aj_wade, or with Dr. Hawley at @115coffeepot. Use the hashtag #SouthernSchooling.