First year teachers quitting

[Anonymous]

I am a veteran teacher and there is no way I would encourage most people to go into teaching. It is an overwhelming job and I have many ideas about why, but mostly, the teacher prep programs need to increase classroom time before graduation, and they should have new teachers serve as aides for a year before getting a classroom. It’s really a national crisis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a veteran teacher and there is no way I would encourage most people to go into teaching. It is an overwhelming job and I have many ideas about why, but mostly, the teacher prep programs need to increase classroom time before graduation, and they should have new teachers serve as aides for a year before getting a classroom. It’s really a national crisis.

+1 as long as it is still viewed as a profession for women, we will have poor working conditions.

[Anonymous]

There have been multiple posts on how easy it will be to fill veteran teacher posts. This thread will be illustrative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These 22 year olds aren't quitting because they're afraid of covid. Each one has said the job is too hard. One was my teaching partner. I gave him all my plans. I spent hours helping him prep. He cried EVERY DAY in my classroom after school.

Well, what exactly was he crying about? Kids with home issues making him sad? Kids being violent? Maybe he didn’t think he was explaining things in a way they understood? I mean, did you pay attention to what his actual concerns were, or just dismiss them?

He was crying because he couldn't figure out how or when to teach stuff. So 2x a week i helped him for a few hours to create plans. He had no idea how to manage behavior. I'm not talking about severe behavior. I mean things like the kids who talk too much. I came into his classroom to model how to do this. He was crying because, I kid you not, he wanted to go hang out with his friends and didn't have time. He actually said this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These 22 year olds aren't quitting because they're afraid of covid. Each one has said the job is too hard. One was my teaching partner. I gave him all my plans. I spent hours helping him prep. He cried EVERY DAY in my classroom after school.

Well, what exactly was he crying about? Kids with home issues making him sad? Kids being violent? Maybe he didn’t think he was explaining things in a way they understood? I mean, did you pay attention to what his actual concerns were, or just dismiss them?

He was crying because he couldn't figure out how or when to teach stuff. So 2x a week i helped him for a few hours to create plans. He had no idea how to manage behavior. I'm not talking about severe behavior. I mean things like the kids who talk too much. I came into his classroom to model how to do this. He was crying because, I kid you not, he wanted to go hang out with his friends and didn't have time. He actually said this.

Don’t teacher training programs teach how to lesson plan and some rudimentary classroom management? I mean, we all know they don’t teach about effective reading instruction in most places, but everyone know teachers have to plan lessons right?

It also seems like in the student teaching they would have gotten a realistic job preview about the amount of hours worked during the school year. There really is no work/ life balance for teachers, and that alone can lead to burnout.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teacher preparation is the worst! You would never let a doctor right out of med school start being a doctor on their own. You would never let a lawyer right out of law school be a lawyer on their own.
Teaching involves so much skill above and beyond knowing the subject areas. And we expect new teachers to figure it out along the way.

And I was a part of a mentoring program when I was a new teacher. Although it was nice, it didn’t help me much.

The way we develop teachers seems unlike every other profession. For other professions, you leave school or training, and they give you the more routine and boring tasks. You might work hard, even harder than the more experienced people, but you aren't doing the same level of cognitive work as the most experienced people. My spouse is an LEO. As a first year officer, he worked really hard, but he was writing traffic tickets, and responding to DV calls, not solving gang murders. He worked his way up to that. I have another family member who is a software engineer who cut his teeth on the mundane pieces of code in project where senior colleagues where writing the innovative bits. Now he gets to do the fun exciting stuff. I have another family member who is an electrician. He's got the newbies pulling wires, and redoing outlets while he's creating plans, and solving the tricky bits.

But in teaching, in many places, the newest teachers don't just have the same amount of cognitive work (that takes them three times as long to figure out) they get the most challenging situations. So, if there are two positions in a department where someone has 1 or 2 preps, and one where that person has 3? Guaranteed that the newbie will get three. If there's a kid who is particularly hard? He/she will probably be in the newbie's class. If there are classes that are more likely to have challenges, like algebra 1 in a high school (where the kids who struggle the most with math, and sometimes with behavior start), the new teacher will get it while the experienced teacher gets Honors Algebra 2.

I think that if we want to fix the teacher's shortage, we need to figure out strategies to prevent burn out and drop out. One piece of that is figuring out how to bring teachers into the profession more gradually, with more time to watch and learn from people with experience and a gradual release of responsibility. I work in special ed, and was a counselor in disability specific camps, and then spent a year as a paraeducator, and then worked in a classroom with a very experienced paraeducator, before being on my own. That actually was a pretty perfect route, but few teachers get that.

[Anonymous]

Considering how easy parents think teaching is maybe some of the parents who are stay at home or have lost their jobs should take over. Plenty of people on this forum are experts at teaching.

[Anonymous]

Lots of low SAT scorers are attracted to teaching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lots of low SAT scorers are attracted to teaching.

Right the women with low SATs- uh huh. You would be one of the people who make the job harder

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a veteran teacher and there is no way I would encourage most people to go into teaching. It is an overwhelming job and I have many ideas about why, but mostly, the teacher prep programs need to increase classroom time before graduation, and they should have new teachers serve as aides for a year before getting a classroom. It’s really a national crisis.

+1 as long as it is still viewed as a profession for women, we will have poor working conditions.

The way OP describes it, I'm not sure why anyone would go into this job, especially considering the starting pay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher preparation is the worst! You would never let a doctor right out of med school start being a doctor on their own. You would never let a lawyer right out of law school be a lawyer on their own.
Teaching involves so much skill above and beyond knowing the subject areas. And we expect new teachers to figure it out along the way.

And I was a part of a mentoring program when I was a new teacher. Although it was nice, it didn’t help me much.

The way we develop teachers seems unlike every other profession. For other professions, you leave school or training, and they give you the more routine and boring tasks. You might work hard, even harder than the more experienced people, but you aren't doing the same level of cognitive work as the most experienced people. My spouse is an LEO. As a first year officer, he worked really hard, but he was writing traffic tickets, and responding to DV calls, not solving gang murders. He worked his way up to that. I have another family member who is a software engineer who cut his teeth on the mundane pieces of code in project where senior colleagues where writing the innovative bits. Now he gets to do the fun exciting stuff. I have another family member who is an electrician. He's got the newbies pulling wires, and redoing outlets while he's creating plans, and solving the tricky bits.

But in teaching, in many places, the newest teachers don't just have the same amount of cognitive work (that takes them three times as long to figure out) they get the most challenging situations. So, if there are two positions in a department where someone has 1 or 2 preps, and one where that person has 3? Guaranteed that the newbie will get three. If there's a kid who is particularly hard? He/she will probably be in the newbie's class. If there are classes that are more likely to have challenges, like algebra 1 in a high school (where the kids who struggle the most with math, and sometimes with behavior start), the new teacher will get it while the experienced teacher gets Honors Algebra 2.

I think that if we want to fix the teacher's shortage, we need to figure out strategies to prevent burn out and drop out. One piece of that is figuring out how to bring teachers into the profession more gradually, with more time to watch and learn from people with experience and a gradual release of responsibility. I work in special ed, and was a counselor in disability specific camps, and then spent a year as a paraeducator, and then worked in a classroom with a very experienced paraeducator, before being on my own. That actually was a pretty perfect route, but few teachers get that.

You are so right. The most tenured and experienced teachers shouldn’t be the ones taking the easy classes.

It is so ironic since the field of education preaches the gradual release of responsibility (I do, we do, you do) but doesn’t practice it for its own members.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher preparation is the worst! You would never let a doctor right out of med school start being a doctor on their own. You would never let a lawyer right out of law school be a lawyer on their own.
Teaching involves so much skill above and beyond knowing the subject areas. And we expect new teachers to figure it out along the way.

And I was a part of a mentoring program when I was a new teacher. Although it was nice, it didn’t help me much.

The way we develop teachers seems unlike every other profession. For other professions, you leave school or training, and they give you the more routine and boring tasks. You might work hard, even harder than the more experienced people, but you aren't doing the same level of cognitive work as the most experienced people. My spouse is an LEO. As a first year officer, he worked really hard, but he was writing traffic tickets, and responding to DV calls, not solving gang murders. He worked his way up to that. I have another family member who is a software engineer who cut his teeth on the mundane pieces of code in project where senior colleagues where writing the innovative bits. Now he gets to do the fun exciting stuff. I have another family member who is an electrician. He's got the newbies pulling wires, and redoing outlets while he's creating plans, and solving the tricky bits.

But in teaching, in many places, the newest teachers don't just have the same amount of cognitive work (that takes them three times as long to figure out) they get the most challenging situations. So, if there are two positions in a department where someone has 1 or 2 preps, and one where that person has 3? Guaranteed that the newbie will get three. If there's a kid who is particularly hard? He/she will probably be in the newbie's class. If there are classes that are more likely to have challenges, like algebra 1 in a high school (where the kids who struggle the most with math, and sometimes with behavior start), the new teacher will get it while the experienced teacher gets Honors Algebra 2.

I think that if we want to fix the teacher's shortage, we need to figure out strategies to prevent burn out and drop out. One piece of that is figuring out how to bring teachers into the profession more gradually, with more time to watch and learn from people with experience and a gradual release of responsibility. I work in special ed, and was a counselor in disability specific camps, and then spent a year as a paraeducator, and then worked in a classroom with a very experienced paraeducator, before being on my own. That actually was a pretty perfect route, but few teachers get that.

You are so right. The most tenured and experienced teachers shouldn’t be the ones taking the easy classes.

It is so ironic since the field of education preaches the gradual release of responsibility (I do, we do, you do) but doesn’t practice it for its own members.

So the veteran teachers had to take the hard classes when they were new teachers and figured it out and now they have to only teach the hard classes while the new teacher get the easy classes. That doesn't make sense either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teacher preparation is the worst! You would never let a doctor right out of med school start being a doctor on their own. You would never let a lawyer right out of law school be a lawyer on their own.
Teaching involves so much skill above and beyond knowing the subject areas. And we expect new teachers to figure it out along the way.

And I was a part of a mentoring program when I was a new teacher. Although it was nice, it didn’t help me much.

The way we develop teachers seems unlike every other profession. For other professions, you leave school or training, and they give you the more routine and boring tasks. You might work hard, even harder than the more experienced people, but you aren't doing the same level of cognitive work as the most experienced people. My spouse is an LEO. As a first year officer, he worked really hard, but he was writing traffic tickets, and responding to DV calls, not solving gang murders. He worked his way up to that. I have another family member who is a software engineer who cut his teeth on the mundane pieces of code in project where senior colleagues where writing the innovative bits. Now he gets to do the fun exciting stuff. I have another family member who is an electrician. He's got the newbies pulling wires, and redoing outlets while he's creating plans, and solving the tricky bits.

But in teaching, in many places, the newest teachers don't just have the same amount of cognitive work (that takes them three times as long to figure out) they get the most challenging situations. So, if there are two positions in a department where someone has 1 or 2 preps, and one where that person has 3? Guaranteed that the newbie will get three. If there's a kid who is particularly hard? He/she will probably be in the newbie's class. If there are classes that are more likely to have challenges, like algebra 1 in a high school (where the kids who struggle the most with math, and sometimes with behavior start), the new teacher will get it while the experienced teacher gets Honors Algebra 2.

I think that if we want to fix the teacher's shortage, we need to figure out strategies to prevent burn out and drop out. One piece of that is figuring out how to bring teachers into the profession more gradually, with more time to watch and learn from people with experience and a gradual release of responsibility. I work in special ed, and was a counselor in disability specific camps, and then spent a year as a paraeducator, and then worked in a classroom with a very experienced paraeducator, before being on my own. That actually was a pretty perfect route, but few teachers get that.

You are so right. The most tenured and experienced teachers shouldn’t be the ones taking the easy classes.

It is so ironic since the field of education preaches the gradual release of responsibility (I do, we do, you do) but doesn’t practice it for its own members.

So the veteran teachers had to take the hard classes when they were new teachers and figured it out and now they have to only teach the hard classes while the new teacher get the easy classes. That doesn't make sense either.

In many professions, you earn the most challenging roles. Can you imagine a lawyer saying "I don't want to go before the Supreme Court, I worked too long to do something that hard. Give it to my junior associates, I'm sticking with traffic tickets." No, they see it as an honor.

Yes, there will be a generation of teachers who will have it hard at both ends. Some will be annoyed, but if our choices are between doing the right thing by them, or doing the right thing by the next generation of teachers, and their students (because when we overwhelm new teachers and they leave, in the end it's our students who suffer), then we need to pick the future.

-- veteran special ed teacher

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These 22 year olds aren't quitting because they're afraid of covid. Each one has said the job is too hard. One was my teaching partner. I gave him all my plans. I spent hours helping him prep. He cried EVERY DAY in my classroom after school.

Well, what exactly was he crying about? Kids with home issues making him sad? Kids being violent? Maybe he didn’t think he was explaining things in a way they understood? I mean, did you pay attention to what his actual concerns were, or just dismiss them?

He was crying because he couldn't figure out how or when to teach stuff. So 2x a week i helped him for a few hours to create plans. He had no idea how to manage behavior. I'm not talking about severe behavior. I mean things like the kids who talk too much. I came into his classroom to model how to do this. He was crying because, I kid you not, he wanted to go hang out with his friends and didn't have time. He actually said this.

Don’t teacher training programs teach how to lesson plan and some rudimentary classroom management? I mean, we all know they don’t teach about effective reading instruction in most places, but everyone know teachers have to plan lessons right?

It also seems like in the student teaching they would have gotten a realistic job preview about the amount of hours worked during the school year. There really is no work/ life balance for teachers, and that alone can lead to burnout.

This is very true. I had no idea about this until I had my own classroom. If we were honest with prospective teachers about this, we wouldn't have many prospective teachers.

And to be honest, it's still like that after a decade. To do my job well, I put in far more than 40 hours per week. It takes hours to properly read student compositions and write thoughtful comments. It takes hours to read and prepare lessons. I could cut corners like many of my colleagues, but I'm just OCD enough that this would leave me in a stew of anxiety.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach in a very large school with several hundred staff members in the Midwest. 20 years ago, we almost never hired a first year teacher. We didnt have to. Only the very best, proven and experienced teachers were even had their resumes looked at. Now? The teacher shortage is so bad, we're lucky to get more than a dozen applicants. Most are first year teachers.
First years have a lot of energy and no skill. They're like puppies. Which would be okay except we've had so many quit mid year the last few years. We've been teaching for 4 weeks. In that time, despite a robust mentoring program, a fabulous admin team, and awesome students, we've had THREE first year teachers quit. One quit after day 2! And since we lost most of our subs, the rest of us are left to double up classes. I have 45 kids in my AP bio class until or if we can find a replacement. Kids are sitting on the floor (yes we are in person). I am talking to our HR to see if we can put something in the contract to penalize people for breaking their contract. I'm tired of 22 year olds, who think they're going to save the world, meeting real life teaching and, once they have a few tough days i a row, wussing out. This job is hard. Don't get a teaching degree if you can't handle a year or two of 80 hour weeks and most of those weeks sucking. It takes that long for things to get better.

Your school has been very lucky for many years.

I teach in a large mostly suburban district in the DMV. We experience this every year and have for the last twenty. Even in my cohort of career changers that came into the profession and my district in a program designed to place experts in their fields in teaching, it happened. We lost two teachers the first year. One in the first month.

October is a major shedding month. One of the veteran teachers at my last school used to warn the mentors to step up support in the last week of September even if our mentees didn’t outwardly appear to be struggling. She had a lot of theories why there was an October peak in loss of new teachers. I’ll share the two that I think are the most common:
1) the September shock wears off. In September, the brand new teacher learns what teaching is really like. And they most likely have never sat through as many useless meetings in their entire life. They are drowning and someone is talking about the cost of upgrading lifeboats we haven’t yet purchased. When they cry out for help, they are told to google swimming lessons.
2) in October usually (pre-Covid), new teachers go to their college or HS homecoming. They see their peers looking rested and hear stories of free evenings spent dating and socializing. They realize other 22/23 year olds are not killing themselves for $30k.

Layering Covid on top of everything else just adds to their disillusionment and stress.