Teachers in my district leaving mid year

[Anonymous]

Class sizes are too big. I’m on year 3 as a teacher. The first two years I routinely worked 7 days a week to keep up with planning and grading.
This year is a little easier but I still work 6 days a week.
I like teaching but I feel like a chump working 60 hours a week for such low pay

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pp:

But when the prior teacher stops working weekend, threads are made about her in the FCPS forum on how her grades aren’t done in a timely manner.

If I want my job to be a 40 hour per week job, there would be zero grading done. My planning periods are enough time to plan, not grade. I can create and copy one lesson in an hour if I’m super fast. I have two preps on the block, so if I keep up with that I’m on track. The other 30 minutes is recording SPED data, IEPs/504s, contacting home, contacting absent kids, preparing work for kids who are going to be out, etc.

All grading is done outside of school hours. I am currently grading AP math tests. The average test takes 4-5 minutes to grade, and I have 92 students in that course this year. Best case scenario, that’s 6 hours of grading. Worst case, nearly 8. I also have algebra tests to grade. I try to stagger them so only one prep tests each week, but that’s 6-8 hours of work every weekend, and that’s if I never grade homework/class work/quizzes.

Tell me how to be more efficient. All multiple choice? Have kids grade each other’s work? Make assessments 5 questions instead of 20? I’m guessing you can see why that is all awful.

When I ask my department how to get better, they all admit to working weekends. I’m not unique.

How can it be better? Class sizes of 20 vs 32. Additional staff hired purely to tutor/catch up/assess absent kids so I don’t have to. 4 courses to teach instead of 5 so I have a period to grade. If I had 80 students and 2 hours a day to plan/grade, it would be amazing. Instead I have 150 and an hour. But the reality is that’s not going to happen, so more people are going to quit and 10 years from now math instruction will be on a computer and my only job will be to run around and answer questions, because that’s the only way I can support the 250 kids who will be on my roster.

Making sure that you don’t need to deal with disruptive students in your classes, and starting to track students so the kids are at the same level and you only need to teach one class at a time, would allow you to do some prep and some grading during class time while the kids are working, right?

No, that wouldn’t change anything at the high school level. Disruptive kids tend not to come to class, and they are already tracked (AP/honors/gen Ed/double block). I have absolutely no behavior issues on my roster this year. I just have 150 good kids that I cannot adequately support because it is impossible to give meaningful instruction and feedback to that many kids in 40 hours a week.

How were teachers doing it in the past? I know they graded written work with good feedback. Were class sizes really that much smaller?

I am only talking about math, because that’s what I teach, and I can only really compare it to my own high school experience.

Teachers taught 4/6 blocks in my high school. I teach 6/8 (5+advisory which truly is another prep).
My math tests were straight multiple choice, graded within 30 seconds of turning them in. Parents and admins would wring our necks if we did that.
Classes were capped at 25. Mine are 35 (overall load max is 150)

Biggest difference though is the idea of continual demonstration of mastery. (Which is good! I agree with it! But it’s a huge time suck) When I was in high school, if you failed the unit 1 test you were just screwed. Today, I have to meet with that child, do some form of remediation (corrections, additional practice), and then write and give a second chance assessment. Writing a second AP level test is easily 2 hours of work. Administering it and grading it is 2 more (out of class) hours. Maintaining a list of kids who missed the original assessment, arranging a time to take it, monitoring their retakes, etc is something that honestly justifies having an administrative assistant. I wish I could just hand a stack of tests to a testing coordinator and tell kids to arrange with a 3rd party to take missing assessments/retakes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Curious if school districts can have teachers sign a contract that requires them to stay the entire school year as a way to avoid mid-year exodus?
Otherwise, the teacher will have to pay back benefits, relinquish sign-on bonuses, and other perks previously granted upon hiring.

It tends to work in other professions (at least in mine). I imagine the teachers union would have a tantrum and it would be a deterrent in recruiting, but if this was a normal standard in academics as a whole then the (even bigger ) problem of teachers leaving mid-year would be minimal.

Yeah, no, no teacher will ever sign that. And I know no one getting a sign on bonus. I also don't know about any perks given upon hiring (or at any point). What perks are you aware of?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

"starting a business" = Airbonne, Pampered Chef, baby photographer

In this case, it was a teacher with a communications degree and experience who started a freelance PR business.

The teachers most at risk for leaving are new teachers, who are young enough to start over in a new profession without financial penalty, and teachers with experience in other fields. However, I see more and more teachers taking on part-time work in other fields to build that experience so they can make the jump.

They work 60 hours a week and take on an additional part time job?

ES Teacher

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

"starting a business" = Airbonne, Pampered Chef, baby photographer

In this case, it was a teacher with a communications degree and experience who started a freelance PR business.

The teachers most at risk for leaving are new teachers, who are young enough to start over in a new profession without financial penalty, and teachers with experience in other fields. However, I see more and more teachers taking on part-time work in other fields to build that experience so they can make the jump.

They work 60 hours a week and take on an additional part time job?

ES Teacher

Young, childless teachers with student loan payments and no other responsibilities? Yeah. One of the other math teachers at school is working full time and tutoring from 6-10 each evening during the week. She can charge $100/hour for it so it’s worth her time.

If she has kids that will probably have to change.

[Anonymous]

What would make me want to stay?
Cut the meetings I am required to attend in half. That would give me an extra 1-2 hours time per week to get real work done.

Cap all classrooms at a max size of 20. K-2 need full time TA's.

When a kid arrives at school and is an extreme behavior issue but doesn't yet have an IEP, give the student support in the form of a 1:1 aide for a week. If he or she can't function without that aide after that in a calm way that doesn't disrupt the learning or safety of everyone else after that? The child needs to go to a self contained special ed room at that point.

When a teacher says there's a behavioral or emotional disability that interferes with safety or learning, believe her. Change the law that says parents must agree to an evaluation. Stop forcing districts to go through the legal due process system in order to evaluate such kids. Evaluate the child and then give the kid what she or he needs.

Legislators must be required to FUND any law they pass around education.

[Anonymous]

I don't know what hours they work. I just know that more than one acquaintance is taking on a a few hours of additional work with an eye towards a career jump, which is something I haven't seen before in my years of teaching.

[Anonymous]

One teacher in my building left to be a project manager. Another left to take a position in a hospital using her tech and bilingual skills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pp:

But when the prior teacher stops working weekend, threads are made about her in the FCPS forum on how her grades aren’t done in a timely manner.

If I want my job to be a 40 hour per week job, there would be zero grading done. My planning periods are enough time to plan, not grade. I can create and copy one lesson in an hour if I’m super fast. I have two preps on the block, so if I keep up with that I’m on track. The other 30 minutes is recording SPED data, IEPs/504s, contacting home, contacting absent kids, preparing work for kids who are going to be out, etc.

All grading is done outside of school hours. I am currently grading AP math tests. The average test takes 4-5 minutes to grade, and I have 92 students in that course this year. Best case scenario, that’s 6 hours of grading. Worst case, nearly 8. I also have algebra tests to grade. I try to stagger them so only one prep tests each week, but that’s 6-8 hours of work every weekend, and that’s if I never grade homework/class work/quizzes.

Tell me how to be more efficient. All multiple choice? Have kids grade each other’s work? Make assessments 5 questions instead of 20? I’m guessing you can see why that is all awful.

When I ask my department how to get better, they all admit to working weekends. I’m not unique.

How can it be better? Class sizes of 20 vs 32. Additional staff hired purely to tutor/catch up/assess absent kids so I don’t have to. 4 courses to teach instead of 5 so I have a period to grade. If I had 80 students and 2 hours a day to plan/grade, it would be amazing. Instead I have 150 and an hour. But the reality is that’s not going to happen, so more people are going to quit and 10 years from now math instruction will be on a computer and my only job will be to run around and answer questions, because that’s the only way I can support the 250 kids who will be on my roster.

Making sure that you don’t need to deal with disruptive students in your classes, and starting to track students so the kids are at the same level and you only need to teach one class at a time, would allow you to do some prep and some grading during class time while the kids are working, right?

No, that wouldn’t change anything at the high school level. Disruptive kids tend not to come to class, and they are already tracked (AP/honors/gen Ed/double block). I have absolutely no behavior issues on my roster this year. I just have 150 good kids that I cannot adequately support because it is impossible to give meaningful instruction and feedback to that many kids in 40 hours a week.

How were teachers doing it in the past? I know they graded written work with good feedback. Were class sizes really that much smaller?

I am only talking about math, because that’s what I teach, and I can only really compare it to my own high school experience.

Teachers taught 4/6 blocks in my high school. I teach 6/8 (5+advisory which truly is another prep).
My math tests were straight multiple choice, graded within 30 seconds of turning them in. Parents and admins would wring our necks if we did that.
Classes were capped at 25. Mine are 35 (overall load max is 150)

Biggest difference though is the idea of continual demonstration of mastery. (Which is good! I agree with it! But it’s a huge time suck) When I was in high school, if you failed the unit 1 test you were just screwed. Today, I have to meet with that child, do some form of remediation (corrections, additional practice), and then write and give a second chance assessment. Writing a second AP level test is easily 2 hours of work. Administering it and grading it is 2 more (out of class) hours. Maintaining a list of kids who missed the original assessment, arranging a time to take it, monitoring their retakes, etc is something that honestly justifies having an administrative assistant. I wish I could just hand a stack of tests to a testing coordinator and tell kids to arrange with a 3rd party to take missing assessments/retakes.

Parent here — I really think teachers need an assistant to keep up with the demands today. Instead schools are bleeding faculty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious if school districts can have teachers sign a contract that requires them to stay the entire school year as a way to avoid mid-year exodus?
Otherwise, the teacher will have to pay back benefits, relinquish sign-on bonuses, and other perks previously granted upon hiring.

It tends to work in other professions (at least in mine). I imagine the teachers union would have a tantrum and it would be a deterrent in recruiting, but if this was a normal standard in academics as a whole then the (even bigger ) problem of teachers leaving mid-year would be minimal.

Most districts already have this. It's considered bad form to leave mid-year and other districts will not hire teachers who do. That isn't making as much of an impact anymore, however, because teachers are leaving for other fields instead. We just lost a teacher last week to another career field and we're currently covering her classes since there is no replacement.

It's going to keep happening because teaching is TERRIBLE right now. As an example: I woke up at 6am on Saturday and worked for 10 hours. I only took breaks to drive my kid somewhere and to make dinner. I was up again at 6am today and I'll work through to the evening... probably another 8-10 hours. DCUM is my 5-minute break I give myself between stacks of papers. I can't keep this up. My last day off was September 10th (a Saturday). I've worked at least 7-8 hours every day since then and often much more.

I'm quitting at the end of the year. The only thing keeping me going is the fact I don't want to dump this work on my already too-busy coworkers.

Just curious -- what did you spend 20 hours on at home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What are the other jobs they are taking, do you know? Just curious.

NP but so far I've seen teachers leave for HR, an education non-profit, sales, training, aerospace, writing, and starting a business.

"starting a business" = Airbonne, Pampered Chef, baby photographer

NP. Alas, the fantasy of being able to trap teachers into staying because "they can't get any other jobs" is just that, a fantasy.

There's a home roost for those chickens right over there in the corner.

[Anonymous]

Schools should think about paying retired math and English teachers to be graders just like college professors have TA’s.,
A grader could be assigned to an English or math teacher 10 hours a week and grade papers/tests at home. It would be a no benefits hourly rate position so way cheaper for the district than hiring another teacher. Teachers with young children, retired teachers, teachers with health issues would be willing to take this job. Get rid of all the instructional coaches and there is your funding. Ask any high school teacher whether they would want a grader or instructional coach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious if school districts can have teachers sign a contract that requires them to stay the entire school year as a way to avoid mid-year exodus?
Otherwise, the teacher will have to pay back benefits, relinquish sign-on bonuses, and other perks previously granted upon hiring.

It tends to work in other professions (at least in mine). I imagine the teachers union would have a tantrum and it would be a deterrent in recruiting, but if this was a normal standard in academics as a whole then the (even bigger ) problem of teachers leaving mid-year would be minimal.

Most districts already have this. It's considered bad form to leave mid-year and other districts will not hire teachers who do. That isn't making as much of an impact anymore, however, because teachers are leaving for other fields instead. We just lost a teacher last week to another career field and we're currently covering her classes since there is no replacement.

It's going to keep happening because teaching is TERRIBLE right now. As an example: I woke up at 6am on Saturday and worked for 10 hours. I only took breaks to drive my kid somewhere and to make dinner. I was up again at 6am today and I'll work through to the evening... probably another 8-10 hours. DCUM is my 5-minute break I give myself between stacks of papers. I can't keep this up. My last day off was September 10th (a Saturday). I've worked at least 7-8 hours every day since then and often much more.

I'm quitting at the end of the year. The only thing keeping me going is the fact I don't want to dump this work on my already too-busy coworkers.

Just curious -- what did you spend 20 hours on at home?

I'm the PP. I'm grading AP essays. I do 4 at a time (which usually is a sustained hour or more of reading and commenting) before taking a 10-minute break. I repeat this until the stack is done. My current stack has 40 essays in it, so that's at least 10 hours today. I also had a paragraph assignment to score for my younger students. I graded those yesterday. That stack had 65 and took about 6 hours. I also had to plan my lessons for the week and revise an upcoming test, which took 3 hours yesterday.

I'm not the only teacher doing this. I was online at 7am yesterday morning (Saturday) with my grade-level team. We met virtually to discuss lesson planning before beginning our grading.

[Anonymous]

Oof, PP, I believe it. I left an ES job I loved teaching departmentalized 6th grade reading and writing because the grading demands, even at that level, were so unwieldy. I can’t imagine doing it for HS/AP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious if school districts can have teachers sign a contract that requires them to stay the entire school year as a way to avoid mid-year exodus?
Otherwise, the teacher will have to pay back benefits, relinquish sign-on bonuses, and other perks previously granted upon hiring.

It tends to work in other professions (at least in mine). I imagine the teachers union would have a tantrum and it would be a deterrent in recruiting, but if this was a normal standard in academics as a whole then the (even bigger ) problem of teachers leaving mid-year would be minimal.

Most districts already have this. It's considered bad form to leave mid-year and other districts will not hire teachers who do. That isn't making as much of an impact anymore, however, because teachers are leaving for other fields instead. We just lost a teacher last week to another career field and we're currently covering her classes since there is no replacement.

It's going to keep happening because teaching is TERRIBLE right now. As an example: I woke up at 6am on Saturday and worked for 10 hours. I only took breaks to drive my kid somewhere and to make dinner. I was up again at 6am today and I'll work through to the evening... probably another 8-10 hours. DCUM is my 5-minute break I give myself between stacks of papers. I can't keep this up. My last day off was September 10th (a Saturday). I've worked at least 7-8 hours every day since then and often much more.

I'm quitting at the end of the year. The only thing keeping me going is the fact I don't want to dump this work on my already too-busy coworkers.

what do you teach???

I teach AP and Honors English. It’s the grading. It’s always the grading. I have to teach writing, which means I have to leave feedback on essays. I get 46 minutes a day built into my schedule for grading and planning. One stack of essays is over 20 hours of grading alone.

I see the other comments about time management. I have to have access to time in order to manage it. There’s no way to make grading go faster without sacrificing feedback, which I can’t do. I know the solution (fewer classes and more work hours for grading), but I don’t have control over that.

Changing careers means reclaiming my weekends. That’s why one teacher quit last week. She didn’t want to do this anymore and so she found a job with more reasonable hours. I can’t fault her.

Was it always like this, or has something changed?

The writing skills of students have dropped dramatically. I am not the previous poster but I have to spend time now correcting rudimentary grammar/spelling/sentence structure. If a kid doesn’t have readable writing it takes a lot more time from a teacher instead of general feedback about themes/claim/evidence. Kids are grade promoted or even put in APs who just don’t have basic mastery of English.