First year teachers quitting

[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.

Thank you for this great perspective.

[Anonymous]

I think another challenge is the way that admins treat teachers as fungible resources. I have lost count of the number of teachers in my local district who share that they have been teaching 5th grade language arts but are being moved to 3rd grade, or some other ridiculous change.

It takes time to understand the developmental stages of kids and to master content areas, it is crazy to switch them with 2 weeks notice. How can they reasonably be successful?

[Anonymous]

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

DCUM posters constantly bash teachers and then wonder why there's a shortage of people willing to go into the profession.

The burnout rate in the first couple years of teaching is extremely high I honestly look back at my first two years of teaching and I am amazed I didn't quit

[Anonymous]

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.

I cried a lot during my first couple years of teaching. I was teaching at a school in DC with the highest rate of suspensions. My classes were out of control. It was hard. I'm very proud that I didn't quit

[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.

There is a charter in DC that does something like this (inspired teaching) where each classroom has a mentor teacher in the classroom with a new teacher

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: 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.

Maybe things should change so that it's not like this anymore.

I worked at a high school where we would have 5+ new teachers every year and not all would make it to Nov. I agree with PP that said something about late October being the quitting time. I'm sure the stress of this year hasn't helped the situation.

[Anonymous]

I have only ever seen two teachers do this in my career, both SpEd who had sign on bonuses. Once they got the first paycheck with a 5k bonus, they disappeared. Not 1st year teachers by the way. One was 30ish, the other was 60 or so.

[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.

I think they should substitute teach for a year, as you build more classroom management skills.

I am in the Midwest, too. I am in a state that has over 20,000 certified teachers who are not teaching in public or private schools. My experience is that administration is hiring poor idiots, as most administrators could not make in the classroom and can't find a job outside of education, if they tried. Once you bring in TFA teachers and alternative certified who have NO business in the classroom, good teachers see the grass is green elsewhere and leave. Or, administration pushes out good teachers to collapse the school so higher-ups can sell the building to a charter school. It's happening in the city, I reside in now.

I am certified teacher, who would not mind teaching in a classroom, but I keep getting beat out by 22-years old or older people who don't want to stay in the classroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

That is real.

I was 7/8th of the way through elementary ed certification in college and realized in fall of my senior year, as i watched my peers apply for jobs with consulting firms and in in the federal government, that I didn't want to spend my entire adult life in a classroom with children and not have colleagues who I could be an adult with. It was a shock to me because I had always wanted to be a kindergarten teacher, but I realized that I actually didn't...I just wanted to me a mom some day. I had another major so I dropped the ed, found my way to grad school soon, and worked in my field for 10 years and in a full-circle move I'm now a mom and a college professor in my chosen field. Makes sense, but I didn't see that coming at 20. Dropping K-12 education was one of the most self-aware, smartest decisions I made as a young adult.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

There are too many 22/23 years who are still living in mom's basement and working at Starbucks. In my experience, a lot of 20 somethings are working 16+ hours trying to get the next promotion. Their freetime is at the socializer to schmooze for the boss.

[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.

Yes, but he would have gotten it in his final semester of a bachelor's degree in education, or with an education certification. At that point he's about to graduate--what else is he going to do?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Yes, but he would have gotten it in his final semester of a bachelor's degree in education, or with an education certification. At that point he's about to graduate--what else is he going to do?

+1

Also in student teaching you aren’t in charge of the most critical portion of the school year which is the first month. If you are too lax and don’t set up really clear expectations and procedures early on you are done for the year. The veteran teacher next door to me my first year told me don’t smile or be nice for three weeks. This was at a very tough high school and it was some of the best advice I got. It was a really hard year for me but I did have classroom management. Some other first years had kids throw books at them, curse them out, threaten physical harm, etc. Most quit after one year.

[Anonymous]

Stop blaming high turnover on new teachers. The situation is really so toxic and unsustainable. I've seen it mentioned that people realize they are stressing so much to earn so little. To top it off a lot of buildings are unsafe, filled with mold and falling apart. When I taught there was also a lot of violence in schools.


My second month teaching a girl had a razor blade and started cutting herself in class. After the incident, no administrator never talked to me or checked on me. I should have left then.

I honestly don't think there's a way to fix the system. I'm sorry if you're vested and counting on it as a career, really. It's a damn shame. I know misery loves company but if you're not stuck in the system why the hell would you stay? You have one life to live.

[Anonymous]

They don’t pay teachers enough to put up with the stress and they don’t give them any support either.

When I started out teaching at 25, I was making around 45k. I was working 80 hour weeks and my husband was making around 300k working much much less. At the he same time, I had no support from fellow teachers, admin, or parents. Everyone criticized me. I once got a bad review from my principal because he didn’t think I had enough posters or artwork up on the walls. He said nothing about the quality of the lesson he had just observed, my interactions with students, or the materials I spent hours slaving over creating from scratch.

As DH continued to make more and more money, at some point I was like eff this nonsense and left.

[Anonymous]

There really is no work/ life balance for teachers, and that alone can lead to burnout.

It dependents upon your role, system, and district. I taught English Language Learners and worked on average 45 hours my first year of teaching. I know perfectionist who worked more, and people who didn't care work less.