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Anonymous wrote:That sucks, and I'm sorry. There must be something really difficult going on in that teacher's life right to make such a decision.
She probably got fed up with the a-hole parents.
Honestly, this is probably accurate.
I wouldn't blame her.
Not this late in the year. It’s unprofessional and rude. Anyone can work another 6 weeks. That’s a really $hitty thing to do to her students. Just finish the damn year and move on.
No one here has any idea what is happening with this teacher in her personal life.
They shouldn't quit. people were not quitting their jobs like this 3 years ago. Biden needs to banned this and do something to stop people from quitting. MY DD English teacher quit last month, she said quit and ain't coming back. It's a sad day in America. November can't come soon enough, I will be voting and something will be done to stop the labor shortage.
You can't force labor. People aren't slaves. That is a route to have zero teachers available to teach in the fall.
The ones who quit midyear won't be working this fall anyway. Maybe you need to rethink your route.
Yes, but forcing people into contracts they can't quit deters the already dwindling supply of teachers to not take on a new contract.
No, it doesn't. All teacher contracts require a 9 month commitment. There's nothing onerous or bad about that. It doesn't deter anyone.
There is not a clause in it that forces you not to quit. In fact, it's them telling you they are committing to you for 9 months and generally teachers are generally professionally agreeing to stay then also. But they can't do more than that like PP wants--forcing people not to quit--without creating a deterrent. If someone is at a breaking point, or needs to move, or wants out of the profession they can quit when they want. It sucks for parents, other teachers, their students, but instilling draconian 'no quit' policies would likely not survive a legal test and make a profession that is struggling to attract people at the worst rate since it's been measured in even worse shape.
You can't force people not to quit. But you can also acknowledge that quitting in the middle of the year is really bad for parents, other teachers, and students. It should not be the norm for a salaried skilled professional and should only happen under dire circumstances. You wonder why kids are detached and anxious. I guess they should recognize that the adults in their lives are only there while it works for them and should feel terrible if they are disappointed when these adults leave without any warning.
Did you not read that I wrote "it sucks for parents, other teachers, their students..." Teaching has long held to this professional norm. Quitting mid-year was exceedingly rare and was long done for only extenuating circumstances. But they've had enough. The mandated policies at the federal level lingering since NCLB have added up, piling up with special education laws with grossly inadequate support. Thrown in your state governor creating a tip line for people to report their teachers, teachers feel like the social contract is broken and they don't have to honor it anymore. I'm not saying we want this for teachers at all. I'm just telling everyone who is still tut-tutting teachers they think are bad that it's a five alarm fire in the profession. I'm not a teacher myself, I track the data in my job and it is STARTLING.
I agree with you. Reading your additional comments, I think we are in complete agreement on the fact that teaching has become an increasingly undesirable profession for a variety of reasons, and the high level of dissatisfaction has created some checked-out and ineffective teachers. The teachers in my life complain more about administrative burdens, impossible workload, and clueless administrators than they do about students and parents. Teachers are burned out, and as a result, the current level of professionalism accepted in teaching does not align with other educated professions. I'm sorry, but it is true. I don't think we are to accomplish the needed reform unless when admit that. My oldest kids are now adults, but I can say that the slide began long before the pandemic and has nothing to do with the tip line (although that's ridiculous). Regular attendance, communication, timely grading, and consistent and respectful treatment of students and parents - all of the components that command respect, are harder to find than ever in public schools. Whether there are good reasons for burnout is beside the point. The decline in professionalism hurts kids, yet we aren't allowed to talk about it because more teachers might leave the profession. It's a vicious cycle. When kids get the bare minimum from some teachers, there's no backup to get them caught up. That's not fair to anyone, but most of all, the kids.
I'm the PP. I don't agree with you that there was a longer history of decline in teacher professionalism. I think despite a lot of demands, they maintained a fairly solid standard of professionalism. In any profession there is a range of course, but I would say on the whole it has been fairly steady for decades. What I am referring to is that teachers are burnt out and feel that the social contract has been broken. Highly skilled, committed and experienced teachers who wanted to be teachers for life, that had teaching as core to their identity are leaving the profession. Less skilled and committed people are also leaving the profession. Far fewer people of any skill level are entering the profession. Some less professional ones are quitting mid-year, but far, far more have either already left or are planning to leave this spring. They don't want to teach in public schools, they don't want to teach in charter schools, they don't want to teach in private or parochial schools. They are done.
I think parents have yet to wrap their heads around this reality.
DP. I'm not sure what you think parents can or should be doing about this, besides just laying down and crying. You may blame parents 100% for the current teacher crisis. Okay. Not sure what parents can do to ameliorate it or to improve teacher conditions in the near term. Obama attempted to overturn NCLB with the ESSA but it doesn't seem to have succeeded in improving things. If I contact Richmond, should I ask for less oversight? More SOLs? Fewer SOLs but better written? Relaxing state (and federal) requirements related to sped students? What, exactly?
PP: I don't blame parents 100%--I'm a parent too! My post was more an exasperated reaction to parents still complaining about teachers when they will be lucky to have a teacher at all next fall. But I appreciate your healthier proactive response. I think the problems are structural but there are some things I think that could be done. I think the first one is for every parent to take a breath before they start venting about teachers--in person, at meetings, on social media. The more demands people make on educators the more they are too overwhelmed to do anything well and the fewer there are left to do it. The more vitriol they experience the more they will continue to walk. Support your kids, support and trust your teachers, think about what you can do to make what you want to happen educationally for your child.
As for more specifically,
1) There needs to be some kind paperwork reduction act for special education students. Special education teachers have to do this paperwork but so do general teachers since most students with IEPs are also in general classrooms. Teachers feel the the documentation is often more burdensome than providing the accommodations. When an outsider looks at the paperwork demands for one kid it might not seem that bad, but remember teachers have to maintain these records for all their students while they are also supporting all their behavior and learning grading, tracking pacing guides etc.
We may also need to review whether the IEP model as it is currently used is the most appropriate approach. A lot of the accommodations benefit everyone and could be more seamlessly built into a universal design for the classroom without the documentation demands. If a much more serious and intentional approach to universal design for learning built in commonly needed accommodations (e.g., ones that help dyslexia, adhd, anxiety, asd) there might be less need for IEPs and the documentation demands of those would be lower as they would involve documentation of accommodations beyond the universal ones.
2) The current approach to SOLs does add unnecessary stress to teacher's lives. Not so much the accountability or the time for testing, but because the SoLs then get a backwards design into a pacing guide. Teachers feel they can no longer exercise their professional judgment to spend longer teaching x or y, because students haven't gotten or that maybe there's value in having students read more books and fewer "targeted passages" even though that doesn't help as much for SOL strategies. Looser pacing guides and more autonomy to make and adapt instructional and pedagogical decisions would help. Flexibility is key. I think what the data has been suggesting is happening more particularly this year is that the pacing guides are there as a drumbeat, but with all the absences from sick children and staff, increased mental health and behavioral concerns, and spotty instruction from the year before, teachers feel like they are forced to steamroll over children's learning needs in order to keep up with the pace. So they know kids haven't mastered something but they have to move on or they will be even farther behind. Which adds to children's anxiety. Which adds to teachers' stress. So the pace and density of the pacing guides were always a long-standing challenge, but this year it's an emergency. The tests just add pressure remind them and the kids that things are still off-track from the demands and give them less time to do what they professional think is best for the kids.
3) More professional support staff are really crucial: school counselors, school nurses and librarians. These professionals are worth their weight in gold to most school communities. There are also just fewer adults in the building overall due to staffing shortages and limits on parent volunteers due to the pandemic--"floaters" and volunteers who would read or do work 1 on 1 with kids often helps deescalate kids who are getting stressed and helps them learn. Maybe there's a way create college student work/study positions to doing ten hours a week doing 1 on 1 and small group work with kids. It would need to be routine individualized help with students on their classwork that teachers don't have to organize and manage. (They would all need background checks too).
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