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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

what do you teach???[/quote]

Also, what changes could realistically be made that would make teaching tolerable for you?[/quote]

Working lights and HVAC, adequate textbooks and instructional materials, smaller class sizes, less standardized testing. [/quote]

I'm a former high school teacher. Even after my first year teaching I'd laugh at the TFA teachers who would drop out in November. I resigned (with notice) at the end of my 7th year and wonder if those TFA dropouts had the right idea. I loved teaching high school and miss the kids and the atmosphere all the time, but the increasing demands with decreasing resources weren't worth it. I decided I would quit when I came in to make copies on the weekend, after grading 170 papers, and found that I had used up my paper budget for the month and we didn't have textbooks and I had already reached my max # of kleenex boxes allowed for the year and when I put in a request for dry erase markers I got ONE - in a color of  my choice.

I now teach at a (public) university. While I am not amazingly resourced and I still don't get paid a ton and my colleagues tease me for being a workaholic (I give students my cell phone number. I zoom with them on weekends to help with homework). I can at least leave my classroom to pee whenever I want. Also, I love to remind my students that they're now in college and if they don't know something, they should get their darned phone out and google it (and I can use much stronger language than "darned" because I work with adults! sometimes I use the "f-word" just because I can).

In case you're curious: The marker I chose was a "Marks-a-Lot" in blue. I could have chosen an "Expo" in red, but I thought my students would be grumpy since the red doesn't show up as well. I know all the other teachers are out there being like "oooo you could have gotten an Expo!" well... sad to say, maybe it's Stockholm syndrome, but I prefer marks-a-lot.

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