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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our last remaining teacher resident quit yesterday. Despite having lots of “real world” experience in his subject area, he couldn’t make it past 7 months. Maybe teaching isn’t as easy as the keyboard warriors suggest?[/quote]

I think any career transition is difficult. The ones who do it successfully are the ones who transition in their I’m still moldable 20’s or the I don’t give 2F’s I’m doing it for the cheap insurance late 50s.

Switching careers is very difficult for most people for the same reasons a mid career teacher moving out would flounder and probably fail in the corporate world.

Teaching is a job just like any other job. Period.
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Obviously it isn't if nearly half of teachers quit by year 5. Maybe somebody should look upstream to figure out why. Just ask a teacher. They will make a nice long list.[/quote]

The percent of teachers who quit within the first 5 years (often cited as 44%) is not exactly what it seems--it includes people who didn't get their contract renewed in their district, people who left for maternity leave and returned later (or decided to be a SAHP) and also includes private school teachers who didn't invest much in terms of getting licenses or whatever so may not have been that committed to the teaching field (it's not uncommon for recent liberal arts college grads to teach at a private school for a few years before grad school).  I think we need to pay attention to teachers' needs and support retention, but it's also important to look at data and trends accurately.  This is especially important if we want to understand whether conditions are worsening and causing more teachers to leave (anecdotally this is true, but the data hasn't shown it yet--but it may--it takes a while to get the data in a readable format, do the analyses etc.).  The other complication is that there are fewer children now, so we are starting to need fewer teachers.  We're at a weird time where the US birthrate peaked in 2007 and then fell and continued to fall.  We currently have schools that include the highest birthrate year and then steadily falling ones--particularly hard to staff. But it's all declining birth rate years from 8th grade and younger at this point. [/quote]

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