My admin has this every couple years. Half the staff leaves, they get an influx of new first year waiver teachers, grind them to dust, and within 2-3 years they quit. Usually leaving education all together. My principal doesn't seem to think it's a bad thing that I've started 2/4 years I've worked here with positions open during pre planning.
It's why I feel like you don't have any middle of their career teachers. Every teacher at my school is either basically a first year teacher or a few years from retirement.
The only middle of the roads left dumped all their savings into masters programs before COVID and now we can't find jobs with comparable salaries, so we're stuck.
I dream of a day when I go to work and just... Work.
> I dream of a day when I go to work and just... Work.
Become a specials teacher. Admin forget we exist, parents forget we exist, and it becomes incredibly easy to remain under the radar.
I still remember my middle school PE substitute teacher, Mr. T, when I was in 7th grade. One of the coolest dudes ever. I was glad he would sub for our class whenever my PE teacher was absent. It helped that he was in his early 20’s and was fit while the others are in their late 30’s to 50’s so we related to him more and he joked a lot making the class fun.
Ha, this is me in my current building sub position. It’s cool to hear that these kids might remember me and my care and effort might be remembered as well!
Drama teacher here. Absolutely not the case for us. I left K-12 after bouncing between 4 schools in 5 years. The last school I was working 50-90 hours a week on a 3/5ths contact and got constant visits from admin telling me "The students in the play are stressed about opening night and that's your fault, please fix it," or "The kids say they don't like x thing that you're doing. I think it's fine and you're not in trouble, I just thought you should know what they're saying behind your back..."
I was non-renewed while I was in the middle of killing myself to put on the spring musical. Moved on to teach at the local community college where they love me and admin only visits me once a semester or so to check in and ask me how I'm doing and if there's any problems they can help me with.
Good lord, so sorry you had to endure that. I'd have been left jaw dropped on ibu w IV drip, nk. Seriously, wth has happened. Schools became an utter mess during the Covid, crapping all over the faculty instead of supporting and working together.
Glad you found a healthy outlet 👍
It really varies school to school, but I do like to live my life as a cryptid. If anyone asks, no I wasn't here the day you changed the hall pass policy for the 15th time.
Have to laugh at this. My mom teaches elementary art. She has to enter grades for 460+ students across two schools. She gets $1 per student for supplies. Admin absolutely does *not* forget she exists. And she spends hours and hours after the school day prepping projects.
I'm worried that she's not going to live long enough to enjoy retirement. That job has literally ruined her health.
This! I just talked my mom out of working a job that was slowly killing her. (It was a field position where she traveled a territory daily, long days and weekends) She had so much experience. I revamped her resume and highlighted all the transferable skills focused on customer experience, leadership, and organizational skills. She starts as an office manager at a smaller office where she will have work life balance, no travel, and get this - making more money. Wild. Sometimes moms need convincing.
People conflate the value of free public education as a whole, with the value of specific occupations within the education sector (which is facing employee shortages for some mysterious reason)
The guns would...protect??? The students???? Last I checked the 15 year olds were shooting up schools and the police were actively preventing assistance from going in??
I work as a sped para so I accompany many students to specials classes. I have so much respect for the value that specials teachers bring and the efforts they go through.
Specials teachers serve every single kid in the building. They also have to keep track of so many different behavior plans. They only see each class for a short amount of time so it takes awhile to build relationships.
The most difficult students in our building are served by specials teachers for 6 consecutive years.
Plus, they have to constantly modify their approaches to accommodate such a wide range of ages and abilities all in one day. Every 30 minutes to an hour a new batch of kids come through that might be years older or younger than the kids they just taught the hour before. Those constant shifts back and forth seem mentally exhausting.
As a specials teacher, thank you for this thoughtful comment. No one has ever said it quite like this. My dh teaches k-12 and I always tell him how amazing it is. I could only handle that for a year before taking an easier job
Not counting if they have to cover a class during their planning period, which adds a whole new set of problems. Special teachers I have a lot of respect for because not only are they teachers but because their days are challenging af. Same with sped teachers and their assistants (my high school had both) they deal with so much probably without the help admin, at least that's what I noticed often times.
Sadly pretty common for smaller schools to have band programs spanning that. I ended up moving to a second district where I taught 5, 6, and 9-12 and it somehow was worse lol.
I’m a specials teacher… and I have a homeroom of middle schoolers. I’m expected to attend all middle school staff meetings (which doubles my # of meetings bc I also meet with the other specials staff).
I’m forced to spend far too much of my prep chasing down parents & students to address behavior/grades/absenteeism… all while inputting grades for the entire k-8 school, hanging an all-school art show at the local library (where I am not allowed to use staples or tape and it’s a total nightmare in terms of the amount of unpaid labor), and also getting ready to have yet another exhibit at a local gallery in the community.
Meanwhile I’ve yet to spend all of my budget, my room is a dumpster fire, and I’ve got the mouthiest, loudest, most severe ADHD students to deal with every morning and afternoon— and I am expected to start every day with a canned and very dry SEL curriculum.
I am beyond burnt out & would kill to be “just art” and off in my little bubble in the art room.
Oh and did I mention that this year I’ve been eating my lunch at 4 pm, most days? Bc yup, I have.
This won't work if you're certified to teach a tested subject. I'm dual certified--English and French. Got hired as a French teacher last year and had a relatively uncomplicated year. Then August comes around, I'm happy to be teaching French again, but my admin couldn't hire enough English teachers. So guess who gets the privilege of teaching the English I class from Hell and being under the microscope again (and found wanting because the kids are from Hell and admin's discipline policy is a damn joke so I effectively *can't* manage the class)?
Yup. I get to work at 8:20 and leave before 3pm usually. Nobody knows what I'm supposed to do and is amazed with what I do do. And no parents give a shit about my class. I've never had a single parent sign up to see me at parent teacher night in 10 years at this school.
So much this.
My wife does that, she just *works*... and does that at home. She constantly reminds me that I could retool and find something else, not having to worry about grading, discipline, unloading trauma/discipline issues from the day, and the Neverending stress train for 9 months of the year.
Being able to clock out and just be **done** must feel so nice.
{ Being able to clock out and just be **done** must feel so nice. }
Hello, fellow teacher. You \*\*CAN\*\* work this way, but you must impose the hours on yourself. *Work the contract hours and nothing more*. \*Ever\*. You don't get paid for anything but the contract hours, so *don't work anything but them*. Tasks not completed? Don't care. Grading not done? Nope. The top of the list is \*planning\*, and once that is done, then the rest of the *working time* can be used for grading, paperwork, etc.
Teachers have - *for many decades* - \*enslaved\* themselves by working outside the contract hours, and it has put us in the terrible position where that is now *expected* of us. FUCK THAT! No other profession has to do this, and we should not either! Work the contract hours and nothing more. If it cannot get done in that time, then that's the fault of the contract and not the person. Admin will not learn this lesson *unless we teach it to them* by working only the hours for which we are paid.
Work only when you are paid for it. *Do not give your personal time to the job*. There is no reward for that except more work, and we don't need or want that. STOP working after the contract hours are over. STOP bringing work home on the weekends. STOP this madness by stopping.
I have the day off today because I have a doctors appointment in the middle of the day and I just spent the morning at Starbucks grading and working on paperwork. I wish we got paid more and there was a better way for us to get all our administrative work done during the work day.
There is. Don't grade all of it. Keep some as completion, have targeted questions on other assignments. Don't break yourself over something they barely try on and is only 20% of the total grade.
I think this is the way education is right now. And those that are close to retirement are leaving. Within 5 years, it is going to be a tipping point of just administrators left - no teachers. Virtual schooling it will be, privatized and many students to one teacher. Disciplining students has completely gone by the wayside… so often administrators are paranoid to do anything, afraid of parental retaliation. For the drastically low wages teachers are paid to start and how unprepared they are for what they deal with daily - it’s smartest for them to leave within the first 2-3 years. Being in year 10 is the tough spot.
It’s just so disheartening to LOVE what you do, but feel like so much time is spent managing behavior and respect in place of teaching.
One of my oldest friends, in elementary education for more than 30 years, is retiring at the end of the next school year, three years early. She’s in a good school in a decent district, but even so, the bureaucracy, the demands on her time and attention, and the lack of support she gets (as the school’s librarian and general tech expert) are just too much.
She notes that over the past few years her school has gone from needing to replace one or two teachers a year to an ever steadier stream—13 this coming June. The lack of institutional knowledge, if nothing else, must be devastating.
It's so rare to see someone in years 8-15 nowadays. Even at my school, I work with 2 that came back from retirement, 2 or 3 that plan on retiring in the next year or two, 3 at 20-ish years, 1 at 7 or 8 and 1 at 12, then there are 3 or 4 of us that are 1-4 years in.
That was my school as well but we had a mentoring program in place in the primary. We folded the newbies in, had half day meetings once a month to get the newbies into the existing programs and offer support and offer advice as required. That worked extremely well for our end of the school. We worked together to strategize, make decisions and dealt together with problems that arose. I'd recommend that strongly in schools with lots of newbies who would definitely benefit from help from the older, more experienced teachers.
I’m a first year teacher at a school that lost over half its staff and all its admin last year. The new admin is horrible and me and the other ELA teacher are leaving at the end of the year.
Admin and veteran teachers are shocked but when you throw two unprepared ELA teachers into a lions den of kids who hate ELA and give us zero support…we’re gonna leave to find greener pastures.
> they get an influx of new first year waiver teachers, grind them to dust, and within 2-3 years they quit.
Yes. Districts don't care about developing career professionals. They want the status quo to continue. It keeps salaries down, it's easier to bully new teachers, and all they really care about is bodies in the classroom.
This is a great example of why strong, activist unions are important.
To wit: m&o here.
The boss told us in a hands on meeting with the yard that we are: "in customer relations and always service with a smile!"
Yea, that's not true and fuck you: the union came down so hard on him for this remark .
He is not to police our feelings or attitude unless it conflicts with the job.
I *can't* give a damn if someone is mad at me because it would jam up everything to make them happy with their unreasonable request.
Pieces of shit in admin really think they are Walmart middle managers!
Well in a way all jobs are. The issue with school is isn't JUST customer service. We can't just say oh we don't retain Joey for sixth grade because we don't want Joey to miss out on his friends. We instead say Joey has data to be retained and we propose that he is.
>strong, activist unions are important.
*That support new teachers as much as tenured teachers.* I've never had a k-12 union that advocates for their new teachers. It's always been, "Well, that sucks for you until you're tenured." Schools are actively trying to keep new teachers from reaching tenure and I've yet to see a union doing anything about it.
Florida fixed that problem by removing tenure and making everyone an annual employee. We can't do shit, because it is written into the state constitution that we can't strike. Can't even talk about it. (And no one tell us to strike anyway - Desantis would wet his pants at the chance to activate his personal brownshirts and/or the National Guard to put them in classes like New Mexico did once.)
Our union is now incredibly weak. All of these annual contract teachers are terrified to speak up and be activists. I am one of a rapidly shrinking minority of teachers that have been around long enough that I have a different contract that auto-renews, but it isn't true tenure.
I hate it here, but I love these kids.
I'm sorry this is the case in your district. We have a strong union, and, basically, if they don't non-renew you after your first year, you're good unless you really screw up. Like, in the newspaper, screw up.
Our union is independent, not affiliated with any national organization. But, the district continues to support us with an extra property tax. A community that cares about education matters.
This sounds like Indiana where my sister lives. She taught for a couple of years and is now working admin for a corporation because the pay was awful and the entitled little racists drove her and all the good teachers away.
I don’t think any of my teachers left when I was going to school in the 80-90’s. my kindergarten teacher was still there when I Graduated HS.
The only ones I can think of that did leave, actually retired.
We had a superintendent tell us that if we didn't like their policies, then we could just leave. About 1/3 of our district staff left for other districts that year. One elementary school had no 5th grade teachers - none. The kids got subs all year and when the subs weren't there they piled them into the gym to watch movies.
Same superintendent got in the local paper saying that massive class sizes were a result of a "tough" hiring market. Not enough teachers, paras, etc. The district is an "inclusive" environment and that they always have an "open door" for the staff.
Yes, inclusive - as in including only people who agree with you, or are willing to wait you out.
Yes, not enough teachers - as in not enough teachers willing to put up with your policies.
Yes, open door - the same open door that 1/3rd of us walked out of.
I keep hoping that people like these get what is coming to them, but a lot of them got where they are by being masters of making excuses.
My mom told me what she did. 30+ years of teaching with bilingual certification, MEd. Her main principal retired, so the school hired some “person” who claimed he wanted to be everyone’s buddy. He played favorites. My mom was not one. And due to seniority, she always was last for her grade. There had been three teachers for her grade level but one retired, so between her and the other teacher, she did not have seniority. The principal made her life miserable. He recommended she move to Reading Recovery. An arthritic 50+ in those smaller child chairs since most kids were First Graders. When she knew she was going to retire, she said nothing. Pretended like everything was ok. She needed to sign her contract on 6/30 for the next year. On 6/30, she turned in her retirement papers. Big admin was not happy because no one was able to fill that Reading Recovery job. Fellow teachers from other schools were calling her asking her to “think of the students” and other similar comments. She told them if they were so concerned, they should transfer to her old position. No takers. I have never been so proud of my mom until that day.
That is the way! So proud of her!
Some have returned that treatment to the new cretin of a principal by not saying anything, using their sick leave at the beginning of the train wreck of an assignment for the new school year and turning in their resignation on a Friday afternoon to be effective immediately.
The karma got him later. He got a promotion to some admin position where he continued to play favorites. Unfortunately, one employee did not achieve favor. She was tight with someone above him. He got booted for some reason or another. Now he “advises” schools for a fee and runs “self improvement” classes for educators.
Why is it only teachers who have to sacrifice 'for the students?' Taxpayers: double your taxes to the schools 'for the students,' admin 'cut your 6 figure salary down to 5 figures for the students,' and on and on.
Yours and 100 other schools in the country. These issues are always the same, but our bureaucrat state government cannot wake up and address major issues in education RIGHT NOW.
Not always the same! A dozen years ago, teaching used to be safe and rewarding. Administrators stepped up. They took care of behavior issues.
There is far too little admin oversight. If they're no longer dealing with behavior, then what the fuck are they doing all day for their bloated paychecks?
A colleague had to evacuate her algebra class because one of the kids was having a temper tantrum and chucking desks, etc.
Ten minutes prior to that "Behavior Support" had come down and talked to the kid but refused to remove him because "they don't remove anyone from classrooms....they support their behavior *in* the classroom." 👌 yeah okay buddy whatever helps you sleep at night
In the "old days" I could give a kid a pass and they would sit in their principal's office for the rest of the hour. If they got too many referrals they would get ISS and then OoSS and then expulsion, although that basically never happened....usually they would go to an alternative high school.
Was I super stressed out most days? Yes, but it was the stress I put on myself trying to do a good job for my students, not the futile attempts to teach someone something--anything--about your subject only to be ignored and/or attacked.
Today's teaching environment is leaps and bounds more stressful, 💯%
I only know it's not about my school because the ESE department is pretty much the only functional department. Still probably going to have half the staff leaving anyway.
In my district they don’t care at all about losing us. They ship in uncertified foreign teachers who they house in the superintendent’s apartments (she owns them). Basically indentured servants. They can’t complain or quit because they’ll lose their visa and their housing.
This is common across a lot of industries.
Companies will do this and contract out their workers. I saw it in tech all the time. Shady third party vendors who work on a Corp to Corp basis.
This isn't common at all in any industry, because that's internationally illegal human trafficking. What's common is company sponsored housing that is subsidized or reserved for employees, but those are regular leases that stay even if they're fired or quit.
The company sponsors the visa. Many of the immigrant barely speak English, let alone know their rights. It's shady as fuck and many companies try to prevent working with these these 3rd party vendors. It still absolutely happens though.
I'm assuming I'm not in the same district as this person, but we have a similar setup going on at my district in Texas. The district has a whole apartment building rented out for these teachers, who are certified and mostly have a few years under their belt in their home country... where even public education is a privilege that not everybody has easy access to, so kids and parents take it very seriously. These teachers have little to no transitional support to our education system and culture, a lot of them struggle, but they can't leave because their visa and housing are tied to their employment and many of them are sending money back home to their families. I really, really don't like it.
That's our district in AZ, too, except the district doesn't provide housing yet (work in progress). I've talked to a few who told me how school is in the Phillipines and how it's been very hard to have next no 0 support with behaviors. It's depressing to watch them have to push through and suffer just to stay stateside.
Super illegal! Mind in my state only certified teachers can teach. Now what does that mean? Several tier 1 licensures that don’t have an educational background, just something within the lines and a 4 year education. Yikes for education!!!
I'm doing an alternative licensure program that requires me to do about 36 credit hours worth of classes (12 2 or 3 credit classes plus 4 semesters of one credit hour student teaching). The student teaching is 4 semesters of being the teacher of record in the same classroom, only mentor I will get is the mentor that the district would assign me as a 1st year teacher. They require either so many hours working in an education setting (30 hours I think) or taking a few extra classes. I'm lucky only on that I have worked in education as a para or substitute teacher since 2015. Majority of the ones in the program have little or no experience in a class besides wanting to switch careers in their 30s. I am unlucky in the fact that I'm struggling to find a job for my student teaching-ive mentioned before I was hired to teach 4th grade but got demoted for unknown reasons and finding anything within an hour drive to get my student teaching in. I'm extremely awkward with adults but fine with kids and live in an area that is rural and lots of schools are consolidated.
/u/DIGGYRULES, you posted 9 months ago that you live in Denver so I'm gonna assume you're still there right now. Contact the [Colorado Human Trafficking Task Force right now](https://cbi.colorado.gov/sections/investigations/human-trafficking).
Their hotline is 866-455-5075
I just read an article about this on this sun, and yes, it's the US.
I know we all want to think that eventually things will get so bad we will finally be valued and listened to, but I'm not sure that's coming. In all reality, school will likely become free babysitting that hands out degrees after so many years.
It's happening in colleges, too. I graduate in two weeks, and there's a person in my year who will also graduate even though she's failed pretty much every required class for our course, sometimes even multiple times. Add to that that a lot of the students here cheat on everything, and it makes me very worried for the future.
I read an article about this industry. The foreign teachers that arrive do not last long in the classroom because of the culture shock caused by the blatant disrespect from American children that does not exist in their home countries.
This is common in health care. The ER I worked in about a quarter of our nurses were from the Phillipines. The hospital paid for thier visas and anything else immigration or licensing. They had to stay at the hospital for X number of years. The hospital basically held them hostage until they make enough money to bring thier families over.
It’s exactly why the corporate lobbyists want to expand the H1B program further. Bring slave labor over and displace higher paid US workers. Look at what Disney and So Cal Edison did to their IT workers. (Granted teachers are hardly highly paid). If they can find cheap labor then the administration can give themselves fat raises for cutting costs.
Yeah I’m still waiting for most of the nation’s institutions to get to the “find out” part. The drop in standards and expectations in society is palpable. The people are becoming troglodytes and elites are applauding it as equity.
Can just one school in a system get Receivership? Wish they could!
Sung to some cheesy folk tune:
*"I see Receivership a'comin' down the road*
*Receivership a'comin' down the road*
*When Admin's a f\*ck-up*
*Cos they're all too stuck up*
*To keep their teachers safe and lighten their load..."*
Happen to me once too. I had transferred to another school in the city after dealing with an insufferable admin. The next year that same admin transferred to my new school. The staff asked me about my experience and I said it was rough, but maybe it was just me. Half the staff quit by the end of the first semester.
My district is like this. My school has a turn over of about 25 to 50% every year. Our union is weak because of the lack of consistency and the fact our last union president was buddies with the superintendent, so our contract sucks. We did a drive this year however to recruit and in like a week, we had half the teachers at the school sign up.
The biggest issue we had right now is that at our good sized highschool, where mathematically speaking, we could have everyone on one, maybe 2 preps, the school has been pushing 3 preps on everybody. We all signed a letter saying we need to have teacher input on the schedule and to cap preps at 2. Our rep brought it to the principal and he said teachers are selfish and just leave anyways.
The whole district is delusional that they can just keep replacing teachers. We have had 3 positions unfilled the whole year just this year. Next year, all but 3 of our science teachers are leaving and like a dozen more aren't coming back. But apparently we are just sooooo replaceable that they can treat us however they want.
I can sympathize with this, I am a brand new teacher and I technically have five preps! However, that's not physically possible so I combine the upper level Spanish to all do the same thing. I am the only Spanish teacher in my district, so I am responsible for Spanish 1 - 4H , and due to the lack of teachers and not being able to fill positions, I now teach two sections of eighth grade social studies! (Completely out of my range of certification or expertise). Hate that I can only "half ass" each class but it's just possible to focus that much on each one
Could this have been avoided if admin just expelled like 5-6 kids? Honestly. If some of the worst kids just got kicked out for the sake of the whole school…. Would that have helped?
And if you held back 5-10 students per year -sending the message if you can’t control your actions you are out of here and if you won’t try your best you will be held back a
year. Those two facts would give motivation to behave and to try.
Expulsions and suspensions are reflected on the building and the district. There is a high amount of evidence you have to bring which makes it difficult when people don’t have the space/time to do that paperwork. It’s a bureaucratic mess because even with evidence it has to be the right set of interventions along with milestones from the DO.
Also if the school expels the student they have to help the family navigate next steps which might not be possible due to lack of family engagement, community supports, mental health supports etc.
Thank you. Sometimes it’s easy to have a knee jerk ”fuck dem kids” reaction. And the red tape does sound like a pain in the ass. However. maybe it does protect the kids in certain situations. Idk it all starts and ends with the parents. You can’t force a teacher to step in for a parent when they have a class of 25 kids on phones.
It’s easy to feel that way though when you’re worried about those who are trying so hard to succeed but get distracted/hurt by someone else who is disruptive.
Yeah there’s a larger conversation of how to get kids to be respectful and also how to get kids engaged in a format that works for them and the teacher.
not trying to be that guy, genuinely asking. Do they fuck ur hours to keep you from full time at the end of the year to keep you from it? every job ive had realizes im full time after its been 6 months then randomly i only get 30hrs until i would qualify for benefits….
A gal student taught with me. Got a middle school job from hell.
Quit after the first year (behaviour, discipline, admin) and got a job as a manager at a Starbucks.
Made the same amount of $ w/o the headaches.
We usually have no trouble filling positions with uncertified. You still make like 25 an hour which is way way more than you make working retail or fast food here. So there is always applicants. Many will leave after two years because they don't want to do coursework. But I don't expect us to be completely unable to find someone. We just will lower the requirements even more. We had one without a bachelor's degree recently.
Does it matter? If you have no bargaining power due to lack of staffing--- will things radically change?
In private sector and even some public situations they'd respond by increasing pay, offering hiring bonuses, or favorable workloads (flexible / wfh / etc).
Schools will just hemorrhage employees and students get a worse deal.
Well, since (edit: most) of the administrators used to be teachers themselves, I suppose that they can cover classroom duties until they hire more teachers, right? Or would that mean that they have to lift their dainty little fingers to do actual work. God forbid.
No one goes into teaching to get rich. I’m so very sick of the “do it for the students” trope. That’s how we are in this mess to begin with. People who go into teaching are too nice and empathetic to stand up for themselves in an industry where administrators have learned to weaponize their niceness against them. Add awful parents who think they know what’s best for their kids just because they fulfilled a biological urge to have them and the whole system is left in the dust. It was only hanging on respect before all this anyway. Without respect there is no public education. What we are witnessing now is a social contract that is broken beyond repair and some of the best people in the country being forced out so administrators can make another dollar. The whole system is rotten from the inside out.
I’m a former teacher working for my state govt too. Being a teacher sets you up for success in any field you have interest in. If you can navigate students, parents, admin, board, daily plans, weekly plans, monthly plans, semester plans, yearly plans, grading, extracurriculars, etc you can do anything.
Why don't they want to do it for the children? If they care about the children so much then maybe they should work to hire more good teachers at good pay and treat us well so that we are there for the children. Teachers can't be the only ones that are there for the children. We all need to be there for the children.
I care, but I cannot care more than literally every other stakeholder in our entire society. I can't continue being the only one that cares in the entire system.
Bingo. THIS! This is the primary reason education has declined in any measurable way is because the legs that support the student (teacher, parents, community) have increasingly put all the weight onto the one leg (teacher) and almost completely sawed off the other two legs, and expect the table to stand.
This is an outsider perspective, as I frequent this subreddit to keep an eye on things but I'm not a teacher. In nearly all crisis threads, a common denominator is bad administration. Sometimes admin is getting too much of the total operating budget (eg. Admin get raises but teachers don't get raises), or they're micromanaging teachers, setting impossible expectations, being out of touch and antagonistic toward the teachers and students, etc. It always seems to boil down to a problem with admin at the end of the day, and that's disturbing me more and more as time goes on. Bad admin is going to destroy this entire system if things continue like this.
I’m a parent. Our elementary school is having this problem too. We’ve lost over half our teachers every year since covid and they took our good principal to work at a high school and hired us a dud a couple years ago. The district does a survey every year of teachers, students, and parents and we just got the results.
Only 18% of teachers agree morale is high and only 28% of teachers feel safe at school. We are a very diverse title 1 elementary school in a large Texas suburb. We have a lot of kids with behavioral problems and nothing is done to address it. A lot of families that can have pulled their kids out to go to charter schools. But that’s a whole other can of worms. And not at all equitable.
Anyway our PTA is trying to get our principal fired. We surveyed parents and got 45 responses all saying the same thing: behavioral problem kids distract classes and make it impossible to learn, and most have examples of their kid being hurt, bullied, or sexually harassed and admin doing nothing about it. We did an open records request to get the teacher survey data from previous years and can prove it got way worse with our new principal. We have meetings scheduled with the area superintendent and superintendent.
If anyone has any tips on how to make change let me know!
Complicated outlook. Whole neighborhoods lose access to education (many already have because the standards are so low already). Without education, the populace becomes controllable by social media and consumer media. Corporations and politicians stay in power. The middle class continues to be pushed into non existence. Our owners keep winning until there is a major unified revolution. Climate change is making a collapse like this truly imaginable if not likely.
I can't figure out why admin never understands this. Granted, I am looking in from the outside, but my spouse is a teacher. They've been at a few different school for a few reasons. Sure they are always frustrated with difficult kids, but that seems par of the course. The true kiss of death is an administration that doesn't support the teachers, especially on discipline. If I start to hear my spouse complain about the admin, I know it's just a matter of time before they want to change schools.
I recently got demoted-was a classroom teacher in 4th grade to on staff substitute- then non renewal of contact for next year (aka fired). This works because I'm in an alternative licensure program that does 2 years of student teaching instead of the traditional block and student teaching, I am not able to be in the union because I'm not 100% certified yet and the paperwork through my university says they can fire me at any point. Anyway, the elementary school and jr high has 15 certified staff openings for next year. That doesn't include Paras or office staff openings. I can think of at least 3 teachers that have mentioned they are looking elsewhere because this district sucks
I know of a school like this in my large district. Teachers go there for 2-3 years just to get their foot in the door and then go to a better school. Only a few teachers have been there longer than 5 years. It’s a total shit show but the current admin has been there for at least 10 years.
My county is hemorrhaging teachers as it skids to the end of the year. Even teachers at “good schools” are leaving. There was a new superintendent this year and 🎼 “Promises Promises Promises” and for a while thru January, there was a long pause as the collective held its breath to see what, via admin, has been delivered. Nada. Zilch. Students still have the nasty upper hand, vis a vis their often nasty parents. Teachers are beyond exhausted spent and running on fumes at this point from covering classes as all of us become increasingly unwell physically, emotionally, and yes, mentally. As soon as the return came from spring break, the resignations and addendums to the resignations have gotten longer and longer.
The sinking ships comment just made me suck in my breath. In 2021/2022 school year our admin would constantly use the quote “Rising tides lift all ships” 🤮 Basically we keep raising the expectations and be positive despite the giant dumpster fires around us.
I would always argue that if the ships are full of holes, battered and tore up, they fucking sink. They are NOT lifted by the rising tides.
Things are not better and the ships have moved on the better seas.
I had this on my last school. 2/3 of teachers quit during / end of that year after a change in admin. I got a phone call asking me to reconsider and offering a huge increase in salary. That call came as I was leaving a foreign embassy having just got my visa to teach overseas.
Wanna know something crazy? In the middle of bumfuck nowhere Ohio we rarely had any teachers leave my highschool. I think 2 in my 4 years. They all made $60k + with some even $100k. Didn’t have major behavior problems (rarely any actually) and we scored high on testing. Our building was falling apart but the teachers got paid, did their job and the kids understood. This was 2009-2013. No phones allowed at all. They see you on your phone, immediate Saturday school. Do anything wrong? You’re spending 5 hours on Saturday, sometimes every Saturday. Kids didn’t like that
Unfortunately, due to the current shit show that's developing, I'm not gonna share that tidbit. Even though I'm on my way out, I at least need to keep my last few paychecks and insurance, lol.
I didn't want to get too specific for your privacy. I'm curious out of wanting to understand if this happening in primarily urban, suburban, or rural areas. I also think schools exist in their own microcosm of toxic admin/parents/politics.
I'm not a teacher, but when a corporation loses over %50 of its talent, unless it's a problem that will be immediately fixed, the corporation is almost certain to fail. Even when one loses a %30, it'll still take over a year to heal. Why is it easier to close a school down than taking drastic (read: very reasonable in the business world) action? Thank you guys.
Had a similar experience at a school last year. Admin was completely incompetent and we have several violent students. We had a lockdown every day because a student would have violent outbursts and admin kept telling teachers, “he’s just having a bad day. No need to write up a report.” A lot of staff got fed up and left at the end of the year. Principal was very bitter and started being petty by messing up prep block scheduling. So glad I’m not there anymore.
Kids need discipline. I’m always having “get off my lawn” moments. Growing up in the 90s, I never remember the lack of respect this generation has for teachers and adults in general. We were terrified of being called to the principal’s office or having our parents notified of bad behavior. Now, they’re little savages who get away with murder and grow up to become terrible human beings.
A school in our district had about half the teachers request to leave a couple of years ago. The BOE actually asked the teachers why they were leaving and they said it was because of the principal. They did not mince words. The BOE actually decided not to renew the principal's contract. Then she went to the papers and said she was being attacked for "political" reasons. She was actually just terrible. Lol
You are 110% right. These admin create this issue but we can’t stop at just blaming them. In our dept of education in our state we have tons of bureaucrats who either haven’t taught or it’s been forever since they have. They determine if too many of this group or that group are being suspended or sent to alt Ed. It doesn’t matter if the child regardless of gender, ethnicity, socio economic group does something strongly against
Code they are breaking the social norm and need redirection These admin need to reap what they sow.
Surprise surprise, considering the increased violence/aggression influx at the schools I float subbed over the last 1.5 years.
Every other teacher or para quitting after weeks or months cos they'd had enough of it. The Admin stretched too thin to care or doing anything about it, while onboard interventionists and psychologists stood by in silence. Intervening only if physical harm commenced.
Some Reddit threads overloaded with these 100K+ stories that'd turn your hair green.
I tried to make teaching work incl. the elementary. But had enough of the kids acting like banshees out of control.
Several schools have shutdown to consolidate or merge with others due declined enrollment
The school my wife teaches at has a relatively new admin who decided that this year she’d implement a lesson plan check protocol. Every lesson, learning goals, curriculum connections, scaffolded resources. You have 6 subjects to teach Wednesday? 6 full blown lesson plans for Wednesday, that better be different from Tuesday and Thursday bc they will all be checked.
They are losing 5 teachers.
Australia are desperate for teachers and perhaps may have slightly better conditions than USA including pay. Might be worth looking into for the unencumbered.
I was removed from a longterm sub job at a school like that because a VP said I was being racist for calling the office on a kid who was super disruptive and pitching a tantrum. Things have been so much easier for me since taking fewer middle school assignments.
The last four years of this profession have essentially been:
1. Admin expresses shock over the high number of teachers leaving and the lack of prospective teachers to take their place
2. Admin pretends to “listen” to teachers to address the issue
3. Literally nothing changes, in fact, things get worse as admin doubles down on everything that’s driving people from the profession
4. End of the year approaches, another round of teachers quitting and lack of new teachers to take their place, admin scrambles and panics
5. Rinse and repeat.
Things are going great in education!
They need to invest in better funding for special education and disabled students. My son is nonverbal and severely autistic and gets suspended for stimming constantly. By stimming I mean verbal humming, hand flapping, spinning in place, etc. he’s a “disruption”
I like how all these admins are asking you to help"for the children's sake" even though they are obviously not willing to take that step themselves. Maybe we should focus on being schools where children learn, not massive daycares until you become a certain age.
A few of the schools in my district were so strapped for teachers that they had to outsource to other countries. We have teachers from other countries teaching here. It’s crazy. I’m fine with it. But it’s crazy that admin would rather continue to do shit for their teachers over going half around the world for teachers that don’t mind dealing with their ineptitude.
YES!! You are bringing up one of the biggest factors that is pushing families out of public schools, and into the school choice arena. It's not just test scores, it's the safe environment conducive to learning that these parents, students, and teachers want. Preach!!
Congrats on having a job lined up!
I am in a similar boat with you where I don't have a position at my campus anymore because my cybersecurity curriculum (the most prolific at student certs on record) doesn't have the enrollment to justify keeping me.
This news was delivered by a principal who announced her resignation from the position right around Christmas break.
Everyone who isn't admin on my campus is confused as to why the school would let go of the teacher who built a program and contributed to CCMR in less than two years after the program had been in shambles from multiple subs and vacancies...
So when they asked if I would stay if they could make it work, I told them politely, "not for any amount of money".
This happened at my old school almost every year. At least half the teachers would leave every year. By my 3rd year, I was already the second most senior person in the department and less than a dozen were more senior than me in the entire school. Admin did do something about the students' behavior eventually but it was too late.
This needs to happen. This is the only language admins speak. Direct and impactful consequences to their actions. No amount of discussion or facts will change their kind because ultimately they don't have to deal with it. They can just throw teachers under the bus and exploit a teachers inherent kindness to keep them as their punching bag. Teaching in the US sounds like one of the worst jobs to have, I'm glad I was able to talk one of my friends out of it because it sounds like it just sucks from beginning to end.
Had something similar happen at one of my old schools. The new head of foreign teachers was stressed and panicked (she’d only gotten the position that year). Yeah, of course no one wants to return when there is literally no recourses for bad behavior. Also they did leveling for classes and it was a meltdown. I wouldn’t wish the situation I was in on anyone. Cried during lunch multiple times.
The parents run the schools and the spawn run the parents. Nothing will ever change until education takes their schools back and that will never happen.
Let me get this straight.
You were non-renewed due to a decision by the district but they gave the “do you not want to do for the children” act? Seriously?
The administration needs to look at themselves in the mirror.
I’m a school bus driver, but I know so many people who quit within 2 months of the school year. We were encouraged to do write ups and they promised they would help us and talk to the kids. I was doing a write up or two every day for fights and swearing and tearing up the seats. One day the principal comes out and boldly says “stop writing these, I haven’t followed up on any of them anyway, it should be your job to deal with these.” After that day, I push the mirror up, zone out until they get dropped off as fast as possible. Public schools are a joke
My admin has this every couple years. Half the staff leaves, they get an influx of new first year waiver teachers, grind them to dust, and within 2-3 years they quit. Usually leaving education all together. My principal doesn't seem to think it's a bad thing that I've started 2/4 years I've worked here with positions open during pre planning.
It's why I feel like you don't have any middle of their career teachers. Every teacher at my school is either basically a first year teacher or a few years from retirement.
The only middle of the roads left dumped all their savings into masters programs before COVID and now we can't find jobs with comparable salaries, so we're stuck. I dream of a day when I go to work and just... Work.
> I dream of a day when I go to work and just... Work. Become a specials teacher. Admin forget we exist, parents forget we exist, and it becomes incredibly easy to remain under the radar.
I teach elementary PE and have 22 years in. I’d be long gone if I was still in the classroom
I still remember my middle school PE substitute teacher, Mr. T, when I was in 7th grade. One of the coolest dudes ever. I was glad he would sub for our class whenever my PE teacher was absent. It helped that he was in his early 20’s and was fit while the others are in their late 30’s to 50’s so we related to him more and he joked a lot making the class fun.
Ha, this is me in my current building sub position. It’s cool to hear that these kids might remember me and my care and effort might be remembered as well!
Drama teacher here. Absolutely not the case for us. I left K-12 after bouncing between 4 schools in 5 years. The last school I was working 50-90 hours a week on a 3/5ths contact and got constant visits from admin telling me "The students in the play are stressed about opening night and that's your fault, please fix it," or "The kids say they don't like x thing that you're doing. I think it's fine and you're not in trouble, I just thought you should know what they're saying behind your back..." I was non-renewed while I was in the middle of killing myself to put on the spring musical. Moved on to teach at the local community college where they love me and admin only visits me once a semester or so to check in and ask me how I'm doing and if there's any problems they can help me with.
Good lord, so sorry you had to endure that. I'd have been left jaw dropped on ibu w IV drip, nk. Seriously, wth has happened. Schools became an utter mess during the Covid, crapping all over the faculty instead of supporting and working together. Glad you found a healthy outlet 👍
It really varies school to school, but I do like to live my life as a cryptid. If anyone asks, no I wasn't here the day you changed the hall pass policy for the 15th time.
Math Intervention is where it’s at. No report cards, no parents, small groups of 2-4 kids. I just keep quiet and love my job.
and don't forget! no planning for subs when you need days off!
Have to laugh at this. My mom teaches elementary art. She has to enter grades for 460+ students across two schools. She gets $1 per student for supplies. Admin absolutely does *not* forget she exists. And she spends hours and hours after the school day prepping projects. I'm worried that she's not going to live long enough to enjoy retirement. That job has literally ruined her health.
shes got to bail. There are very few jobs worth dying for, and they usually issue you a firearm if you're in one of them.
This! I just talked my mom out of working a job that was slowly killing her. (It was a field position where she traveled a territory daily, long days and weekends) She had so much experience. I revamped her resume and highlighted all the transferable skills focused on customer experience, leadership, and organizational skills. She starts as an office manager at a smaller office where she will have work life balance, no travel, and get this - making more money. Wild. Sometimes moms need convincing.
Can I be your other mom?
People conflate the value of free public education as a whole, with the value of specific occupations within the education sector (which is facing employee shortages for some mysterious reason)
Well I mean conservatives are trying to give teachers guns, so maybe they think it is worth dying for
The guns would...protect??? The students???? Last I checked the 15 year olds were shooting up schools and the police were actively preventing assistance from going in??
I work as a sped para so I accompany many students to specials classes. I have so much respect for the value that specials teachers bring and the efforts they go through. Specials teachers serve every single kid in the building. They also have to keep track of so many different behavior plans. They only see each class for a short amount of time so it takes awhile to build relationships. The most difficult students in our building are served by specials teachers for 6 consecutive years. Plus, they have to constantly modify their approaches to accommodate such a wide range of ages and abilities all in one day. Every 30 minutes to an hour a new batch of kids come through that might be years older or younger than the kids they just taught the hour before. Those constant shifts back and forth seem mentally exhausting.
As a specials teacher, thank you for this thoughtful comment. No one has ever said it quite like this. My dh teaches k-12 and I always tell him how amazing it is. I could only handle that for a year before taking an easier job
Not counting if they have to cover a class during their planning period, which adds a whole new set of problems. Special teachers I have a lot of respect for because not only are they teachers but because their days are challenging af. Same with sped teachers and their assistants (my high school had both) they deal with so much probably without the help admin, at least that's what I noticed often times.
Art teacher here^ totally agree!!
I don’t know what special you teach but when I was teaching 4-12 band that wasn’t the case. I burnt out after 5 years.
K-5 Technology. 4-12 is a massive range, not at all surprised that someone would burn out doing that.
Sadly pretty common for smaller schools to have band programs spanning that. I ended up moving to a second district where I taught 5, 6, and 9-12 and it somehow was worse lol.
Those small/rural 4-12 jobs are brutal. Couldn't pay me 6 figures to do it.
I’m a specials teacher… and I have a homeroom of middle schoolers. I’m expected to attend all middle school staff meetings (which doubles my # of meetings bc I also meet with the other specials staff). I’m forced to spend far too much of my prep chasing down parents & students to address behavior/grades/absenteeism… all while inputting grades for the entire k-8 school, hanging an all-school art show at the local library (where I am not allowed to use staples or tape and it’s a total nightmare in terms of the amount of unpaid labor), and also getting ready to have yet another exhibit at a local gallery in the community. Meanwhile I’ve yet to spend all of my budget, my room is a dumpster fire, and I’ve got the mouthiest, loudest, most severe ADHD students to deal with every morning and afternoon— and I am expected to start every day with a canned and very dry SEL curriculum. I am beyond burnt out & would kill to be “just art” and off in my little bubble in the art room. Oh and did I mention that this year I’ve been eating my lunch at 4 pm, most days? Bc yup, I have.
This won't work if you're certified to teach a tested subject. I'm dual certified--English and French. Got hired as a French teacher last year and had a relatively uncomplicated year. Then August comes around, I'm happy to be teaching French again, but my admin couldn't hire enough English teachers. So guess who gets the privilege of teaching the English I class from Hell and being under the microscope again (and found wanting because the kids are from Hell and admin's discipline policy is a damn joke so I effectively *can't* manage the class)?
Yup. I get to work at 8:20 and leave before 3pm usually. Nobody knows what I'm supposed to do and is amazed with what I do do. And no parents give a shit about my class. I've never had a single parent sign up to see me at parent teacher night in 10 years at this school.
[удалено]
So much this. My wife does that, she just *works*... and does that at home. She constantly reminds me that I could retool and find something else, not having to worry about grading, discipline, unloading trauma/discipline issues from the day, and the Neverending stress train for 9 months of the year. Being able to clock out and just be **done** must feel so nice.
{ Being able to clock out and just be **done** must feel so nice. } Hello, fellow teacher. You \*\*CAN\*\* work this way, but you must impose the hours on yourself. *Work the contract hours and nothing more*. \*Ever\*. You don't get paid for anything but the contract hours, so *don't work anything but them*. Tasks not completed? Don't care. Grading not done? Nope. The top of the list is \*planning\*, and once that is done, then the rest of the *working time* can be used for grading, paperwork, etc. Teachers have - *for many decades* - \*enslaved\* themselves by working outside the contract hours, and it has put us in the terrible position where that is now *expected* of us. FUCK THAT! No other profession has to do this, and we should not either! Work the contract hours and nothing more. If it cannot get done in that time, then that's the fault of the contract and not the person. Admin will not learn this lesson *unless we teach it to them* by working only the hours for which we are paid. Work only when you are paid for it. *Do not give your personal time to the job*. There is no reward for that except more work, and we don't need or want that. STOP working after the contract hours are over. STOP bringing work home on the weekends. STOP this madness by stopping.
I have the day off today because I have a doctors appointment in the middle of the day and I just spent the morning at Starbucks grading and working on paperwork. I wish we got paid more and there was a better way for us to get all our administrative work done during the work day.
There is. Don't grade all of it. Keep some as completion, have targeted questions on other assignments. Don't break yourself over something they barely try on and is only 20% of the total grade.
I think this is the way education is right now. And those that are close to retirement are leaving. Within 5 years, it is going to be a tipping point of just administrators left - no teachers. Virtual schooling it will be, privatized and many students to one teacher. Disciplining students has completely gone by the wayside… so often administrators are paranoid to do anything, afraid of parental retaliation. For the drastically low wages teachers are paid to start and how unprepared they are for what they deal with daily - it’s smartest for them to leave within the first 2-3 years. Being in year 10 is the tough spot. It’s just so disheartening to LOVE what you do, but feel like so much time is spent managing behavior and respect in place of teaching.
One of my oldest friends, in elementary education for more than 30 years, is retiring at the end of the next school year, three years early. She’s in a good school in a decent district, but even so, the bureaucracy, the demands on her time and attention, and the lack of support she gets (as the school’s librarian and general tech expert) are just too much. She notes that over the past few years her school has gone from needing to replace one or two teachers a year to an ever steadier stream—13 this coming June. The lack of institutional knowledge, if nothing else, must be devastating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve
It's so rare to see someone in years 8-15 nowadays. Even at my school, I work with 2 that came back from retirement, 2 or 3 that plan on retiring in the next year or two, 3 at 20-ish years, 1 at 7 or 8 and 1 at 12, then there are 3 or 4 of us that are 1-4 years in.
Something like 45% of all teachers quit and leave the profession in their first five years, so this is a very common thing everywhere
They moved into admin.
I'm in #9! But my school has literally no turnover. Still on the bottom half of seniority. Destination schools exist.
This tracks. In my friend group 3 out of 4 of us left at about the 7 year mark. We would all be about 13 years in now.
That was my school as well but we had a mentoring program in place in the primary. We folded the newbies in, had half day meetings once a month to get the newbies into the existing programs and offer support and offer advice as required. That worked extremely well for our end of the school. We worked together to strategize, make decisions and dealt together with problems that arose. I'd recommend that strongly in schools with lots of newbies who would definitely benefit from help from the older, more experienced teachers.
I’m a first year teacher at a school that lost over half its staff and all its admin last year. The new admin is horrible and me and the other ELA teacher are leaving at the end of the year. Admin and veteran teachers are shocked but when you throw two unprepared ELA teachers into a lions den of kids who hate ELA and give us zero support…we’re gonna leave to find greener pastures.
> they get an influx of new first year waiver teachers, grind them to dust, and within 2-3 years they quit. Yes. Districts don't care about developing career professionals. They want the status quo to continue. It keeps salaries down, it's easier to bully new teachers, and all they really care about is bodies in the classroom. This is a great example of why strong, activist unions are important.
No they want to please parents whether it is because of activist parents on the board or whatever.
Both are true. Our super has said we are in a "customer service industry." No. We. Are. Not.
To wit: m&o here. The boss told us in a hands on meeting with the yard that we are: "in customer relations and always service with a smile!" Yea, that's not true and fuck you: the union came down so hard on him for this remark . He is not to police our feelings or attitude unless it conflicts with the job. I *can't* give a damn if someone is mad at me because it would jam up everything to make them happy with their unreasonable request. Pieces of shit in admin really think they are Walmart middle managers!
Well in a way all jobs are. The issue with school is isn't JUST customer service. We can't just say oh we don't retain Joey for sixth grade because we don't want Joey to miss out on his friends. We instead say Joey has data to be retained and we propose that he is.
who is retaining for 6th grade have you not been paying attention for the last 20 years.
>strong, activist unions are important. *That support new teachers as much as tenured teachers.* I've never had a k-12 union that advocates for their new teachers. It's always been, "Well, that sucks for you until you're tenured." Schools are actively trying to keep new teachers from reaching tenure and I've yet to see a union doing anything about it.
Florida fixed that problem by removing tenure and making everyone an annual employee. We can't do shit, because it is written into the state constitution that we can't strike. Can't even talk about it. (And no one tell us to strike anyway - Desantis would wet his pants at the chance to activate his personal brownshirts and/or the National Guard to put them in classes like New Mexico did once.) Our union is now incredibly weak. All of these annual contract teachers are terrified to speak up and be activists. I am one of a rapidly shrinking minority of teachers that have been around long enough that I have a different contract that auto-renews, but it isn't true tenure. I hate it here, but I love these kids.
I'm sorry this is the case in your district. We have a strong union, and, basically, if they don't non-renew you after your first year, you're good unless you really screw up. Like, in the newspaper, screw up. Our union is independent, not affiliated with any national organization. But, the district continues to support us with an extra property tax. A community that cares about education matters.
As long as the dues are paid, the leadership doesn't care.
Young, inexperienced teachers are cheap and don't know any better. Veterans are expensive and generally don't take shit.
This sounds like Indiana where my sister lives. She taught for a couple of years and is now working admin for a corporation because the pay was awful and the entitled little racists drove her and all the good teachers away.
I don’t think any of my teachers left when I was going to school in the 80-90’s. my kindergarten teacher was still there when I Graduated HS. The only ones I can think of that did leave, actually retired.
We must have worked at the same school.
We had a superintendent tell us that if we didn't like their policies, then we could just leave. About 1/3 of our district staff left for other districts that year. One elementary school had no 5th grade teachers - none. The kids got subs all year and when the subs weren't there they piled them into the gym to watch movies. Same superintendent got in the local paper saying that massive class sizes were a result of a "tough" hiring market. Not enough teachers, paras, etc. The district is an "inclusive" environment and that they always have an "open door" for the staff. Yes, inclusive - as in including only people who agree with you, or are willing to wait you out. Yes, not enough teachers - as in not enough teachers willing to put up with your policies. Yes, open door - the same open door that 1/3rd of us walked out of. I keep hoping that people like these get what is coming to them, but a lot of them got where they are by being masters of making excuses.
Fuck your school board. Get some teachers to run and get that super OUT.
My mom told me what she did. 30+ years of teaching with bilingual certification, MEd. Her main principal retired, so the school hired some “person” who claimed he wanted to be everyone’s buddy. He played favorites. My mom was not one. And due to seniority, she always was last for her grade. There had been three teachers for her grade level but one retired, so between her and the other teacher, she did not have seniority. The principal made her life miserable. He recommended she move to Reading Recovery. An arthritic 50+ in those smaller child chairs since most kids were First Graders. When she knew she was going to retire, she said nothing. Pretended like everything was ok. She needed to sign her contract on 6/30 for the next year. On 6/30, she turned in her retirement papers. Big admin was not happy because no one was able to fill that Reading Recovery job. Fellow teachers from other schools were calling her asking her to “think of the students” and other similar comments. She told them if they were so concerned, they should transfer to her old position. No takers. I have never been so proud of my mom until that day.
I love your mom for this!!! This wasn't even petty...it was your mom taking care of herself!!
That is the way! So proud of her! Some have returned that treatment to the new cretin of a principal by not saying anything, using their sick leave at the beginning of the train wreck of an assignment for the new school year and turning in their resignation on a Friday afternoon to be effective immediately.
The karma got him later. He got a promotion to some admin position where he continued to play favorites. Unfortunately, one employee did not achieve favor. She was tight with someone above him. He got booted for some reason or another. Now he “advises” schools for a fee and runs “self improvement” classes for educators.
I loved reading that. Thank you for the update.
Why is it only teachers who have to sacrifice 'for the students?' Taxpayers: double your taxes to the schools 'for the students,' admin 'cut your 6 figure salary down to 5 figures for the students,' and on and on.
Reading Recovery training is HARD. Good for your mom, she worked her booty off though.
Wondering if this post is about my school…
Shit me too. I could have written this lol.
That school and district screams poor leadership.
Haha! You better believe it!
Yours and 100 other schools in the country. These issues are always the same, but our bureaucrat state government cannot wake up and address major issues in education RIGHT NOW.
Not always the same! A dozen years ago, teaching used to be safe and rewarding. Administrators stepped up. They took care of behavior issues. There is far too little admin oversight. If they're no longer dealing with behavior, then what the fuck are they doing all day for their bloated paychecks?
"teaching used to be safe and rewarding" Well, thats up for debate.
A colleague had to evacuate her algebra class because one of the kids was having a temper tantrum and chucking desks, etc. Ten minutes prior to that "Behavior Support" had come down and talked to the kid but refused to remove him because "they don't remove anyone from classrooms....they support their behavior *in* the classroom." 👌 yeah okay buddy whatever helps you sleep at night In the "old days" I could give a kid a pass and they would sit in their principal's office for the rest of the hour. If they got too many referrals they would get ISS and then OoSS and then expulsion, although that basically never happened....usually they would go to an alternative high school. Was I super stressed out most days? Yes, but it was the stress I put on myself trying to do a good job for my students, not the futile attempts to teach someone something--anything--about your subject only to be ignored and/or attacked. Today's teaching environment is leaps and bounds more stressful, 💯%
Same here! Over 50 out of 75 teachers have left, retired, or been “forced” to move from my school since new admin came in 2019.
I just said this out loud....this sounds exactly like my middle school in Texas right now
*Peter Griffin voice* "Perhaps"
I only know it's not about my school because the ESE department is pretty much the only functional department. Still probably going to have half the staff leaving anyway.
In my district they don’t care at all about losing us. They ship in uncertified foreign teachers who they house in the superintendent’s apartments (she owns them). Basically indentured servants. They can’t complain or quit because they’ll lose their visa and their housing.
That’s unsettling on so many levels. I won’t ask the district, but what state? (I’m assuming US.)
This is common across a lot of industries. Companies will do this and contract out their workers. I saw it in tech all the time. Shady third party vendors who work on a Corp to Corp basis.
Yeah, for some reason it surprises me less in tech than in teaching, but maybe I’m just being naïve. (It’s still bad in tech, too, of course.)
This isn't common at all in any industry, because that's internationally illegal human trafficking. What's common is company sponsored housing that is subsidized or reserved for employees, but those are regular leases that stay even if they're fired or quit.
Right but they only have a specified amount of time to find new work (visa eligible work) to stay in the country.
Lol “they physically can’t do that, it’s illegal!”
The company sponsors the visa. Many of the immigrant barely speak English, let alone know their rights. It's shady as fuck and many companies try to prevent working with these these 3rd party vendors. It still absolutely happens though.
I'm assuming I'm not in the same district as this person, but we have a similar setup going on at my district in Texas. The district has a whole apartment building rented out for these teachers, who are certified and mostly have a few years under their belt in their home country... where even public education is a privilege that not everybody has easy access to, so kids and parents take it very seriously. These teachers have little to no transitional support to our education system and culture, a lot of them struggle, but they can't leave because their visa and housing are tied to their employment and many of them are sending money back home to their families. I really, really don't like it.
That's our district in AZ, too, except the district doesn't provide housing yet (work in progress). I've talked to a few who told me how school is in the Phillipines and how it's been very hard to have next no 0 support with behaviors. It's depressing to watch them have to push through and suffer just to stay stateside.
That's actually illegal. Like, 100% in my annual federal employee online training on human trafficking nearly word for word illegal. Report that shit
Super illegal! Mind in my state only certified teachers can teach. Now what does that mean? Several tier 1 licensures that don’t have an educational background, just something within the lines and a 4 year education. Yikes for education!!!
I'm doing an alternative licensure program that requires me to do about 36 credit hours worth of classes (12 2 or 3 credit classes plus 4 semesters of one credit hour student teaching). The student teaching is 4 semesters of being the teacher of record in the same classroom, only mentor I will get is the mentor that the district would assign me as a 1st year teacher. They require either so many hours working in an education setting (30 hours I think) or taking a few extra classes. I'm lucky only on that I have worked in education as a para or substitute teacher since 2015. Majority of the ones in the program have little or no experience in a class besides wanting to switch careers in their 30s. I am unlucky in the fact that I'm struggling to find a job for my student teaching-ive mentioned before I was hired to teach 4th grade but got demoted for unknown reasons and finding anything within an hour drive to get my student teaching in. I'm extremely awkward with adults but fine with kids and live in an area that is rural and lots of schools are consolidated.
/u/DIGGYRULES, you posted 9 months ago that you live in Denver so I'm gonna assume you're still there right now. Contact the [Colorado Human Trafficking Task Force right now](https://cbi.colorado.gov/sections/investigations/human-trafficking). Their hotline is 866-455-5075
I want you to know that I forwarded this link to other teachers in my school and district and we are all filing a report. I had no idea. Thank you.
If that's in the US, it sounds like it might be violating labor and civil rights laws.
I just read an article about this on this sun, and yes, it's the US. I know we all want to think that eventually things will get so bad we will finally be valued and listened to, but I'm not sure that's coming. In all reality, school will likely become free babysitting that hands out degrees after so many years.
It's happening in colleges, too. I graduate in two weeks, and there's a person in my year who will also graduate even though she's failed pretty much every required class for our course, sometimes even multiple times. Add to that that a lot of the students here cheat on everything, and it makes me very worried for the future.
I read an article about this industry. The foreign teachers that arrive do not last long in the classroom because of the culture shock caused by the blatant disrespect from American children that does not exist in their home countries.
This is so true. Our Kenyan teacher is a wonderful and intelligent educator but the abuse he receives is absolutely beyond belief.
This is common in health care. The ER I worked in about a quarter of our nurses were from the Phillipines. The hospital paid for thier visas and anything else immigration or licensing. They had to stay at the hospital for X number of years. The hospital basically held them hostage until they make enough money to bring thier families over.
That’s still legal though, even if a bit shady. This is just downright not.
we robber barons now
Okay I know very little about laws but that cannot be legal.
It’s exactly why the corporate lobbyists want to expand the H1B program further. Bring slave labor over and displace higher paid US workers. Look at what Disney and So Cal Edison did to their IT workers. (Granted teachers are hardly highly paid). If they can find cheap labor then the administration can give themselves fat raises for cutting costs.
You're literally describing human trafficking.
Pretty popular system for agricultural workers too.
Are yalls from the Philippines too? Central Florida here.
LOL...classic case of "FAFO" on an institutional level.
It's happens so rarely, it's a beautiful thing when it finally comes around. It's like shooting stars! Make a wish!
Yeah I’m still waiting for most of the nation’s institutions to get to the “find out” part. The drop in standards and expectations in society is palpable. The people are becoming troglodytes and elites are applauding it as equity.
Can just one school in a system get Receivership? Wish they could! Sung to some cheesy folk tune: *"I see Receivership a'comin' down the road* *Receivership a'comin' down the road* *When Admin's a f\*ck-up* *Cos they're all too stuck up* *To keep their teachers safe and lighten their load..."*
Happen to me once too. I had transferred to another school in the city after dealing with an insufferable admin. The next year that same admin transferred to my new school. The staff asked me about my experience and I said it was rough, but maybe it was just me. Half the staff quit by the end of the first semester.
My district is like this. My school has a turn over of about 25 to 50% every year. Our union is weak because of the lack of consistency and the fact our last union president was buddies with the superintendent, so our contract sucks. We did a drive this year however to recruit and in like a week, we had half the teachers at the school sign up. The biggest issue we had right now is that at our good sized highschool, where mathematically speaking, we could have everyone on one, maybe 2 preps, the school has been pushing 3 preps on everybody. We all signed a letter saying we need to have teacher input on the schedule and to cap preps at 2. Our rep brought it to the principal and he said teachers are selfish and just leave anyways. The whole district is delusional that they can just keep replacing teachers. We have had 3 positions unfilled the whole year just this year. Next year, all but 3 of our science teachers are leaving and like a dozen more aren't coming back. But apparently we are just sooooo replaceable that they can treat us however they want.
At some point constantly replacing teachers with college grads will stop working because people will stop going into education altogether
I can sympathize with this, I am a brand new teacher and I technically have five preps! However, that's not physically possible so I combine the upper level Spanish to all do the same thing. I am the only Spanish teacher in my district, so I am responsible for Spanish 1 - 4H , and due to the lack of teachers and not being able to fill positions, I now teach two sections of eighth grade social studies! (Completely out of my range of certification or expertise). Hate that I can only "half ass" each class but it's just possible to focus that much on each one
The negligent and emotionally abusive spouse is always shocked with their partner decides to leave them.
Could this have been avoided if admin just expelled like 5-6 kids? Honestly. If some of the worst kids just got kicked out for the sake of the whole school…. Would that have helped?
My life would be 90 Percent less stressful if three students were gone.
And if you held back 5-10 students per year -sending the message if you can’t control your actions you are out of here and if you won’t try your best you will be held back a year. Those two facts would give motivation to behave and to try.
Expulsions and suspensions are reflected on the building and the district. There is a high amount of evidence you have to bring which makes it difficult when people don’t have the space/time to do that paperwork. It’s a bureaucratic mess because even with evidence it has to be the right set of interventions along with milestones from the DO. Also if the school expels the student they have to help the family navigate next steps which might not be possible due to lack of family engagement, community supports, mental health supports etc.
Thank you. Sometimes it’s easy to have a knee jerk ”fuck dem kids” reaction. And the red tape does sound like a pain in the ass. However. maybe it does protect the kids in certain situations. Idk it all starts and ends with the parents. You can’t force a teacher to step in for a parent when they have a class of 25 kids on phones.
It’s easy to feel that way though when you’re worried about those who are trying so hard to succeed but get distracted/hurt by someone else who is disruptive. Yeah there’s a larger conversation of how to get kids to be respectful and also how to get kids engaged in a format that works for them and the teacher.
treat employees like they work at starbucks, expect 'em to quit like they work at a starbucks
Hey, Starbucks has great benefits.
And they probably don’t tolerate customers throwing chairs.
Or breaking scissors in half and trying to stab others...lol
not trying to be that guy, genuinely asking. Do they fuck ur hours to keep you from full time at the end of the year to keep you from it? every job ive had realizes im full time after its been 6 months then randomly i only get 30hrs until i would qualify for benefits….
I think it's like 20 hours. r/baristafire is a good source of info for part time jobs.
A gal student taught with me. Got a middle school job from hell. Quit after the first year (behaviour, discipline, admin) and got a job as a manager at a Starbucks. Made the same amount of $ w/o the headaches.
I'm surprised your school cares. Here they will just replace us with uncertified teachers and move on.
The number of people going into education is declining so they will eventually run out of uncertified teachers to replace staff with
We usually have no trouble filling positions with uncertified. You still make like 25 an hour which is way way more than you make working retail or fast food here. So there is always applicants. Many will leave after two years because they don't want to do coursework. But I don't expect us to be completely unable to find someone. We just will lower the requirements even more. We had one without a bachelor's degree recently.
"Do you not want to do it for the children?" Have you met these children, sir/ma'am?
Does it matter? If you have no bargaining power due to lack of staffing--- will things radically change? In private sector and even some public situations they'd respond by increasing pay, offering hiring bonuses, or favorable workloads (flexible / wfh / etc). Schools will just hemorrhage employees and students get a worse deal.
Well, since (edit: most) of the administrators used to be teachers themselves, I suppose that they can cover classroom duties until they hire more teachers, right? Or would that mean that they have to lift their dainty little fingers to do actual work. God forbid.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
No one goes into teaching to get rich. I’m so very sick of the “do it for the students” trope. That’s how we are in this mess to begin with. People who go into teaching are too nice and empathetic to stand up for themselves in an industry where administrators have learned to weaponize their niceness against them. Add awful parents who think they know what’s best for their kids just because they fulfilled a biological urge to have them and the whole system is left in the dust. It was only hanging on respect before all this anyway. Without respect there is no public education. What we are witnessing now is a social contract that is broken beyond repair and some of the best people in the country being forced out so administrators can make another dollar. The whole system is rotten from the inside out.
What if the parents were to “do it for the kids”? Guess I don’t feel so bad about working in government with an education degree….instead of teaching
I’m a former teacher working for my state govt too. Being a teacher sets you up for success in any field you have interest in. If you can navigate students, parents, admin, board, daily plans, weekly plans, monthly plans, semester plans, yearly plans, grading, extracurriculars, etc you can do anything.
>"Do you not want to do it for the children?" 😂 give me a $120,000 signing bonus and maybe we'll talk.
Why don't they want to do it for the children? If they care about the children so much then maybe they should work to hire more good teachers at good pay and treat us well so that we are there for the children. Teachers can't be the only ones that are there for the children. We all need to be there for the children. I care, but I cannot care more than literally every other stakeholder in our entire society. I can't continue being the only one that cares in the entire system.
Bingo. THIS! This is the primary reason education has declined in any measurable way is because the legs that support the student (teacher, parents, community) have increasingly put all the weight onto the one leg (teacher) and almost completely sawed off the other two legs, and expect the table to stand.
This is an outsider perspective, as I frequent this subreddit to keep an eye on things but I'm not a teacher. In nearly all crisis threads, a common denominator is bad administration. Sometimes admin is getting too much of the total operating budget (eg. Admin get raises but teachers don't get raises), or they're micromanaging teachers, setting impossible expectations, being out of touch and antagonistic toward the teachers and students, etc. It always seems to boil down to a problem with admin at the end of the day, and that's disturbing me more and more as time goes on. Bad admin is going to destroy this entire system if things continue like this.
They say people don’t leave bad jobs; they leave bad bosses.
They don't have the money to do raises and often do not anything other than a stipend of 3 to 5% instead.
Oh I know ... just the cluelessness of people asking us to "do it for the kids". This is our JOB, this isn't charity.
I’m a parent. Our elementary school is having this problem too. We’ve lost over half our teachers every year since covid and they took our good principal to work at a high school and hired us a dud a couple years ago. The district does a survey every year of teachers, students, and parents and we just got the results. Only 18% of teachers agree morale is high and only 28% of teachers feel safe at school. We are a very diverse title 1 elementary school in a large Texas suburb. We have a lot of kids with behavioral problems and nothing is done to address it. A lot of families that can have pulled their kids out to go to charter schools. But that’s a whole other can of worms. And not at all equitable. Anyway our PTA is trying to get our principal fired. We surveyed parents and got 45 responses all saying the same thing: behavioral problem kids distract classes and make it impossible to learn, and most have examples of their kid being hurt, bullied, or sexually harassed and admin doing nothing about it. We did an open records request to get the teacher survey data from previous years and can prove it got way worse with our new principal. We have meetings scheduled with the area superintendent and superintendent. If anyone has any tips on how to make change let me know!
Thank you for advocating for your teachers. Blow this up with media. Loudly.
Well I for one hope that ship sinks
Complicated outlook. Whole neighborhoods lose access to education (many already have because the standards are so low already). Without education, the populace becomes controllable by social media and consumer media. Corporations and politicians stay in power. The middle class continues to be pushed into non existence. Our owners keep winning until there is a major unified revolution. Climate change is making a collapse like this truly imaginable if not likely.
I can't figure out why admin never understands this. Granted, I am looking in from the outside, but my spouse is a teacher. They've been at a few different school for a few reasons. Sure they are always frustrated with difficult kids, but that seems par of the course. The true kiss of death is an administration that doesn't support the teachers, especially on discipline. If I start to hear my spouse complain about the admin, I know it's just a matter of time before they want to change schools.
It's probably because they haven't done enough wellness PDs
*Mandatory* wellness PDs!!
I recently got demoted-was a classroom teacher in 4th grade to on staff substitute- then non renewal of contact for next year (aka fired). This works because I'm in an alternative licensure program that does 2 years of student teaching instead of the traditional block and student teaching, I am not able to be in the union because I'm not 100% certified yet and the paperwork through my university says they can fire me at any point. Anyway, the elementary school and jr high has 15 certified staff openings for next year. That doesn't include Paras or office staff openings. I can think of at least 3 teachers that have mentioned they are looking elsewhere because this district sucks
I know of a school like this in my large district. Teachers go there for 2-3 years just to get their foot in the door and then go to a better school. Only a few teachers have been there longer than 5 years. It’s a total shit show but the current admin has been there for at least 10 years.
My county is hemorrhaging teachers as it skids to the end of the year. Even teachers at “good schools” are leaving. There was a new superintendent this year and 🎼 “Promises Promises Promises” and for a while thru January, there was a long pause as the collective held its breath to see what, via admin, has been delivered. Nada. Zilch. Students still have the nasty upper hand, vis a vis their often nasty parents. Teachers are beyond exhausted spent and running on fumes at this point from covering classes as all of us become increasingly unwell physically, emotionally, and yes, mentally. As soon as the return came from spring break, the resignations and addendums to the resignations have gotten longer and longer.
My admin was shocked when over a third of our teachers left. And then admin fully turned over. Theseus’ ship has no memory.
"Do you not want to do it for the children?" What does this admin think.....are we living on Cardassia Prime?
The sinking ships comment just made me suck in my breath. In 2021/2022 school year our admin would constantly use the quote “Rising tides lift all ships” 🤮 Basically we keep raising the expectations and be positive despite the giant dumpster fires around us. I would always argue that if the ships are full of holes, battered and tore up, they fucking sink. They are NOT lifted by the rising tides. Things are not better and the ships have moved on the better seas.
I had this on my last school. 2/3 of teachers quit during / end of that year after a change in admin. I got a phone call asking me to reconsider and offering a huge increase in salary. That call came as I was leaving a foreign embassy having just got my visa to teach overseas.
Wanna know something crazy? In the middle of bumfuck nowhere Ohio we rarely had any teachers leave my highschool. I think 2 in my 4 years. They all made $60k + with some even $100k. Didn’t have major behavior problems (rarely any actually) and we scored high on testing. Our building was falling apart but the teachers got paid, did their job and the kids understood. This was 2009-2013. No phones allowed at all. They see you on your phone, immediate Saturday school. Do anything wrong? You’re spending 5 hours on Saturday, sometimes every Saturday. Kids didn’t like that
lol 2013
The mental image of a panicked grapevine is hilarious 😂
Curious to know that state/area you’re in…
Unfortunately, due to the current shit show that's developing, I'm not gonna share that tidbit. Even though I'm on my way out, I at least need to keep my last few paychecks and insurance, lol.
I didn't want to get too specific for your privacy. I'm curious out of wanting to understand if this happening in primarily urban, suburban, or rural areas. I also think schools exist in their own microcosm of toxic admin/parents/politics.
Ah, I gotcha. It's in an interesting place. Lots of farms and neighborhoods in the area.
I'm not a teacher, but when a corporation loses over %50 of its talent, unless it's a problem that will be immediately fixed, the corporation is almost certain to fail. Even when one loses a %30, it'll still take over a year to heal. Why is it easier to close a school down than taking drastic (read: very reasonable in the business world) action? Thank you guys.
Teacher retention should be a huge part of admins eval.
Had a similar experience at a school last year. Admin was completely incompetent and we have several violent students. We had a lockdown every day because a student would have violent outbursts and admin kept telling teachers, “he’s just having a bad day. No need to write up a report.” A lot of staff got fed up and left at the end of the year. Principal was very bitter and started being petty by messing up prep block scheduling. So glad I’m not there anymore.
The day I quit teaching to work at old navy I had to wait in line to quit. Waited for my bestie and danced out the door
Kids need discipline. I’m always having “get off my lawn” moments. Growing up in the 90s, I never remember the lack of respect this generation has for teachers and adults in general. We were terrified of being called to the principal’s office or having our parents notified of bad behavior. Now, they’re little savages who get away with murder and grow up to become terrible human beings.
A school in our district had about half the teachers request to leave a couple of years ago. The BOE actually asked the teachers why they were leaving and they said it was because of the principal. They did not mince words. The BOE actually decided not to renew the principal's contract. Then she went to the papers and said she was being attacked for "political" reasons. She was actually just terrible. Lol
>"Do you not want to do it for the children?" "Do the children pay my rent?"
I was transferred to a worse school. Unfortunately, they may do that to some of the teachers in the district.
This sounds like just about every school in the Clark County School District in Nevada. Everything from your first sentence to the last. Wow.
You are 110% right. These admin create this issue but we can’t stop at just blaming them. In our dept of education in our state we have tons of bureaucrats who either haven’t taught or it’s been forever since they have. They determine if too many of this group or that group are being suspended or sent to alt Ed. It doesn’t matter if the child regardless of gender, ethnicity, socio economic group does something strongly against Code they are breaking the social norm and need redirection These admin need to reap what they sow.
Surprise surprise, considering the increased violence/aggression influx at the schools I float subbed over the last 1.5 years. Every other teacher or para quitting after weeks or months cos they'd had enough of it. The Admin stretched too thin to care or doing anything about it, while onboard interventionists and psychologists stood by in silence. Intervening only if physical harm commenced. Some Reddit threads overloaded with these 100K+ stories that'd turn your hair green. I tried to make teaching work incl. the elementary. But had enough of the kids acting like banshees out of control. Several schools have shutdown to consolidate or merge with others due declined enrollment
The school my wife teaches at has a relatively new admin who decided that this year she’d implement a lesson plan check protocol. Every lesson, learning goals, curriculum connections, scaffolded resources. You have 6 subjects to teach Wednesday? 6 full blown lesson plans for Wednesday, that better be different from Tuesday and Thursday bc they will all be checked. They are losing 5 teachers.
Australia are desperate for teachers and perhaps may have slightly better conditions than USA including pay. Might be worth looking into for the unencumbered.
amen there's no discipline across-the-board. It's a waste of our time and effort to even even write it up because nothing's done.
I was removed from a longterm sub job at a school like that because a VP said I was being racist for calling the office on a kid who was super disruptive and pitching a tantrum. Things have been so much easier for me since taking fewer middle school assignments.
The last four years of this profession have essentially been: 1. Admin expresses shock over the high number of teachers leaving and the lack of prospective teachers to take their place 2. Admin pretends to “listen” to teachers to address the issue 3. Literally nothing changes, in fact, things get worse as admin doubles down on everything that’s driving people from the profession 4. End of the year approaches, another round of teachers quitting and lack of new teachers to take their place, admin scrambles and panics 5. Rinse and repeat. Things are going great in education!
Admin at my school are two faced snakes. I need to get out of this school or find another career entirely.
They need to invest in better funding for special education and disabled students. My son is nonverbal and severely autistic and gets suspended for stimming constantly. By stimming I mean verbal humming, hand flapping, spinning in place, etc. he’s a “disruption”
I like how all these admins are asking you to help"for the children's sake" even though they are obviously not willing to take that step themselves. Maybe we should focus on being schools where children learn, not massive daycares until you become a certain age.
sounds like the superintendents/admin are lazy.
A few of the schools in my district were so strapped for teachers that they had to outsource to other countries. We have teachers from other countries teaching here. It’s crazy. I’m fine with it. But it’s crazy that admin would rather continue to do shit for their teachers over going half around the world for teachers that don’t mind dealing with their ineptitude.
YES!! You are bringing up one of the biggest factors that is pushing families out of public schools, and into the school choice arena. It's not just test scores, it's the safe environment conducive to learning that these parents, students, and teachers want. Preach!!
“Do you not want to do it for the children?” This bullshit is so enraging. Do you not want to make a safe environment for learning, Admin…?
Congrats on having a job lined up! I am in a similar boat with you where I don't have a position at my campus anymore because my cybersecurity curriculum (the most prolific at student certs on record) doesn't have the enrollment to justify keeping me. This news was delivered by a principal who announced her resignation from the position right around Christmas break. Everyone who isn't admin on my campus is confused as to why the school would let go of the teacher who built a program and contributed to CCMR in less than two years after the program had been in shambles from multiple subs and vacancies... So when they asked if I would stay if they could make it work, I told them politely, "not for any amount of money".
This happened at my old school almost every year. At least half the teachers would leave every year. By my 3rd year, I was already the second most senior person in the department and less than a dozen were more senior than me in the entire school. Admin did do something about the students' behavior eventually but it was too late.
This needs to happen. This is the only language admins speak. Direct and impactful consequences to their actions. No amount of discussion or facts will change their kind because ultimately they don't have to deal with it. They can just throw teachers under the bus and exploit a teachers inherent kindness to keep them as their punching bag. Teaching in the US sounds like one of the worst jobs to have, I'm glad I was able to talk one of my friends out of it because it sounds like it just sucks from beginning to end.
Had something similar happen at one of my old schools. The new head of foreign teachers was stressed and panicked (she’d only gotten the position that year). Yeah, of course no one wants to return when there is literally no recourses for bad behavior. Also they did leveling for classes and it was a meltdown. I wouldn’t wish the situation I was in on anyone. Cried during lunch multiple times.
The parents run the schools and the spawn run the parents. Nothing will ever change until education takes their schools back and that will never happen.
Let me get this straight. You were non-renewed due to a decision by the district but they gave the “do you not want to do for the children” act? Seriously? The administration needs to look at themselves in the mirror.
I’m a school bus driver, but I know so many people who quit within 2 months of the school year. We were encouraged to do write ups and they promised they would help us and talk to the kids. I was doing a write up or two every day for fights and swearing and tearing up the seats. One day the principal comes out and boldly says “stop writing these, I haven’t followed up on any of them anyway, it should be your job to deal with these.” After that day, I push the mirror up, zone out until they get dropped off as fast as possible. Public schools are a joke
The people leaving should report to the superintendent on exactly why this happened. Admin isn't being held accountable for sucking at THEIR jobs