We’ve all got our soap boxes, and usually for good reason. I certainly have mine. For the past three years, the bulk of my professional energy has gone towards efforts to increase the attention schools pay to the lives and wellness of educators, the attention educators pay to one another, and the care educators take of themselves.
All with a simple premise: if this doesn’t happen, the profession of teaching isn’t sustainable.
I’ve written a book about it. I travel around speaking about it. I write editorials about it (rarely published). And I tell just about anyone willing to listen that we’ve GOT to make this conversation front and center in our thinking about education.
Like many of you, the statistic I cite most often is that “50% of educators leave within the first five years of their careers.” By now, this stat has almost become the stuff of folklore. Almost everyone knows it. We fret about it. We hope to do something about it. But at the end of the day, it’s just a stat.
Then along comes the story of actual educators leaving the profession. In their own words. Words laden with frustration and hurt and sadness and a feeling of defeat merged with survival.
And then it’s not a stat anymore. Now it’s the story of an individual who we’ve lost.
Two such stories found me this week.
One is by Sarah Fine in the Washington Post titled Schools Need Teachers Like Me. I Just Can’t Stay.
In this wonderful essay, Sarah tells a story that gives flesh and bones to the 50% of departing educators. Read the whole article. Simply put, Sarah burned out. “Educator burnout” is as an ubiquitous a term as the “50%” stat. We throw it around cheaply, rarely recognizing the nuance and reality that contributes to an individual burning out. It’s not like a rash or a condition that comes and finds someone. Burnout is the end of a process, one in which systems and individuals fail to sustain people in the ways that lead to fruitfulness and longevity.
For Sarah, she cites a host of mitigating factors that led to her departure, lead among them: administration that didn’t care for the needs and strengths of staff, students who lacked curiosity and those who fell through the cracks and didn’t graduate. There were long hours and increased demands without increase of pay, and lingering stress about being a teacher and having a family.
Finally, Sarah cites another rarely mentioned element of teaching: while admirable, it doesn’t necessarily tend to the ambitious. She writes, “My generation does seem to care a lot about Important Stuff. We put our lives on hold to canvass for the causes we believe in. We volunteer like our hair is on fire. When it comes to teaching, however, this fire only burns for so long. We millennials are jostling each other for a place at the whiteboard, but few of us stay long enough to see our students make it through.“
Teaching is recognized as being a “nice job” and an “important career” that is “good for America.” But these lofty, if at times demeaning, portrayals of the life and careers of educators does little to shed a truly accurate light on the real day to day challenges of teaching.
Look. You want fewer teachers to leave the profession? Then make schools really great places to teach. Period. One of the most controllable factors schools have is the relationships adults have with one another. Teachers and administrators, you have to be better to each other. When you get back to school in the next few weeks and are sitting in a high school auditorium for opening day ceremonies, look to your left and look to your right. These are the people who hold the pleasure and success of the year ahead in their hands. And you theirs.
But this isn’t me on a soap box. This is just reality. In an equally compelling article titled Voting With My Feet, educator Maria Fenwick tells a story of leaving one school behind and moving to another. Not because of a lack of smart boards or unruly students. No. She leaves her old school behind because the staff culture and workplace climate was so disheartening she can no longer stand it.
Luckily, she has found another school. But Maria could have been one of the “50%.” She could have been another teacher lost, another teacher where we say, “Man! It’s too bad we’re losing another teacher.” But that wouldn’t have been the story. The story would have been, “Man! It’s amazing that colleagues, who should be the very best part of being a teacher, can be the very reason we’re losing educators.”
Over the coming months, I’m going to keep careful tabs on stories like Maria’s and Sarah’s. Send them to me as well. I don’t want stats. I want stories.
And I don’t want us to gnash our teeth about them, throwing our hands up as if we don’t know what to do. I want these stories to be cautionary tales and reminders that as you head back into your schools this fall, you need each other. Everyday. We come to work to make the work of others better. And we expect that in return.
Without that, we might become a statistic.
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