Why Teachers are Quitting Teaching - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Provision of the two UN HDI indicators other than GNP.
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#15168239
This 20 years into the profession American teacher said it all:



Unless things change? You will lose your best teachers. You will be stuck with mediocrity.
#15168262
My favourite part was when she said "Teaching is an artform, not a science, these are not widgets, they are children"
or when she described her husband as having "squishyheart" (putting light on a tense situation), but I guess that's not relevant to the discussion here :lol:
This isn't something I personally have never given much thought to, so my comments are just going to be brief and kind of first-impressiony.
I think it is interesting to note at the very outset the extensive relief this teacher has to finally be able "To speak out loud" about what the issues are facing the present-day educational system. It makes me wonder; are teachers not permitted to freely express their criticisms or suggestions for improvements, because they are afraid of being punished by their superiors? If so, that is disheartening. You would think teachers, of all people, would be able to gather together and have productive conversations concerning the direction of the children's future.
at a certain point she expresses her disdain over the bureaucratization of the educational institution, where a school is rated based on grading systems and there is a high level of pressure for job-performativity. This seems to be a condition which effects many modern institutions, but the difference here is that when the children are being turned into statistics it can overwhelm a teacher who has a lot of expectations on her, and being around overwhelmed people can't be good for a child.
Can anyone tell my why it is just generally accepted that teachers should have low wages? They always resignedly point this out.
Are they purposefully not funding public schools because they don't want too many people rising above working-class conditions?

another side; Is it teachers that form great students?
Should teachers view themselves as being anything more than the caretaker of the children, the ones who watch over the children while the parents go to work, and teach them the basics of the system to help them grow up and become one with the system?
Do great teachers leave because they realize that their ideal will never be achieved, that they are not in fact there to help children learn, but rather to get children through to the next, class, semester, grade, etc?
I personally cannot recall a single one of my teachers. None of them stood out to me.
Mediocrity would exist with or without teachers, the only thing greater educational systems does is teach mediocrity how to blend in better.

With all that said, I still would strongly support the idea of smaller class-sizes. I don't get why its so hard for somebody to make this happen. What the fuck are we all paying taxes for anyways?!
But I suppose many smart and able people have been fighting for educational reforms for a long time and are getting nowhere, so it seems like things are looking bleak.
#15168342
Tainari88 wrote:Unless things change? You will lose your best teachers. You will be stuck with mediocrity.


It's ok, the US will just continue to import the educated from other countries.

I think teacher pay needs to double at the very least. I think we would see more people willing to put up with that job.
#15168347
Rancid wrote:It's ok, the US will just continue to import the educated from other countries.

I think teacher pay needs to double at the very least. I think we would see more people willing to put up with that job.


Things are changing Rancid. Many nations are making strides to retain their teachers. My kid's private school has an Irish woman married to a Mexican. Excellent educator graduated from Oxford and so on in the UK. But they pay her badly but she prefers Mexican culture and society. She remains.

Many teachers find the way educators are trained and recruited in the USA very discouraging. As parents work two jobs and kids are latchkey kids and remain kind of feral? Socially speaking? The teachers and staff at these public schools have to be the school psychologists, the coaches, the nursing staff, the immigrant kids with zero English fill in the gap with no knowledge on how to teach kids in native language instructions so they don't fall behind. Etc etc. it is increasingly more they got to do. Keep the school violence and shooters who are crazy targeting kids in school for killing, be cops, fire fighting and disaster relief, voting poll places, ex and y and z and g.....teachers proposed by school boards to maybe carry handguns? WTH!!

Planning, six different school subjects, class discipline with kids who's parents beat each other up in DV incidents and or kids in foster care like my older son was before we adopted him. These teachers got to cope with the entire social breakdown of the USA.

It is too much. And the pay sucks. Colorado ranked about 48 out of 50 states in bad pay for teachers. Most of them can't live in the posh schools they work in. It is terrible.
#15168349
Tainari88 wrote:
Things are changing Rancid. Many nations are making strides to retain their teachers. My kid's private school has an Irish woman married to a Mexican. Excellent educator graduated from Oxford and so on in the UK. But they pay her badly but she prefers Mexican culture and society. She remains.

Many teachers find the way educators are trained and recruited in the USA very discouraging. As parents work two jobs and kids are latchkey kids and remain kind of feral? Socially speaking? The teachers and staff at these public schools have to be the school psychologists, the coaches, the nursing staff, the immigrant kids with zero English fill in the gap with no knowledge on how to teach kids in native language instructions so they don't fall behind. Etc etc. it is increasingly more they got to do. Keep the school violence and shooters who are crazy targeting kids in school for killing, be cops, fire fighting and disaster relief, voting poll places, ex and y and z and g.....teachers proposed by school boards to maybe carry handguns? WTH!!

Planning, six different school subjects, class discipline with kids who's parents beat each other up in DV incidents and or kids in foster care like my older son was before we adopted him. These teachers got to cope with the entire social breakdown of the USA.

It is too much. And the pay sucks. Colorado ranked about 48 out of 50 states in bad pay for teachers. Most of them can't live in the posh schools they work in. It is terrible.


Yea, our school district is having trouble attracting teachers because the teachers cannot afford to live in or even near the city. At the same time, I think the district is dysfunctional and shooting itself in the foot constantly. They are setting themselves up to disappear and be replaced by a 100% charter school system that is going to leave behind the poor and special needs.

Also, American school boards place more effort and energy on handing out construction contracts than on teacher retention. I wonder if the Mafia was ever involved in any school related dealings.
#15168352
Rancid wrote:Yea, our school district is having trouble attracting teachers because the teachers cannot afford to live in or even near the city. At the same time, I think the district is dysfunctional and shooting itself in the foot constantly. They are setting themselves up to disappear and be replaced by a 100% charter school system that is going to leave behind the poor and special needs.


Well the class system should only care about rich kids and kids who don't have learning disabilities. Just forget about those losers in capitalist elitist America! Who cares?

When all those ANGRY parents get ready to rumble, those assholes in power in school boards better be trembling in their boots. Because I have seen how angry a mother with a special needs child becomes when the school tells her to get lost with her {special needs) child. They are willing to use the damn handguns. They better be aware of what kind of anger parents on the edge are like. The crazy shooters don't hold a candle to thousands of mothers of autistic, developmentally delayed people. They want some violence you tell the mother of a kid in a wheelchair or a deaf kid's mom to go to effing hell because their kids don't deserve an education only the normies do.

I would think twice about the charter kids and leaving the special needs and poor behind. because the poor are the most explosive of all.
#15168354
Tainari88 wrote:
Well the class system should only care about rich kids and kids who don't have learning disabilities. Just forget about those losers in capitalist elitist America! Who cares?

When all those ANGRY parents get ready to rumble, those assholes in power in school boards better be trembling in their boots. Because I have seen how angry a mother with a special needs child becomes when the school tells her to get lost with her {special needs) child. They are willing to use the damn handguns. They better be aware of what kind of anger parents on the edge are like. The crazy shooters don't hold a candle to thousands of mothers of autistic, developmentally delayed people. They want some violence you tell the mother of a kid in a wheelchair or a deaf kid's mom to go to effing hell because their kids don't deserve an education only the normies do.

I would think twice about the charter kids and leaving the special needs and poor behind. because the poor are the most explosive of all.


Maybe maybe, if there is enough of a critical mass of parents that care about the special needs kids something can be changed here. However, something that makes me doubt this change for the better, is that we are seeing lots of families moving into East Austin, which is the historically poor part of the city. These mostly white families move into those neighborhoods, displace the local poor, and they also do not want their kids going to the local schools (too many poors I guess), so they send them to private schools and charter schools. As progressive as people like to claim Austin is, it is very classist. There is a new charter school two houses down from me on the corner. All of the families attending that school are from east austin. You should see the really nice expensive cars that show up their for pickup/dropoff.

One silver lining. My kid's school is often dubbed "a brown school that tests like a white school." I think the big difference though, is that when you look at all the parents; many of which are Latino like myself; we are all educated professionals. Goes to show you how important coming from an educated family is.
#15168359
Rancid wrote:Maybe maybe, if there is enough of a critical mass of parents that care about the special needs kids something can be changed here. However, something that makes me doubt this change for the better, is that we are seeing lots of families moving into East Austin, which is the historically poor part of the city. These mostly white families move into those neighborhoods, displace the local poor, and they also do not want their kids going to the local schools (too many poors I guess), so they send them to private schools and charter schools. As progressive as people like to claim Austin is, it is very classist. There is a new charter school two houses down from me on the corner. All of the families attending that school are from east austin. You should see the really nice expensive cars that show up their for pickup/dropoff.

One silver lining. My kid's school is often dubbed "a brown school that tests like a white school." I think the big difference though, is that when you look at all the parents; many of which are Latino like myself; we are all educated professionals. Goes to show you how important coming from an educated family is.


Yes it is very important. I did not go to fancy schools growing up Rancid. But I had a mother with a very advanced education she was also the top of her class in almost all subjects. My father was very bright. Both of them were cum laude and magna cum laude college and graduate school graduates. My father did 24 credits a semester while working full time for years to get it done and with straight A GPA. He was at the beginning of his life living in a bad ghetto fighting gang warfare and boxing it out with tough Black kids living in Harlem and in the Bronx. He grew up partially in Puerto Rico's capital...in a bad ghetto with no running water and extreme poverty. I always asked him how he made it out of there? GANAS. That was the answer. He wanted more. He wanted knowledge and something solid to gain knowledge. Violence he understood. But? He wanted more. He also was a man who loved spirituality.

He reminds me of Chris Hedges in many ways. But my father had it a lot worse in background.

Kids need to have a lot of extracurricular stuff and lots of time to play and explore. But structured.

But having an educated family is life or death for many. But you get those rare heroes in life. Like Viola Davis. Who become educated beautiful people. Even though they grow up like this:



Meryl Streep grew up with comfortable and upper middle class parents. She came from financially stability and went to Yale.

Viola is powerful because of letting go of the anger of injustice she fueled herself with it to make art and truth her purpose. My parents were like that. The honesty too is wonderful.



I adore you too @Rancid because you were raised by the grandmother from San Pedro de Macoris and your parents out there working low paid jobs. You started making choices to turn things around. You found the strength to TRY. And to not quit. Kept your goal.

Not all people have that strength. Your wife was also driven. Together you have a lot of power. The kids will benefit from it enormously.

I will always admire you Rancid. It will never matter how much you disagree with me or criticize socialism or anything. I admire GANAS. It is powerful.
#15168441
In the mid 1970s I did some substitute teaching. It convinced me not to pursue teaching as a career.

It also started me looking into education reform. Actually Mom was a teacher, and I had read some of the books she bought about education, and education reform. But it became more than a casual interest.

My opinion, for what's it worth, is that we are going down the same road England went down. Their public education is a mess.

Thanks to the politics, there's no fixing it. Biden is giving it the old college try, and I salute him for it. But I doubt much will escape the Senate, and land on his desk.

It's also not enough.

What we have been doing isn't working, and will never work.

What is needed is a Federal school system. A system that spends money on education, not sports or transportation. It would be voluntary, but the communities that are having a tough time would leap at the chance to hand over the cost. And those are the kids that would need it.
#15168459
When I was in high school, I remember some teachers mumbling angrily about the school board. I did not understand back then what they meant. A lot of the fights were about pay and benefits. Teachers are poorly compensated for their work. It is a thankless job. I wish I could travel back in time and tell those angry teachers, "I appreciate you. It is going to be all right."

My mother is always critical about the teachers my sister and I had. There were the ones who liked to stuff food in our faces, the ones who liked showing us videos, the ones who took us on fieldtrips...so there was not much teaching. And when there was, much of it was horrid.

I had a few good teachers. I had a favorite history teacher who reenacted historical events with us and we made up dialogue. It was fun. He also gave me some of the best writing criticism from grade school about writing thoroughly and explaining. I had a few good English teachers. Sadly my math teachers were not that good. If math is taught poorly in most areas, it is no wonder that most American children suck at mathematics and science.

Parents and teachers need to work cooperatively to educate children. But in today's American society, parents claim to be too busy with their work, too busy to educate their kids. Well parents are never too busy to go boozing and cheat on their spouses. :roll:

So there are some selfish parents out there. That is too bad. Those parents should never have produced children. The children suffer.

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