Intensity

Over the next few days I will be exploring different reasons for why teachers leave the profession.  I have already posted on low pay and classroom management.  The first two posts on attrition are here and here.

The intensity of teaching is the factor most often cited by MTCers as to why they are leaving the profession after two years (dealing with difficult administration is a close second).  It is impossible to explain to someone who has never taught just how consuming it is to be a teacher.  The best I can do is offer an example: Several years ago Lawrence Hardy, a reporter for the American School Board Journal, did a story on one of our teachers, Sarah Alford, in Humphrey County High School.  Hardy shadowed Sarah for two days, through class, through professional development, through play practice.  When I met with him at the end of the second day he was exhausted.  And all he had done was observe (interesting side note: the editor of that piece, titled A Place Apart, was Michelle Sabatier, now a first-year in the Teacher Corps).

Let me put it another way: As a teacher, every second of every day is accounted for (with the exception of a planning period).  Every second of every day you are responsible for 30 teenagers: their health, their well-being, and their education.  You are always ON.  You cannot use the bathroom without first finding someone to cover your class, you cannot take a break, you cannot leave the classroom for any reason.  When I first started my current job, as Program Manager of the Teacher Corps, I was amazed.  I could use the bathroom whenever I wanted.  I could take an hour for lunch.  I could leave early or come late if I had an errand to run.  I could take a day off and not worry if the sub was letting the kids destroy the classroom.  It’s not that teaching is simply filled with long hours (although it is).  It’s that they are intense hours.  You finish the day exhausted, wiped out, and with several hours of planning or grading or parent calls or coaching ahead of you.  As I tell the first-years during the initial summer training, this is an all-encompassing experience.  For the next year you will not have time for anyone but your closest friends and family.  That’s how intense this job is.  For those interested in the program the only way to approximate the intensity of teaching is to not sleep for three days and then go substitute teach for two days.

Now, the good news is that it does get easier.  Once you have a cache of lesson plans and you are a known teacher at the school (rather than a first-year who has parachuted in from Mars), teaching is a great job to have.  But that is little consolation during the first year…

On top of this is the incredible, unbelievable need of the students.  The students our teachers teach, the kids, have been neglected by the forces of education for years.  Their deficiencies in various subjects is enormous.  They need an incredible amount of good teaching to make up this gap, more than our teachers, or anyone, can provide.

On top of this are the other needs.  At times, our teachers assume the role of counselor, nurse, big brother, and parent.  Our kids have grown up in the dark underbelly of the American Dream, and their neglect, in all areas, is staggering.

On top of this is the general inefficiency of the school administration to support our teachers or to help address the needs of the students.

And, finally, on top of this is the perfectionism of our teachers.  Many of our teachers come from the top schools and/or academic programs in the country.  Many of them have been successful at every single thing they have ever put their mind to, no matter how difficult.  And now, they are confronted with a situation that is insolvable, no matter how much work is put in, no matter how much effort is expended.  So, they do what they have always done when faced with this kind of situation: work harder.  And harder.  And harder. Until there is nothing left.  Until finally they come up against the hard truth.  The system is broken.  For the students, there will be few successes and many failures.  The system is broken.  For the students, only the smartest and the strongest and the luckiest will make it.  And that is a hard thing to realize.

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