Dear Public School System,
I’ve been a high school teacher for eleven years in two districts. These years have not been contiguous. I took a fourteen-year hiatus to stay home after the birth of my son and then twenty months later, my daughter. During that time I served on PTA, taught Mothers’ Day Out at our church, and worked at a child sex trafficking non-profit. When I finally returned to education at the urging of a friend who taught at the local high school, it was with considerable trepidation. My first stint as a teacher had easily been the most stressful years of my life. Even though I’d gone to a reputable teaching college and spent a year interning at a public school, I was woefully unprepared for the full responsibility of the classroom. Teaching kids who were barely younger than I was, being responsible for the planning and execution of lessons, grading essays. . . It was being “on” every single day. It was feeling the weight of responsibility for the education of scores of kids. It was the second-hand trauma of seeing what some of them had to live through and still get up and come to school in the morning. It was being in a low-income district with LOTS of behavior problems and not knowing how to fix them. It was trying to make sure that I provided for and documented dozens of IEP and 504 accommodations. It was hours outside of school trying to keep up with everything and arguments with my husband because I had little time for him. It was just a lot. It was consuming. And as the birth of my son approached, I recognized that if I wanted to be available for my family, I could not afford to be consumed, so I left. And I had no plans to return. Ever.
When I finally did return, time had softened my earlier experience. Much like childbirth, where the acute pain of pushing a life into the world fades to soft background music with the love and enjoyment of motherhood, my years of clear boundaries between my family life and the work I did for the school, church, and nonprofit made me, if not forget, at least diminish the misery of my first experience as a teacher. Within the first week of school, though, I remembered. And I panicked. I’d forgotten how difficult it was to juggle all of the responsibilities and the counseling sessions and the accommodations and the behavior problems and the grading and the planning and the presenting and the tutoring and the early mornings and the late nights. The staff meetings and PLC meetings and ARD meetings. My husband and kids watched me entirely melt down and turn into a different person inside of a month.
In my sixth year back in education, I’ve somewhat leveled off. I still struggle to juggle everything. I’m still consumed. And I think I’ve discovered that there are essentially three types of teachers. There are the ones who refuse to bring work home and who essentially wing it most days. They don’t plan in the evenings or on weekends. They don’t grade outside of school except around progress reports or report cards, if then. Most of them care and do the best they can within the firm boundaries they’ve set between work and personal time, but the content and education often suffers. They figure out what they’re doing in class that day the morning of and take a lot of participation grades. They tend more toward glorified babysitters than teachers. Then, there are the chimeras. The unicorns. The ones who have stellar organizational skills, who can grade efficiently while still giving good feedback, who can clearly see the steps required to get kids from point A to mastery at point B, the ones who do some work outside work but who can still be present for their families. Those are the ones who stay in the profession for decades and who have hallways dedicated to their careers and who inspire the next generation of teachers. Finally, there’s the ones like me. The ones who genuinely want to do a good job but just flounder at discovering how to do this job without spending 20 of the 24 hours each day trying to keep up. In my experience, that’s most educators. And it’s why so many of them admit defeat and leave. It’s why I’m leaving at the end of this school year when my daughter graduates. In spite of the week for Thanksgiving and Spring Break, in spite of the two weeks for Christmas, in spite of summers “off,” teachers are leaving and there’s a legitimate teacher shortage.
I’m a good teacher. Like genuinely. The kids like me but know they have to behave. My standardized test scores are above the state average. I give really good feedback on assignments, albeit not in a very timely manner. I do this job well. And truth be told I like my subject matter and enjoy the kids. However, I work most evenings and weekends and my family resents my job. Which is ironic because I went back to education when my son started high school. I wanted to be where my children were. It makes me sad because if I had time to do the job well then I’d stay. And I know what you’re thinking. You have all this time “off.” Yes, we get more breaks than the average profession. But I work during my breaks even if I don’t have students. Those breaks are spent doing what I don’t have time to do when I’m teaching all day. Lesson planning, documenting accommodations, creating accommodations, grading, completing trainings, internalizing content. . . Summers are spent doing STAAR remediations, curriculum planning, and attending more trainings. Now, I will admit that I am a core subject teacher and therefore am responsible for state standardized testing. Maybe if I wasn’t the job wouldn’t be as stressful. . .
At any rate, I don’t know what needs to change, but I know that if you, the Public School System, are going to prevent the hemorrhage of qualified teachers from leaving the profession AND keep the quality of education high, something has to. Maybe it’s four-day weeks so teachers can grade, plan, tutor, and have meetings and Fridays. Maybe core teachers get an extra planning period. Maybe teachers just need to make a whole heck of a lot more money. I don’t know. But if you need a sign, Public Education, this is it. Public education must change the way it’s treating its most valuable assets by creating a workplace that allows for work/life balance that does not sacrifice the learning of our kids.
Thank you for your time,
Heather Begnaud