Oh please! You whining bunch of crybabies. Try running a multi billion dollar tabloid empire. I'm required to be "on it" 24 hours a day. I barely sleep and am hauled into Congress every few months to testify.
Fine, I'm paid handsomely and live in a big house, on a massive estate on my private lake and I don't have a moment to enjoy any of it.
Go f-ck yourself!
Teachers Are Burning Out on the Job
Student behavior and mediocre pay are taking their toll
By Matt Barnum, WSJ
Aug. 26, 2024 9:00 pm ET
Students are showing up to school in much of the country this week. Their teachers are already demoralized and exhausted.
Student behavior problems, cellphones in class, anemic pay and artificial-intelligence-powered cheating are taking their toll on America’s roughly 3.8 million teachers, on top of the bruising pandemic years.
The share of teachers who say the stress and disappointment of the job are “worth it” has fallen to 42%, which is 21 points lower than other college-educated workers, according to a poll by Rand, a nonprofit think tank. As recently as 2018, over 70% of teachers said the stress was worth it.
In surveys and interviews, teachers are most often pointing to a startling rise in students’ mental-health challenges and misbehavior as the biggest drivers of burnout. In the Rand survey, student behavior was the top source of teachers’ job stress.
Cory Jarrell left his teaching job because of frustrations with school policies and limited advancement opportunities. Photo: Cory Jarrell
High-school math teacher Cory Jarrell says he saw student behavior deteriorate, yet his school grew more lenient in administering consequences. He also didn’t feel like teaching offered much opportunity to advance in his career.
And then his district, Kansas City Public Schools, rolled out a new policy last year. Teachers couldn’t give students a zero for an assignment, even if they didn’t turn it in. This was the final straw.
“When I got into teaching my one thing was about learning and love of learning,” Jarrell said. “In the end, it was less about the learning and more about babysitting.”
He left teaching this summer.
Teaching has long been a relatively low-paid profession that comes with job stability, a decent retirement and a sense of purpose. More teachers no longer feel that is a good deal.
Teacher exit rates reached new highs in the past two years, according to data from several states. In Texas, thousands more teachers left the classroom in 2022 and 2023 compared with the years before the pandemic.
Teachers are coming into the new school year with the usual mix of excitement and jitters, but also newfound trepidation. With more teachers leaving and others burned out, schools are struggling to address student challenges such as learning loss and chronic absenteeism. And like the burnout seen in many other professions recently, there isn’t a clear end in sight, say those who study the teaching profession and teachers themselves.
“Across multiple data points, we see that the health and the state of the teaching profession is at or near a 50-year low,” said Matthew Kraft, a Brown University professor.
Classroom stress
Jessica Faust, an elementary-school special-education teacher in Perrysburg, Ohio, says the scale of students’ academic and behavioral challenges had pushed her to the brink of quitting.
“We obviously knew the pandemic would have an impact on children, but I don’t think anyone was prepared for the size or how long-lasting the impact would be,” she said.
Faust started therapy and has worked to focus more on what she can control. She has also joined with other special-education teachers to lobby administrators for more support. She got some relief when her school added another special-education classroom, making her workload feel more manageable, and feels optimistic going into this school year.
Still, she is demoralized by criticism from politicians and the media that teachers are indoctrinating students with various left-wing ideas.
“The perception is now that teachers work against parents,” said Faust. “And it’s not the case. We truly want to be a team.”
In a recent Education Week poll, only 18% of public-school teachers said they were very satisfied with their jobs, with an additional 46% saying they were somewhat satisfied. The share of teachers who were very satisfied was lower than at any point between 1984 and 2012, the last prepandemic period in which the question was asked.
Gina Dukes leads a course for high-school students who aspire to become teachers themselves. Photo: Gina Dukes
Gina Dukes teaches Philadelphia high-school students who aspire to become teachers themselves. They learn about educational theory and spend time teaching and mentoring younger students.
Surveys show that most teachers wouldn’t recommend the profession to others. Dukes aims to offer a realistic portrayal of the job.
“I try to teach from a perspective of ‘yes, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows every day but the impact you feel is incredible,’” she said.
Despite frustrations, nearly three in four educators said they are still glad they chose teaching as a career, according to the Rand survey.
Pay and perks
Pay is another source of teacher stress. Average teaching salaries fell by 6% between 2019 and 2021, adjusted for inflation, and continue to lag behind most other professions.
Peter Galamaga, a high-school English teacher in New Hampshire, said his son, a recent college graduate, is already making more money working in the medical devices industry than he is after 30 years of teaching.
“It’s not a lucrative profession,” he said.
Meanwhile, teachers have largely not been able to access a perk that has opened up to many other college-educated workers: the option to work from home sometimes.
“There’s no question that that changes the calculus among people who are considering teaching,” said Melissa Arnold Lyon, a professor at the University at Albany.
Stephen Staysniak, a high-school English and social-studies teacher in New Haven, Conn., said this past year was unusually challenging. He was juggling many new responsibilities: planning events for the senior class, leading the search committee to find a new principal, and planning lessons from scratch for a journalism class he had recently started teaching.
He has spent the summer trying to disconnect from work and has vowed to say no to taking on too many responsibilities this year.
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“There’s only so much you have of yourself to give,” he said.
Jarrell, the former Kansas City teacher, now works as an operations analyst at an industrial design-build firm. His new position is less intense, he said. The pay is comparable to teaching, but the job offers more opportunities for advancement.
Shain Bergan, a spokesperson for the Kansas City school district, said the district’s no-zeroes policy—which had frustrated Jarrell—is designed to ensure that a single zero doesn’t have an undue effect on students’ grades. Instead, students receive a minimum of 40% for each assignment.
“We wish we had been able to address this teacher’s concerns before they chose to leave the profession,” he said.
Write to Matt Barnum at matt.barnum@wsj.com
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