[Frostnip]

I think a lot of the problem is that parent groups, the media, social media memes, politicians, etc. don't treat teachers like well-intentioned professional educators who are also human beings. There are only two kinds of teachers in the public narrative: hero saints who are Standing and Delivering and have devoted their lives to other people's children, and total screw-ups. The vast majority of teachers are doing the best they can in the system they're in and feel their responsibility to their students quite keenly but also have to draw work/home life boundaries with their time, energy and money. Which is really all you can reasonably ask for, but the public acts like if teachers aren't re-enacting Freedom Writers on a daily basis, they ought to be classified with the total screw-ups. Like, if you were a good teacher, you'd be answering emails at 8pm on Friday, you'd be willing to tutor my kid every day after school, you would cut up my son's lunch for him, endless boundary-pushing requests. But God forbid that level of involvement should be turned the other direction - if a teacher calls home to ask parents to help a child with some task or skill, or to share behavior concerns, then it's "well, that's YOUR job, you're the teacher." All those parents during lockdown "joking" about how they ought to get their kids' teachers' salaries for "homeschooling" and acting like teachers who were concerned about coming back to work in person were just shirking just added another straw to the camel's back. And it seems like people are just waiting for any little slip-up, even something that's not actually problematic for people other than nuns, like having drinks in a public place or posting vacation swimsuit pics on social media, to pounce on a teacher. And now apparently in addition to being classroom teachers...and psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists, nutrition coaches, vocational trainers, surrogate parents, etc....teachers are being called on to carry weapons to defend their schools against armed invaders? Or to NOT carry weapons and to defend their schools against armed invaders? Both options suck pretty hard! Like, if they wanted to be cops, presumably they'd have gone to the police academy rather than ed school. And then to hear from politicians that kids need to be protected from teachers' insidious indoctrination? Boy, if teachers had that power, they would start with getting kids to bring pencils to class and put their names on their papers.

Anyway, it should come as no surprise that if they can make more money elsewhere, they'd follow that path instead. I think the real question is, why HAVEN'T the others quit? Figure out what's making them stay, and foster more of that, grow that.

[AlexZaz.]

Low pay and too many kids are on TikTok learning to do crap to schools. TikTok gets in the way of schoolwork.

[in_newengland]

Teaching has been a bad career for quite a few years now and it's gotten worse lately.

They are on the front lines with disruptive students but they have little authority to do anything. The administration won't back them up or help them out. The administrators get all the money but the teachers are supposed to do all the hard work. The administrators come up with a "new" method for teaching every few years and they get paid for it while the teachers have to sit through long boring lessons on how to teach. They went to college and learned how to teach so leave them alone and let them teach!

Teachers are forced to give passing grades to kids who never show up or who create chaos in class. That's not teaching. Teaching is a profession and there aren't many people out there who could really do a good job of it. Let someone go into one of today's classrooms with the spoiled, disruptive students and see if they last a day.

Add the covid mess and low pay to all of that and of course teachers are quitting. It's one of the most stressful jobs out there.