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44% is not a majority, so your statement should read that a minority of teachers leave in their first five years of teaching.
I don't have stats, but it appears that for most districts in PA, most teachers end up retiring from the job they were originally hired.
I think I admitted to my mistake when I said "not a majority but..." If you are demanding a formal retraction than you may consider this to be one.
I would be interested to see a breakdown of teachers leaving the profession by years teaching but I can't find one. Like, if 44% quit in the first 5 and 20% quit in the next 5 then I would feel that my original statement was correct.
But I have not had luck finding good reliable statistics of that nature.
There were years at my middle/upper middle class high school in Maryland that we lost every single first year teacher that started the year. Sometimes they left the second day, sometimes at the quarter/semester, sometimes at the end of the year. It was more common than not to lose a majority of them anyway. It became a sport to predict how long each new teacher would last. I usually won the pool.
When I transferred to the school the "unwritten rule" was that no one went there with less than five years experience (so everyone was already tenured) and a first year teacher hadn't been hired there in anyone's memory (we had some teachers who'd been there since the end of WW II when it was the Black high school for that side of the County).
That data is really interesting although I suspect things might be quite different depending on area. In fact I suspect things look different depending where in PA you are located.
Hmmm.... I'm going to see if I can find similar studies done in my state, I suspect we don't retain quite as well as PA.
I sure wish I could say something more encouraging to her, though. We need people like her to stay in the field.
Any suggestions out there?
Thank you for your positive vibes and support of our wacky profession (I could write a book a year!).
I have something that you can pass along to her, if you think it would help. I've been teaching in a classroom setting for almost 20 years, so I can say I've got a bit of experience.
Simply stated, this is the most wonderful profession out there. I understand that it is not a profession that everyone will pursue, nor will some people connect with the profession as deeply as others, but I assert that it will always give back what you put into it, and then some.
I think a good metric of your success in life is whether you can be confident that at least a few people will be standing over your grave when you are gone, and that they are able to say that their lives were better because you were in it. Few other professions give you the opportunity to make such a wide, positive impact on so many lives as teaching.
It does not come without stressors, and certainly outside forces can negatively impact your experience in the profession, but so many times that stress comes from factors that you can ignore for a while when you shut your door, and it is just you and the students. Lack of administrative and parental support, less-than-stellar colleagues, lack of resources, etc. are all real factors, but they don't have to negatively affect your mindset when you are there in the classroom and it's just you and the students.
It's funny, but there are still many times when, after the hours of behind-the-scenes planning, after the meetings with school psychologists for the student in need, after confiscating that one students' phone for the 3rd time that week (complete with requisite eye rolls every time), after finding the graph paper missing, after all of those things, I find myself circulating in the middle of some practice that the students are doing and they are hitting that groove where they are all engaged, working, and learning and I take that quiet moment to be thankful for them and for the experience of being part of their growth.
If the negative teachers carry the burden of missing out on all of the positive things that you can reap from the profession, she has little to no power over that, but I hope she stays and goes in every day with a positive mindset and teaches those kids the best she can. Her life will be much richer for it.
About 24 years ago and was involved with the schools a lot for many years after. People haven't changed that much, and the same comments were said back then as they are now.
There is a much more urgent need of qualified teachers now, though.
It's absolutely nuts to compare teaching in the 90s to (and being a para, at that) to being in the third year of pandemic teaching in 2021. Things are different now in many ways, and were even before all the extra insanity of the last three school years.
IMO the single biggest difference is the lack of staffing. Everyone is doing multiple jobs. Pre-pandemic, many districts had already cut instructional staff numbers to the bone for budget reasons, running with minimal paras and only enough faculty to fill a schedule, with specialists serving multiple campuses. Now, as a wave of employees have retired/quit due to Covid, their empty positions have proven hard to fill. All other issues in education aside, with the nationwide sub shortage, there's just not enough warm bodies in a school building these days to offer full supervision and a full schedule and also provide time for preps, collab, intervention, enrichment, etc.
At the very time when people should be taking the most care of their health it's a huge guilt trip to even take a sick day. At a friend's school, they have the principal, librarian, "specials" teachers (art, music, gym, etc.), and aides covering classes most days because there are no subs and a bunch of teachers are out with Covid and or/quarantined. This means that the daily jobs that would normally be done by those staff are now picked up by the classroom teachers - can't send a disruptive kid to the office, don't have an aide to help meet IEP requirements, no prep breaks for the teacher while the kids go to gym or music - which spreads people really thin, especially as class sizes are pretty big this year. And this is at a time when MORE support is what's needed, not less, as kids are struggling academically and socio-emotionally due to the events of the last few years.
At the start of the pandemic parents were pretty cooperative, but now it's all "how dare you send my baby home just because he has a 101 degree fever, it's just allergies."
Teachers and other school staff are expected to suck it up because things are tough all over and at least they have steady employment - which, fair enough, but it must be heartbreaking to want to do what's right for your students and be unable to do so because there simply isn't enough of "you" to go around.
So what's a teacher supposed to tell a prospective teacher? On the one hand, yes, more teachers are needed, so scaring them off isn't a great idea in the big picture. On the other hand, if you sugar-coat it you're basically lying to a naïve kid.
There were years at my middle/upper middle class high school in Maryland that we lost every single first year teacher that started the year. Sometimes they left the second day, sometimes at the quarter/semester, sometimes at the end of the year. It was more common than not to lose a majority of them anyway. It became a sport to predict how long each new teacher would last. I usually won the pool.
When I transferred to the school the "unwritten rule" was that no one went there with less than five years experience (so everyone was already tenured) and a first year teacher hadn't been hired there in anyone's memory (we had some teachers who'd been there since the end of WW II when it was the Black high school for that side of the County).
Do you think the same experience would've occurred if you had started teaching in a suburban Pittsburgh school such as Upper St. Clair, Fox Chapel, or Mt. Lebanon?
The Penn State article is more specific. It states, "nearly 50% of new teachers leave teaching within five years." I wonder how they know that people are no longer teaching. Many women leave the their jobs to raise a family. My daughter is one. She went to college in PA, taught in Florida for 9 years, and got married, had a baby, living in Texas, and currently not teaching. She plans to go back to teaching in a year or two.
Quote:
Originally Posted by history nerd
I think I admitted to my mistake when I said "not a majority but..." If you are demanding a formal retraction than you may consider this to be one.
I would be interested to see a breakdown of teachers leaving the profession by years teaching but I can't find one. Like, if 44% quit in the first 5 and 20% quit in the next 5 then I would feel that my original statement was correct.
But I have not had luck finding good reliable statistics of that nature.
What I have seen in PA is the longer teachers teach in this state, the more likely they are to stay in the same school district. I see a few "newer" teachers leave a district for a better district that pays more, or closer to home. They are usually people with 3-6 years experience. After 6-8 years, they usually stay until retirement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by history nerd
That data is really interesting although I suspect things might be quite different depending on area. In fact I suspect things look different depending where in PA you are located.
Hmmm.... I'm going to see if I can find similar studies done in my state, I suspect we don't retain quite as well as PA.
I definitely agree. There are rough city schools around the state, but also a few suburban, and rural districts that have bad reputations and high teacher turnover. The majority of suburban, small town, and rural teachers stay with the same district until they retire.
Do you think the same experience would've occurred if you had started teaching in a suburban Pittsburgh school such as Upper St. Clair, Fox Chapel, or Mt. Lebanon?
I have no way of knowing. When I went to the school in 1989 it was one of three or four (out of twenty high schools) that people lined up to get to. The financial demographics were high and it was one where parents moved to the attendance area so their kids could go to it.
[/quote]The Penn State article is more specific. It states, "nearly 50% of new teachers leave teaching within five years." I wonder how they know that people are no longer teaching. Many women leave the their jobs to raise a family. My daughter is one. She went to college in PA, taught in Florida for 9 years, and got married, had a baby, living in Texas, and currently not teaching. She plans to go back to teaching in a year or two.[/quote]
I would imagine the criteria was "resigning after X years" without consideration about maybe going back to it.
[/quote]What I have seen in PA is the longer teachers teach in this state, the more likely they are to stay in the same school district. I see a few "newer" teachers leave a district for a better district that pays more, or closer to home. They are usually people with 3-6 years experience. After 6-8 years, they usually stay until retirement.[/quote]
I think that may be true to an extent but I seem to remember a lot of turnover when I was in high school.
Keystone is advertising for a Social Studies teacher. When was the last time you saw that in October?
OP, with all kindness intended, you need to treat this young woman like the adult that she is. If she feels there is an issue, she needs to speak to her principal, not have you tattle in an anonymous report like she's a kindergartener.
As a teacher, I rarely went into the staff room except to grab my mail. I had no time. I ate lunch at my desk, where I wrote my lesson plans and graded. Teaching is a hard, stressful profession that does not pay well. Those who stick it out do so because they truly love teaching, love their students and are willing to put up with the negatives. Venting to colleagues is a way to relieve stress and share in the sense that you are not alone in feeling frustrated at times, just like in every other profession out there. This is the exact opposite of "nonconstructive negativity" as you called it.
I knew one teacher who retired after 20 years with the comment "I don't think I made one bit of difference by teaching."
As someone else said, she will either continue despite the negativity or decide that teaching is not for her.
Things haven't really changed that much over the decades. Teaching is very stressful. Kids aren't being disciplined at home in many cases so they are disruptive in class. Try teaching anything when even one kid is jumping up and down in his seat, calling you names, throwing things. And you aren't allowed to do anything about it. The principal won't support you. The other kids all join in.
There is no time for lunch or to relax or to get caught up or revise your lesson plans during the day. As many teachers will tell, you, there is no time to go to the bathroom!
These days we even have police stationed in the school. Lockers are searched for guns and knives. Superintendents spend their time coming up with silly innovations that interfere with teaching. Just allow the teachers to teach! Get a qualified school board and a down to earth superintendent who isn't just in it for the money. It might be a good job in rare circumstances but I have heard nightmare stories and early retirement from teachers in lovely upper middle class towns. No one listens to the teachers!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have no way of knowing. When I went to the school in 1989 it was one of three or four (out of twenty high schools) that people lined up to get to. The financial demographics were high and it was one where parents moved to the attendance area so their kids could go to it.
I think that may be true to an extent but I seem to remember a lot of turnover when I was in high school.
Keystone is advertising for a Social Studies teacher. When was the last time you saw that in October?
I was one of those people who moved into the Mt. Lebanon school district to have my kids go to school there.
When I was in high school, I remember one new teacher coming into the school. He didn't actually replace anyone. They hired him to be the new swimming coach. This was one of the largest school districts in Western PA, average graduating classes over 600 students.
I'm noticing some districts advertising. Some teachers were frustrated with teaching online, but that has mostly gone away. I would think the district would not be hiring a permanent teacher, but would hire a long-term sub to finish the year. That seems to be the trend.
Thank you for your positive vibes and support of our wacky profession (I could write a book a year!).
I have something that you can pass along to her, if you think it would help. I've been teaching in a classroom setting for almost 20 years, so I can say I've got a bit of experience.
Simply stated, this is the most wonderful profession out there. I understand that it is not a profession that everyone will pursue, nor will some people connect with the profession as deeply as others, but I assert that it will always give back what you put into it, and then some.
I think a good metric of your success in life is whether you can be confident that at least a few people will be standing over your grave when you are gone, and that they are able to say that their lives were better because you were in it. Few other professions give you the opportunity to make such a wide, positive impact on so many lives as teaching.
It does not come without stressors, and certainly outside forces can negatively impact your experience in the profession, but so many times that stress comes from factors that you can ignore for a while when you shut your door, and it is just you and the students. Lack of administrative and parental support, less-than-stellar colleagues, lack of resources, etc. are all real factors, but they don't have to negatively affect your mindset when you are there in the classroom and it's just you and the students.
It's funny, but there are still many times when, after the hours of behind-the-scenes planning, after the meetings with school psychologists for the student in need, after confiscating that one students' phone for the 3rd time that week (complete with requisite eye rolls every time), after finding the graph paper missing, after all of those things, I find myself circulating in the middle of some practice that the students are doing and they are hitting that groove where they are all engaged, working, and learning and I take that quiet moment to be thankful for them and for the experience of being part of their growth.
If the negative teachers carry the burden of missing out on all of the positive things that you can reap from the profession, she has little to no power over that, but I hope she stays and goes in every day with a positive mindset and teaches those kids the best she can. Her life will be much richer for it.
Thank you very much for your kind, helpful post.
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