My Career was Stolen

The ring was a beautiful ruby and diamond setting meant to be worn on the middle finger. I could hardly believe my mom had seriously bought the ring for my college graduation! I was thrilled for graduation day as I was the only family member in a full generation to attend and graduate with a Master's Degree in Education. I had been teaching in the local public school for a year now, and my family were all really proud. I was thrilled that my own children, Cara 9, and Erik 4, had watched me work hard completing my second college degree. You see I had relatives that were retired teachers, my great aunts and uncles were among the first of our nation's teachers. My Great-Aunt Edna had taught in a one room school house before the rural community school was built. Wow! Her stories were inspiring! She taught 2nd grade for many years. I couldn't believe my luck when I too started my teaching career in second grade.

I enjoyed many years of teaching a variety of students and grade levels. I had the opportunity to work with special needs students that far exceeded their learning goals, and talented and gifted students that just lacked motivation to get to their goals. After teaching 2nd grade for a few years, our student numbers in 2nd grade fell and I was moved to 6th grade. Woah, are they nuts I wondered? But I had worked with mostly younger students...I'm short! Do they know what they are doing putting me with middle schoolers?! I quickly realized, within a week, that 6th graders can take my sarcasm and they can generally get a joke. I quickly realized I found my "home" in teaching, or I had accepted that middle schoolers "think" they know it all! I finished my teaching career in 2021 after 31 years.

Some might say that Covid did me in, or Zoom, or even the parents. Really what did me in after all the joy I had? I thought I would teach until I was retirement age. I am still in my early 50's. After a year now of being a retired teacher, my answer is clear. It was not Covid, and I actually liked the technology challenge of having to teach online via Zoom for awhile. No, it was much bigger. Systematically huge! I could make a very long list of items, but just a few can certainly highlight my reason why I feel my career was stolen! When I first started my career getting a teaching job was highly competitive. If you could speak Spanish you could move to California for a teaching job and they would pay you to do it! However, in Michigan we made portfolios and some even video to stand out in the application process. I was so thrilled after a couple years of substitute teaching to finally land a job in the same district my home and children were in. Since those initial years of teaching, I have witnessed school districts do a full adoption of a text book series only to come full circle and dump those books years later for the next upcoming idea/method. I have been on curriculum committees, State committees, etc... only to see the same education issues come back around without ever having been solved. I began to perceive that every program I had worked hard on and may have truly believed in had just been a waste of my time. I recall a few years in teaching where I was sent to Atlanta, Georgia to be trained in a new approach to teaching. I would be a guide, a coach to other colleagues. After the initial 2 years of training and then implementing the program, the district no longer trains or supports this method. I can't even imagine how many metal detectors that grant money could of financed rather than a new teaching method, that was not needed but we had federal dollars that had to spent on curriculum. Haven't the feds ever heard of "if it's not broke, don't fix it?

Are you beginning to get the mental picture of why teacher's are leaving education? Notice I did say beginning... Let me give you a few other reasons this teacher feels cheated from her career. I, like many educators, put myself through college which as you guessed it brought me much student loan debt. I was promised student loan forgiveness if I worked in a Title 1 District, which I did through my whole career. I never received said forgiveness due to the origination of my initial student loan. I guess that must of been in the fine print after my 3rd application attempt to forgive student loan debt. As you guessed it, for many teacher's money is a huge factor. I actually made less in my last few year's of teaching then I did in the middle years. You know, district cut backs, so sorry no step raises. Maybe if I hadn't been trained in Atlanta Georgia with a week long hotel stay, conference fees, etc... I could have received a full step, or full Master degree pay? Wasn't I suppose to make 90,000 a year with a MA after so many years in teaching? That was what the contract said, but that was before concessions... I never made any where close to what I expected my two degrees to yield me yearly. No, not making the money I expected was just another piece to the long list of why I felt I had to leave my career. My career had become a data collection of statuses on students that in a Title 1 district were mostly in survival mode. Survival mode because their resources are thin, survival mode because no one can help them with school work at home. Students are in survival mode because their parents are in survival mode. This has happened because the system keeps repeating itself. Many of the same issues in today's educational scenario haven't been fixed since its beginnings. How do we fund public education? Well, first we value it! If we value education then the funds set aside in taxes actually go to the schools and the educators working with the children. If you really value education for all, then you don't support charter schools as competition because they pick and choose which student applications they will enroll. ( I could write more on this factor, but another title!) If American Voters tell the politicians that we value and should fund public education then students and teachers will see it and feel it. To fix educational programming, how about asking the educated professionals, the teachers, what is needed to support learning in their classroom/district? Please don't call the administrators and secretaries to ask them as they are running a business while teachers educate.

So how will America retain good educators? Teacher perks, such as sticky notes in every color, colored pens, etc... won't do it. Well, there are the joys of seeing the acknowledgement of a learned concept being gained shown in the face, especially the eyes, when a student achieves this. Cookies in the teacher's lounge on pay day! All kidding aside, America needs to get educators in the classrooms to work with college students and seniors. Educators everywhere know it takes a whole village to raise a child. If anything I learned, it is so rewarding to work with kids that truly are our nation's future, just don't expect it will be a career because it just doesn't pay the bills. A multi-faceted approach to fixing our nation's education system is necessary for these kids. In the future, I hope there will be some teacher's left to educate our young people. The university enrollment in teacher programs currently does not indicate good news. As for me, I am on to a second degree, but this time I won't stay the 30 years needed for fully invested retirement obviously.