This teacher is responding to the post by the North Carolina teacher who quit his job rather than submit to unprofessional mandates and politically motivated directives:
I am a 13 year teacher who recently left the United States (Georgia) to come teach overseas.. I don’t know if I can ever go back to the USA and teach in public schools again for the very same reasons that the author of this blog wrote about.
I swear I came this close to a heart attack my last year teaching in Georgia.
I have already talked to my husband about when I do go back home to Georgia how I do not want to teach in the same type of atmosphere, and I don’t see it changing anytime soon. I would not survive it.
Education has become a business run by those who have never set foot in a classroom. No discipline in schools, teach the test, ever changing polices and curriculum teachers can’t keep up with, mind numbing professional developments that are a complete waste of time and pull us away from our jobs of being teachers, continued budget cuts (but money for crazy crap purchased from “educational consultants”). It’s not about educating students or what is in their best interests. It is all about what is on paper, stats, and satisfying a federal govt checklist.. That’s it. The reality doesn’t matter at all anymore.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Dear Concerned Educator,
You may want to join my network for student empowerment. I could really use people like you with passion and conviction for teaching and learning practices that transform (not oppress)! I too taught in Georgia and like your post implicated, we have a nationwide problem. I have also worked in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Wish I could say that it was a regional problem. It’s not. But, it won’t change by leaving (although I understand your departure… trust me, I do!). And, it certainly won’t change if we continue to leave the work in the hands of the people with the big bucks and the big connections. The Empowerment Network is about little people like you and me that are sick and tired of playing school! Let’s teach and empower together…think about it…
http://www.pbsdevelopment.com/empowerment-network.php
#empowerment starts here
Realistically, I am coming to the conclusion that I will not be hired to teach again. I have had not even a nibble to my resume in the 18 months since I lost my job and at 62,…need I say more? Since I am a special ed teacher, I might be able to find employment in Chicago, but I know I cannot handle the hours in a charter. I did that in my last public school. Just like the former Georgia teacher, I have had it with simplistic formulas pushed as the latest panacea that allow for no professional judgement. So I’ll sub for now and maybe join the pool of old faces as a paraprofessional,…if I’m lucky. I need healthcare.
Cannot handle the hours in a charter? Poor baby….I’m 63 and work 40-50 hours a week. 50 weeks a year in the educational hardware business. Teachers have become huge whiners.
I probably worked 80 hours a week. I never went anywhere but church and the grocery. I was either in school or grading papers. Maybe it was more like 100 hours a week. Two years of that plus no leadership and no consequences for disruptive and threatening behavior was enough. That’s not why I spent 27 years in education. Not sure what my next step is because of my health. I just hope my health can be restored. You have no idea how impossible it has become if you are on the “outside.” We are surely not whiners. Who works for 10 years without a pay raise? I did because I wanted to teach. I still want to teach but circumstances beyond my control — poverty, poor parenting, missing leadership –may just force me out. I have finished 6 decades. I’d like to at least finish 7.
40-50 hours would be a breeze. My average, I’ll say it again, MY AVERAGE, was 60 hours per week at my last job. I assume you are one of those who thinks teachers have summers off, so I won’t even go there.
55-70 hours a week, 110 students and their parents- all of us connected by e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and cells. E-mails and phone calls up until 10pm wanting questions answered. Worrying about students who are homeless, raising younger siblings as a 16 year-old, drugs and alcohol gaining hold, oblvivious/disconnected parents who are “still in high school” at times. A devalued profession that is micromanaged by politicians with “questionable ethics, motives and expertise”, disrespect and surly attitudes like Jerry’s. Want to switch for a week Jerry? I’ve done sales/business before, so “I’m in the know”. I’m sure your 50 hours a week are dissimilar in comparison.
40-50 hours a week is nothing in the teaching world. Get a clue before you post drivel.
So, you work in the educational hardware business, right? Good for you! You probably get paid overtime. We, teachers, don’t have the luxury. Then, again, the educational hardware business is not teaching. Why don’t you talk to teachers first before making any postings here? We are not whiners. We are just sick and tired of being underpaid and unappreciated by society and, especially, people like you who wouldn’t have the guts to stand in front of a classroom, discipline misbehaving and uninterested kids, teach them, do the school’s paperwork, attend professional development workshops, and get loads of crap from every direction with no reason at all. Why do we have to beg for money and respect?
Teachers are not whiners. Teachers not only work at school but many of them carry their work home. If it not papers to grade, it’s lesson plans to develop or hours of research looking for an answer to reach that student that needs that extra help whether it be motivation, behavior management and/or that differentiated instruction that leads to academic success. Teachers are getting tired of being treated like crap and blamed for all the social ills of this world. Teachers usually do all the that is required of them and much, much, much more then suddenly their administrator is someone that can’t lead themselves out of an open door. They have no knowledge of curriculum nor discipline but you’re the problem after 22 years of service. Not for professional reasons but personal. Let’s us not forget about the fly by night magic pill (new curriculum/instructional strategy) that promises to cure all academic/social/emotional ills. They might work but how will we ever know if we never stick with any long enough for it to take root and flourish. Does it ever occur to anyone how much money is wasted. I remember a few years ago it was purchase the elaborate libraries. Because after all if you have books, they will read. Teachers spent hours coding and labeling books while creating an attractive area to draw the students’s attention. Now it is get rid of fiction because our kids won’t be college ready unless they read all nonfiction. Money wasted. What about the fancy technology that available but you can’t use it unless you promise your first born and then we can toss it when it becomes obsolete. All of those that complain about teachers should take one month to walk in our shoes. Someone said it best when they said,”doctors treat their patients one at a time, while teachers have to treat their as a whole” and I would like to add “while the inmates round the place.”
Jerry, it’s like comparing what you do to what a soldier does in 40-50 hours a week. Your job doesn’t demand the same level of emotional output as that of a teacher, especially nowadays.
Oh, how I identify with you! I was teaching in a Blue Ribbon Presidential award winning
School in Denver, C O. I have taught for 25+ years in 3 states, public and private.
My test scores have ALAYS been far above the norm. I felt that would protect me…little
did I know! Teachers have NO protection against manical principals who know it is
open season on oder teachers, regardless of proven superior teaching, selfless dedication, etc. I was unmercifully harassed, mentally abused, and outrageously lied about my
accomlishments until I had to leave my classroom or, as my doctor told me, suffer a stroke or heart attack! I am being treated for PTSD, severe depression and extreme anixety ALL from what I was put through in that school. I will never be able to teach again, the damage is too disabling. I am so sick of hearing about BAD TREACHERS!
We are the most malined professiom there is. Good luck getting college kids sign up for
this thankless profession that has sunk so low that teachers have NO say so, have to
read a script instead of talking to their students, all the while corporations make billions
on testing and crazy “test prep” garbage that is proven over and over to be worthless,
Experienced high quality teachers leaving the profession like this is becoming the case far too often, both in K-12 schools and in Teacher Eduction. I’m getting out because the same issues that plague classroom teachers are being implemented at my university. We are now required to use tests that have been proven to be discriminatory and have no relation to teaching to admit students to our programs. The foundation/ corporate interests that pull our university president’s string demand that we use VAM scores to assess the quality of our graduates, and our program is being eaten by test prep to prepare for a final state exam. I see no point in continuing to do this, and so I will be retiring as soon as I can afford to, and keeping my head down until then.
As we’re bombarded with new jargon and acronyms, there’s one term that has disappeared: MASTER TEACHER.
Remember when teachers like us, who, through trial and a lot more error, taught those freshman sweathog classes the older teachers wouldn’t touch? We got good at our job and then better, until, all of the sudden, some department head would say, “Hey, I have this new teacher who is getting slaughtered, can she sit in your classroom and see how to deal with discipline?”
We decided to stay in the classroom instead of going through the mid-management lobotomy or escaping to district admin as a pogue.
We are proud to be in the trenches.
It’s a shame that in this brave new teaching world, nobody cares about us master teachers.
I had taught in private education for 22 years, the last four as a teaching principal in a school for young at-risk young women who were challenging academically and behaviorally. Last year for the first time I taught in a public school thinking I brought a lot to the table. I was appalled at how underserved, at-risk students were treated. The teachers were well-intentioned with not enough training in how to help students in crisis. This year I have returned to private education to help the young people challenged to be educated because of trauma and chaos in their life. Public education saw no need for my insight into students who were failing and were often absent nor was administration interested in thinking in terms of solutions for these young people aside from detention and in school suspension. We wonder why the achievement gap is growing. Those compassionate, experienced educators aren’t there to support and provide the wisdom to younger teachers because they are too expensive or some other excuse tied to money.
The original post was such a sad indictment about what is happening and this latest just adds evidence to the misery of experienced teachers. Perhaps it is worse for us because we can recall better days in the past when our experience, maturity and expertise mattered. Dinosaur English Teacher laments correctly that “nobody cares about us master teachers.” but perhaps the sadder comment is that with the exception of those of us in or leaving the classroom, however long we’ve been at it, the new wave of greed-driven profiteer cares even less for the students. If it is not already so, it is quickly becoming an abusive situation, but who will blow the whistle on them and how many children will be hurt before they can be stopped?
Frozen salaries, furloughs of almost two weeks and the fiscal cliff future impact on school budgets is scary. The lack of professionalism in admins, superintendents who love VAM and politicians who advocate for policies that deprive teachers of full salaries but will pony up state money for commissioned approved charters even if districts don’t want them. That is what is layered on top of the regular stress of teaching. Oh almost forgot to add the added stress of now a whole generation of students who have had nothing but standardized testing to help underdevelop their analytical thought processes. Teaching Georgia students because they darn sure need good teachers is a mission of love but the teaching profession in Georgia is a sentence. One sentence that needs to be commuted but won’t happen any time soon.
Just sickening to read how beaten down and demoralized are the teachers who care so much about education and kids. The young teachers who buy into the corporate sales pitch for charter schools and the greener grass of school reform become disillusioned even faster and usually don’t stay on the job longer than 3 years. What will it take for the country to see the cancer of standards and testing for what they really are? Data–the ugliest 4-letter word you can say in school.
I could have written this: Teacher: Why I Won’t Return to Teach in Georgia Unless…–just change the state to Indiana and leave off the Unless. I feel I am done and done in.
I’m on sick leave because the last two years of my 27-year teaching career have made me sick physically. My doctor referred me to a psychologist as well because she said she felt like I had post-traumatic stress disorder (she knew about the parent who came to school to beat me up and the crazy kid who threatened to put me in the hospital and the school did NOTHING to him among tons of other examples). I don’t want to go back either.
I could have written many of these posts myself! I was a teacher before my kids were born; turned to a stay at home mom / pta mom / sports mom / volunteer mom / sunday school teacher mom for the next 20 years. I recently returned back to the school as a teaching assistant which suits me just fine. The pay isn’t great – but I work my hours and LEAVE. I take no work home and don’t fret about my students as I did as a teacher. I get health insurance and benefits, have the respect of my co-workers and I get to roll my eyes at the stupid things they are doing in public education these days without fear of retribution. Could I go back into the classroom? Only if I HAD TO. Do I WANT to? NO WAY!!!! I’ve kept up relatively well with the technology that is flooding our schools – but still am quite not up to par. I do NOT believe in all of the testing that is being done these days. I do NOT believe in teaching “standards”. I teach STUDENTS. Unfortunately, kids these days do not know how to listen and follow directions. Parents don’t believe in discipline. These 2 things are a recipe for disaster and I witness it daily. I do what I can in the capacity I have and don’t sweat the small stuff. I could definitely use more income – but sanity is expensive in the education world of today
I have officially burnt out and do not want to teach anymore. The thought of getting up tomorrow to be verbally abused again and again, facing the apathy, kids there to just suck air, etc. Its getting harder and harder to rise up and feel any desire to get going. My colleague and I have mentioned pretty much everything already discussed and we want out but where do you go? I have taught in California and now in Washington and agree it doesn’t matter where you go. I am seriously thinking about teaching overseas which is what brought me to this blog. I haven’t felt like a good teacher in years and miss that connection or groove you begin to have with your students when you know light bulbs are turning on. Everyday i hear from some teacher, work e-mail about common core standards, what more can we do, there is no money to replace my laptop that just died with all my documents (and grades are due by Tuesday). My latest conversation with an English teacher re: AP English is more like a honors class because the students just can’t handle it and don’t care. I don’t know what the answer is but kids that just care about the fights that happened at lunch isn’t where I want to be.