Skip to main content

Scientific Proof for My Burnout


The San Francisco Chronicle ran several articles about why teachers quit. Again, I could have told them all of these answers, but they didn't ask me. They preferred instead to spend God-knows how much money on a study.

The second article particularly interests me. Among the important points:
  • "Nicolle Miller could handle the overcrowded classrooms, the lack of supplies and even the shortage of books for her seventh- and eighth-grade students at an Anaheim middle school. What she found most discouraging was the lack of support. "I wanted to make a difference, I wanted to help these kids. A lot of times I would feel that I wasn't allowed to do certain things," to teach her mostly poor, non-English-speaking students at South Junior High.

  • "It was this constant, 'If you don't do better, you're going to lose your job.'"

  • Those who quit overwhelmingly cited bureaucratic impediments to teaching, such as excessive paperwork, too much classroom interruption and too many restrictions on teaching. Despite the high rate of attrition, virtually no schools have adopted the standard business practice of exit interviews to survey teachers about why they're leaving.
  • Miller, of Anaheim, left in 2001, saying she had burned out. She now works in children's ministries at her church and sometimes does substitute teaching at the private school her children attend.
I'm afraid that might be where I'm headed. Everything here describes me exactly. I can't count how many times I've told people, "It's not the kids [even though the kids have so many problems - I can deal with those]. It's the adults who are driving me out."

And it is. Over and over, it's the adults driving me out. From principal #1 who kept telling me, "If you don't watch out, you'll get fired," to the most recent principals who kept saying that we'd better dust of our resumes - I'm tired of the fear tactic as a way to push for excellence. (Has that ever worked for anyone??)

It's heartbreaking to see kids reach out and cry for help and yet know that once again, the district/state/nation has cut funding for counselors or given teachers five more things to be responsible for so that we don't have time to help our children.

It is disheartening to see children beg for science or not know the first thing about history - or show an incredible aptitude for art/dance/music and know that we are so focused on testing that we don't have time or money to teach them what they need and want to know.

And it is just plain INFURIATING to see children who want to learn, who need to learn, who are motivated to learn, and who have to take these damn tests over and over and over! Who get so burned out because anyone would get burned out if they took this many tests - and practice tests - throughout a year. We're beating the natural curiosity out of them by testing them - over and over every single year.

We're going to regret the way we're running education. I think we're going to regret it very soon, and it's going to last a very long time.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Loss

  (I have been putting off finishing this blog post for months. You'll see why)  Today, I was cleaning a bookshelf and I found the journal from one of my third-grade students, who I call Fred in my book , in 2001. I still had it because he didn't come to the last day of school to get his stuff this year and I guess it got put in a pile and somehow I've kept it with me.  He didn't come to the last day of school, probably because his family was a mess: dad in prison, mom in an abusive relationship, all the kids (understandably) acting out violently. Fred was expelled from our school in second grade for hitting a teacher. Then he was expelled from the other school, I don't know why, at the end of second grade. He came back on the condition from the administration that he be in my class because I had him as a student in first grade and he listened to me and worked well with me.  We had a really good relationship, although Fred was definitely not easy to have in class....
Post a Comment
Read more

A New Prison, Part Two

  Second very long part of the prison visit report.   After we got all the paperwork filled out and went through the metal detector, we got visitation slips with the name of the inmate, and made our way over to the other building for visitation. This is not maximum security so thankfully you can just sit next to the inmates, and not be separated by glass or have to use a telephone to talk.    First, you get a gate unlocked and go into a holding pen that is of course in direct sunlight (or rain if it's that season) and surrounded by fences topped with razor wire. You wait there until the gate at the other end is unlocked. This holding pen was a little bigger and less claustrophobic than the other prison (I do not have any claustrophobia and I came very close to a panic attack once at the other place) and they opened the other gate more quickly. Then you walk, again in blazing sunlight (or rain) to the visitation building. This one was less of a walk than the other pri...
Post a Comment
Read more

A New Prison, Part 1

My former student, friend, and co-author was moved to a new prison during COVID. We (myself, Mitali, and his Abuela) have visited a couple of times via the video visit functionality they set up, but we've also been trying to visit in person, ever since in-person visits were allowed again. After four of them being canceled (sometimes we were told why, sometimes not), we finally got a visit. I was super nervous about this visit. (I felt better when Mitali mentioned that she was also, because she is an inherently positive and optimistic person!) I am not proud of this, but there was a large part of me that was hoping that the visit would be canceled, just like the previous four were. I felt a little better when someone I know messaged me privately to tell me that they had had very good experiences visiting a family member in that prison. But I still didn't sleep well at all that night, worrying about the guards, the many things that could go wrong, and the projected 111-degree hea...
Post a Comment
Read more