One of the liquor stores near me had a drunk driver smash through the wall and nearly hit the front counter. They had guys with a machete rob them and there's big cuts in the counter from the machete and there's bars on the windows and the young guy who works there has a baton and a bottle of pepper spray behind the counter to fight off robbers. I wouldn't stay in that job personally.
lol You couldn't be any farther off if you tried. I'll give you and everyone else a hint, but it'll probably only make sense to those who know you. You, of all people, will probably be shocked, appalled, and understanding of it all at the same time.
Yes. You nailed it. Since the school year began in August, 526 teachers have quit. 147 of them just walked away without giving notice or anything. Insane.
That sucks. I will call BS on the 147 who walked off without notice when they say they care about their students though. I bet the situation must suck for teachers with those numbers but just walking off is a spit in the face for the students.
Teachers, even those who care deeply, can only take so much.
Just for a moment, try to think about one teacher who made a difference in your life or whose class you really enjoyed. Why did you like it?
Maybe your teacher was passionate. Maybe your teacher had a unique method of instruction. Maybe your teacher would find new ways of presenting information when the class struggled with a concept.
Almost none of these things are possible now. Teachers have to teach a specific curriculum, using uniform methods determined by someone else. Let's say you're a science teacher who wants to take the kids on a nature hike to show them what they're learning about in real life. It's probably not going to happen. It's not part of the approved curriculum. Let's say you're a math teacher and your kids are learning addition and subtraction. They're struggling with it, and their morale is down. You want to give them M&Ms to use as counters. The principal's going to pull you aside and give you crap because your class isn't supposed to be using counters and sweets promote obesity. It doesn't matter if your students are engaged and learning with your methods- only that they're not the approved ones, and the approved ones are determined several levels above you by people who don't work in classrooms, don't visit your school, and don't know your students.
Let's say you're a first-grade teacher and the kids are super restless or drowsy because they've just come back from a vacation. You decide to let them stand at their desks or move around the room, as long as they're still on assignment. Well, you'd better hope no administrative staff sees that, because kids out of their chairs means the teacher does not have control of the environment. No joke.
I know of a teacher who was denied a box of chalk because there wasn't a budget for it and it didn't "serve the needs of the students" enough. Not only that, but they were given crap for asking for it.
Even if you loved kids and wanted to make a difference, could you go into work every single day knowing that your hands were tied- that you couldn't teach your students in a way that got them excited about learning or that stuck with them? Teachers get pushed into these crappy little boxes, admonished for the stupidest things, have their pay determined by standardized test results, and don't receive much pay to begin with. They start their jobs with hope, and the system strips that away. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario for many.
I don't deny any of that and agree completely. Still leaving without 2 weeks and just leaving a class of kids in limbo one day seems equally irresponsible. That part doesn't sit right with me reguardless of the circumstances.
I'm gonna be completely honest and show I may have some subconcious bias here. I have no good memories of school. Not to say I had some awful experience or bad memories either. For me it was just something I was forced to do and found completely boring and unrewarding. I mostly just sat there waiting for the day to end and annoyed I was expected to do all this bullcrap homework afterwards instead of reading what I wanted to, exploring, and tinkering. I annoyed teachers, and they me, becaused I answered questions correctly and aced tests and labs but skipped homework and had no interest in class participation. So I'll be the first to admit I have a slant here since there really wasn't a teacher that piqued my interest in school. I was naturally interested in learning and more often than not felt hampered by sitting in class going over, and over, and over the same thing to go home and do it again. Far as I was concerened my tests scores proved I didn't need the homework.
I know I come across as cold, indifferent, dick in some of my responses to these types of questions, but I'm not. It's just the medium and my limitations articulating in it the full scope of my opinion. I do still admire teachers and what they do.
Benedict Arnold 