Not long after I started thinking to myself how selfish I was being, and I started to consider what might be going on in her life. As I have mentioned in earlier posts my mother is a teacher, a third grade teacher. This time of year teachers are especially busy. I called my mom back later that night and apologized and asked what was going on in her life and with her classroom. She explained to me all of the mandatory tests her students are required to be taking right now and how excessively long they are and how the scores directly reflect her. Not to mention most of these state regulated tests are online and there is only one computer lab at my mothers school and all the grade levels K-5 must have access to it for this testing. I could not believe all of the things that were going on, it sounded so stressful!
Nearly one in every twelve teachers left the profession last year according to the Department of Education's statistics (Mirror). If that's not a problem I am not sure what is. As an aspiring teacher this is crazy to me and obviously I want to know the reasons behind it, am I going to want to quit? I love children and learning as well as teaching people new things, but so do most of the individuals that go into teaching in the first place. Here are the top reasons why we are losing so many teachers.
- All of the Work
This was the top problem most teachers gave for considering leaving teaching. Every school day a teacher must: teach, manage behavior, put together lesson plans, assess learning, counsel students, sometimes carry out first aid, reply to emails from colleagues, administrators and of course parents, write reports, clean their classroom, create displays, gather/buy/create resources for class, and the list goes on (Stress). The point is there is a lot of work involved, and a majority of it must be done on the teachers own time, their own unpaid time.
2. Teachers Feeling Undervalued
Two-thirds of teachers feel undervalued in their work (Why Teachers Quit). This may be from how the press portrays teachers, parents lack of respect given, how the students behave, or/and especially the government and how they treat teachers, along with other reasons as well depending on the school and the teacher.
3. Constant Changes
Change can be hard to adapt to and everyone has to to some extent every now and then but enough is enough! In the last ten years or so there have been an abundance of changes happening very quickly. Such as the curriculum, pay grades, testing requirements, and new qualifications all teachers must have. Some changes are necessary of course, but this is a little much.
There are just a few of the main reasons teachers are so stressed and why many are in result giving up this profession as a whole. This is obviously a problem to those, including myself, who want to become educators but it is something that all citizens should be aware of, education is the future of our nation, we best be doing a better job than we are now.
Marsh, Sarah. "Five Top Reasons People Become Teachers – and Why They Quit." The Guardian. 27 Jan. 2015. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. <http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/jan/27/five-top-reasons-teachers-join-and-quit>.
