Underpaid, stressed-out teacher wants to join Great Resignation
It felt like a calling: Nina’s parents are both teachers in their native France; Her brother also teaches at home. Her aunts, uncles and even her husband’s father are teachers. “It’s crazy,” she says wealth.
There was family pressure to become a teacher, to say the least, but Nina, 29, says she is passionate about teaching and loves the children she works so hard to raise. She taught in France for two years and has been an art teacher of English at an Arizona high school since the pandemic began. But she’s not sure if she can keep it up for much longer. Like many workers in the final days of the pandemic – particularly teachers – she is seeking a career change. But she’s not quite sure where to start.
“I just don’t want to become a teacher”, Nina, a pseudonym wealth used to protect their privacy, recently wrote on the career advice subreddit. “But I’ve been in training for so long that I don’t feel like I’m qualified enough to do anything remotely interesting, despite having the fire and willingness to work hard.”
The pandemic, which has spent two years debating how – and what – children should be teaching, fueled a teacher shortage that increased pressure on staff, fueled burnout and prompted more teachers to seek an exit ramp. The effect is similar to what workers at America’s companies are facing due to layoffs and the Great Retreat, which saw millions of workers vacate their jobs amid ongoing pandemic fatigue.
A survey by the National Education Association earlier this year found that 80% of union members say job offers have led to more work and commitments, with more than half of members planning to leave education earlier than planned. Nina counts herself among them and hopes to follow in the footsteps of the 300,000 teachers and public school staff who have left the profession since the pandemic.
Their reasons for this are manifold: a lack of trust and support, stress and burnout, struggling with historical learning losses and exhausted staff.
“I thought I would be a high school teacher for a while and maybe a high school reservation teacher, but no,” says Nina. “I don’t think being a high school teacher my entire life would be good for me… Basically, every time I’m frustrated with my job, I keep doing Indeed.”
The pandemic has made classes unbearable
Nina moved to the American Southwest driven by a desire to work with the Native American people there, particularly the Navajo Nation. Her goal was to teach local students. What she found was a school system devastated by the pandemic.
COVID-19 has highlighted and exacerbated the inequalities Nina’s vulnerable students and the small charter school she teaches face. As school went far away, some of their students were stuck at home without computers for online classes or in environments where online classes were virtually impossible.
Like many teachers across the country, Nina had to give credit and pass students who were well below high school reading levels to the next grade. By and large, the learning loss for America’s children has wiped out decades of academic progress. What pains Nina more is the pressure on graduate students who just aren’t equipped or ready to graduate. But what’s the alternative: waste years of their lives holding them back? It has become unbearable for them.
Then the school administration. She says she feels patronized, undervalued and not trusted all the time. And the school is so understaffed that it’s forced to teach special education.
“They ask us for things that are way above our salary,” says Nina, who holds two master’s degrees in Native American Studies and American Studies and two bachelor’s degrees. “I’m not a special education teacher, nor do I get paid as one.”
The search for the right career entry has almost become a hobby these days, she says. She’s drawn to community service, politics, advocacy, even something that’s still in education or academia—anything but teaching.
“I want to use my skills that I spent so much time learning and that brought me here to the US,” says Nina. “I came to the United States to work with Native Americans and advocate for environmental rights. It happened for a while while I was doing my PhD program but the pandemic happened and funds were lacking so here I am.”
The feeling of being stuck with no way out
Teaching can be a pleasant performance; that’s what Nina’s parents always preached: time off and job security. But she doesn’t want to make herself too comfortable. A colleague of hers, who has a PhD, told her he only started teaching to pay the bills, but fell into the trap of teaching much longer than originally planned.
But at this point, Nina is unsure how to cope with such a career change. Despite having four degrees under her belt and expertise in every way beyond the scope of her current job, Nina worries that if she waits too long, her PhD, earned in 2018, will become all but irrelevant.
And she doesn’t want to get stuck in an endless job hunt. A colleague recently told her, somewhat jokingly, that they had been looking for a career change for 15 years. “I just felt like, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to be her,'” says Nina.
Workers across all industries have expressed concerns about staying relevant in their jobs and skills in the wake of a pandemic that has not only set people back, but prompted them to re-evaluate their careers and work-life balance. Nina had her first child during the pandemic, which took a lot of focus, she says, but the lockdown and isolation that came with COVID-19 gave her plenty of time to think about what she wants and what’s best for her health is career.
She’s already been turned down for two jobs, one that she says would have been perfect. But she is not deterred. There is more and more frustration at school, which is pushing them back into the job fairs. Other Redditors flocked to offer advice and guidance, suggest other potential careers, work with a headhunter, or simply send encouragement.
“I’ll stay as long as I can until I find something better… I’m not going to quit and then find another job,” she says. “I love the children. I like my colleagues; They’re not my favorite people, but I respect them and we have a good dynamic… And I don’t want to be unemployed. I have a baby and the daycare costs the same as the rent now, so that’s it.”
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