This came after about three years of absolute rotten treatment by the district and admin toward everyone. I had friends cry after the superintendent called them out for a drop in their students’ test scores. One day, I simply couldn’t take it anymore. I’m very ashamed about how I left, and it’s been seven years. I miss teaching terribly. My husband makes a good living, so I am very lucky…one could never survive on a teacher’s pay alone." —Jennifer Madrid We will always be the ones to blame for everything and it is not fair. Everyone has a responsibility — parents, the student, administration, and us of course — but it’s not fair we get all the fingers pointed at us when things don’t work." —Monroecat —kanelflixka —hellsbells —katelynn41ea92daf I just accepted a job in fintech that’s mostly remote with a $33K pay increase, better benefits, more time off, and I’m already getting more support from my manager than I ever did from my admin and I haven’t even started yet. I left the school saying it was a break since it was so early in my career, but I’m never going back. The average time teachers stay in the profession has been 3–5 years for too long — the education system needs a huge overhaul, and fast, if they want to mitigate the shortage and keep good teachers." —ay(oongi)ana Most people don’t understand the nuances of what we actually do. Instead, they only hear the political arm of the profession talking so of course society all thinks we are just political monsters. I just want kids to feel safe in my classroom and for them to learn. I believe most teachers are that way. Some are just better at ignoring all the other crap while others will get beaten down by it." —19yearteacher Now my state is forcing schools to display god posters if they are donated. The governor is trying to pass a parent bill of rights where parents can sue and we can lose our licenses if we teach facts that they don’t like. We are accused of ridiculous things because of lies that elected officials are pushing to motivate their bases. Between active shooter training, COVID, paperwork, more paperwork, more lesson plans, kids attacking and cursing us, adding more minutes to the teaching day (yep - now working 30 more minutes a day for no extra pay), changing TEKS, parents complaining, the politics, admin not having our backs — goodbye!" —westlawn66
