Why I Am Giving Up Teaching

One teacher’s five-year journey through — and out of — the education profession

I began teaching in the fall semester of 2011, a week before I had technically received my Master’s degree, at the same high school I had attended in the ’90s. Now, only five years later, it is with a heavy heart that I feel I have to throw up my hands in surrender and walk away from the profession. I’m not unusual in that regard, actually: estimates put the number of teachers who leave the profession within their first five years at anywhere from 17% (one in six) to a whopping 50% (one in two). I am not a special snowflake here; I’m a statistic. We do it, this exodus, for a variety of reasons that others have studied and I’m not here to explore, but it’s usually talked about in terms of what it means for education. Why are they leaving? Do we care that they’re leaving? If so, how can we retain them? No, how can we retain them other than paying them like other similarly-educated professionals and/or improving their working conditions (because we’re not going to do either of those things)? How can we blame this on Obama or Millennials?

That’s all fine, but I need to get down on paper what my leaving means for me personally. If that adds something of value to the larger discussion, so be it.

To understand why I’m leaving the teaching profession, it is important to understand why I became a teacher in the first place. When I was in high school — and probably before, but definitely high school — I had a few teachers who were very important to me. I was an unusual kid, and even teachers don’t often handle unusual very well. I was often the smartest person in the room, but I was sensitive and full of self-doubt. I didn’t care about sports or evangelism, the dominant concerns of most of my peers. I didn’t fit in, and I didn’t want to, and a lot of teachers didn’t know what to do with any of that. A couple of them, however, thought it was important to nurture my intellect and independence rather than try to cram me into the conformity box, and I honestly don’t know what I’d have done if I hadn’t known that they cared and were willing to listen to me. Everyone needs that, even the weird kids. Especially the weird kids.

Somewhere along the road of my life, I picked up a quote: “be the person you needed when you were younger.” I don’t remember where I first heard or read it, but Google tells me that it originated on Twitter, of all places, and someone named Ayesha Siddiqi said it first. It’s a powerful statement, and I have taken it not as advice, but as an admonition, and it is at the core of why I became a teacher. My initial certification was in Latin, and that’s a fun class to teach for a lot of reasons, but reciting hic haec hoc didn’t exactly get me out of bed in the morning. My passion isn’t any particular subject matter; it’s helping kids — especially the weird kids — by caring about them and listening to them. I considered a semester successful if I helped my charges feel less isolated and more comfortable with who they were; their grades were of secondary importance.

My first teaching job lasted three years, and every year I managed to ruffle some parent or another’s feathers. I was not like other teachers, you see, mainly for the same reasons I had not been like other students. I went to a few football games (mainly to support the marching band), but it got out pretty quickly that I was a liberal and probably an atheist. I loved my students, but I had very few friends or allies among my colleagues, and I never felt like my job was secure in any way, despite my consistently-above-average evaluation scores. On one occasion, a group of parents got together to march into my principal’s office and demand that I lose my job. I never learned whose parents they were, and it would probably break my heart to find out.

If a teacher claims that the job has never broken his or her heart, I’d question the existence of said heart. We deal with a lot of problems — ours and our students’ — and heartbreak is just part of the job, I think. But for me, it’s been too many times. When my principal told me that he believes his religion demands “blind faith” (his words) and that I should never say anything that might cause a student to ask questions, it broke my heart. When I was accused of being anti-American and hating our troops because I told a group of students they should think critically about what they see in the media, it broke my heart. When my position was eliminated due to “low enrollment numbers” despite the fact that the upcoming sophomores hadn’t even registered yet, it broke my heart. When I left that school, more than one student told me they doubted they’d be alive if not for me, but that didn’t matter. They were the weird kids, the ones other teachers ignore or dislike. What mattered was that I didn’t fit in, and for that, I became the man who killed the 31-year-old Latin program at his own alma mater.

After that, I struggled to find another job. I lived in Nashville by then, so I applied for jobs in Metro schools. I found out only at the very end of the summer that no principal had even seen my applications all summer because someone in HR forgot to push a button that said my application was complete, and I only found that out because it turns out I am distantly related by marriage to someone high up in central office. If I were the only potential teacher that happened to that summer, I’d be extremely surprised, but I’d also be a tiny glitch in the system. That means next to nothing for the profession of teaching, but for me personally, it means I missed a lot of opportunities through no fault of my own and ended up desperate at the end of July. That’s how I found myself hired, two days before the school year started, to teach Freshman English at one of the worst schools in Nashville.

When I started that job, I was cautiously optimistic. “It’ll be an interesting challenge,” I told myself. I was wrong, and when I resigned from that job only about a month later, I was the fifth or sixth teacher to do so that year. The students were packed more than 30 deep into every one of my classes, and I didn’t have enough desks for them. Fewer than half of my “honors” students were rated Proficient in English. Most of my students were rated Basic or Below Basic, and their behavior was atrocious. One of them intentionally broke the statue of Athena I kept on the shelf behind my desk. One of them tore his own desk apart with his bare hands, leaving it just a chair with a wire basket underneath. One of them, rather than sign a sheet of paper acknowledging he had been tardy, told me as dramatically as he could that I could “eat [his] d**k.” Almost none of them ever did any of their assigned work, and I am not a teacher who assigns a great deal of independent work. Not long before my resignation, I was called into the principal’s office because I had the highest failure rate in the entire school. She demanded to know what I was not doing for them. Why were so many failing? I explained that the ones who had done anything at all in class were all passing. That amounted to about 25% of them, incidentally, and as I said, it wasn’t because my standards were too demanding. They couldn’t get lower than a 50% on any assignment, even if they never turned it in, and I am a notoriously lenient grader most of the time.

I couldn’t handle that job. I don’t know how anyone could, honestly, but I know there are people who survive, succeed, and thrive in that type of environment, and may whatever divinity they recognize bless and protect them for that. I turned in my letter of resignation, offering to stay for a month so a replacement could be found, and disclosing that my departure was for health reasons — specifically, that I suffer from major depression and the stress of the job was more than I could handle. That disclosure brought a phone call from one of Nashville’s lawyers, suggesting that I change my effective date to “immediately,” but saying that she hoped I would get better and come back to work for Metro in the future. And so, I resigned from my job rather than kill myself, which had been looking more and more likely. I didn’t know at the time what that would mean for my career in the future.

The remainder of that year, I looked for another job without any success until I heard from a fellow Latin teacher. She was having a baby and needed a certified Latin teacher to cover her maternity leave for six weeks. I eagerly accepted and became a substitute. Her students were similar to the ones I had left behind in my first job, and that was a great six weeks. When it ended, I remained in the system for the rest of the year, mostly covering absences for Special Education aides. It wasn’t what I’d choose to do full-time, but I got along well with everyone and the kids liked me, and because hardly anyone is willing to do that job, I worked most of the days leading up to the end of the school year.

Another summer of applications beyond number and depressingly few interviews came and went. You wouldn’t think there were a lot of Latin teachers around, but it turns out that there are usually a number of them equal to the number of job openings plus one. That one is me. I could also teach English or History, but those jobs are flooded with applicants and almost always reserved for coaches, respectively. I spent a soul-crushing summer on the job hunt and came up empty, but at least I had substituting in the fall, and that’s what ended up happening, at least for a time.

I have this friend. We met in college at WKU and instantly hit it off, even rooming together for a while before I dropped out. He stayed at WKU and became a certified K-6 teacher, moving around a bit at first but eventually ending up a 6th-grade math teacher. He is a rock star, as far as I’m concerned. The kids love him, his colleagues and superiors love him, his evaluation scores and test results are impressive; by any measure you can think of, he is a great teacher. This friend told me at the beginning of last year that his school was about to need a high school English teacher and that he’d put in a good word. He did, and I got the job, probably entirely on the strength of my friend’s recommendation.

So last year, I went to teach in a rural school with grades 6–12 all in one building. It was as far from my previous classroom, figuratively and almost literally, as possible. I drove roughly 45 minutes to and from work, and on my commute I usually saw more cows than cars once I got off the interstate. The kids there were about as country as you’d expect, but even there I managed to find the weird ones and be there for them. It could have been a good job, given some time for me to find my footing as an English teacher, but there was a problem.

I didn’t fit in. That place was small, and the cliques were sharply defined, and here I was, this long-haired city fellow nobody knew in a town where everyone knew everyone and most of them were related somehow. I was in my classroom for 14 business days before I got called into the office about a parent complaint. Another one followed shortly after, then another. Three parent complaints in as many days, and I had been there three weeks. That first semester was rough, to put it lightly. And — just to give you an idea of the kind of thing I was getting in trouble for — one of those complaints was when a parent complained directly to the school board because they didn’t like that I had worn my Captain America hoodie where the hood comes over the face to form a cowl.

The spring semester went a little better, though I never did feel like I belonged or would get the chance to learn and grow from the year’s experiences and come back next year a better teacher. I found more students who needed — and did not seem to have — a caring adult and I at least got to do that part of the job some more. I was even beginning to think maybe I would be renewed for another year, and I started to feel optimistic about the future.

That was dumb.

I didn’t get my contract renewed. I spent a miserable summer applying for jobs, but this time I don’t think I got so much as an interview in any of the counties where I applied. I honestly don’t remember, because I once again just feel heartbroken. If you ask my former students, they’ll tell you I’m great. Some of their parents — the parents of the weird kids — will tell you their kids were so lucky to have me as a teacher. Acquaintances tell me that I’m the kind of teacher they hope their kids get. Some former colleagues who are, themselves, respected and well-loved educators have said that any school would be lucky to have me. A friend of mine who is an assistant principal WANTS to get me hired at his school. And Nashville has a teacher shortage — specifically, central office sent an email to every teacher in the system this summer to try to find a certified Latin teacher because they needed one and couldn’t find one. So why can’t I find a job?

There’s a piece of the story I have only hinted at. When I resigned from that awful place in Nashville, my principal made a decision that I would never work for Metro again. I am ineligible for rehire. No one told me, though. I found out months later, in my unsuccessful job search, when I applied to be a substitute. I got a letter saying there was something wrong with my background check, so they couldn’t hire me. This didn’t make any sense, as I had just passed a background check a few months prior, so I tried to get more information. No one would tell me anything, though, until I mentioned FOIA; that got me a meeting, in person, with someone high up in Human Capital.

He told me that there was nothing wrong with my background check per se, but that I had been marked ineligible for rehire by my former principal, and that only she could reverse that decision. I suspect that he told me this in person, not over email, because meeting me in person doesn’t create a paper trail. I suspect the phone call from the lawyer before was done for much the same reason. In any case, I reached out to my old principal, who told me she couldn’t change the decision. I asked for clarification: was it that she couldn’t, or that she wouldn’t? I got no response. An email to my earlier contact in HC was met with a brusque response that made it sound like it was the latter.

I let the matter drop for a while when I started subbing in the other county, but eventually I decided to check in with the EEOC to find out if I had grounds for a discrimination charge. I had disclosed my depression in good faith, and it seemed like Metro was refusing to take that into account in their punitive blacklisting. The EEOC investigator believed there was enough to file a charge, so I did. That was about a year ago, and it took until the beginning of this August before I heard anything on my case.

I learned that, rather than failing to take my disability into account, Metro claimed that they based their decision on it. That I was a danger to myself and others if I were in a classroom. That they had to block me from ever teaching in Nashville again for my own good, and the good of the children. They had taken what I thought might be discrimination and turned it into definite discrimination — but would the investigator see it that way? Metro made some claims about the circumstances and nature of my resignation that were factually inaccurate; I could correct the record there. They had apparently been dishonest with me; I could shine a light on that. I could also provide statements from, and references for, people who were willing to tell the investigator that Metro was wrong. I wrote an eloquent and compelling statement, attached testimonials from others, and rebutted Metro’s response to my claim.

It didn’t matter. The investigator cited two main reasons that my charge was dismissed:

I had never submitted anything to Metro that would establish that I am in better mental health now. My statement and testimonials did not establish that I would never be a danger to myself in the future.

Why, or how, I would have submitted information on my mental health to Metro when they never told me that was the problem, I don’t know. How exactly I could prove not only a negative, but a future negative, is beyond not only my reasoning, but the reasoning of basically any logician ever. My therapist looked at the dismissal letter I got from the EEOC and pronounced it to be stupid. That was her professional opinion.

My last recourse is a lawsuit, and I have 90 days from the time I received my letter to file it, or I must forever hold my peace. My initial reaction was one of despair; after all, we get the justice we can afford, and I am an unemployed schoolteacher. I cannot afford much. A day or so later, I decided it would at least be worth checking into a lawsuit, so I put out some feelers. A day or so after that, I got new information: such lawsuits are usually lengthy and expensive, and since I can’t claim lost wages (having worked other jobs), there’s not much of anything to pursue anyway. So my initial reaction was right: we get the justice we can afford, and because Nashville is a big city and I am one unemployed person, they win.

I think this deserves its own paragraph: Metro Nashville Public Schools lawyered up to protect one of its principals, lied to me and/or a federal agency, dealt my career a potentially fatal blow, and is going to get away with all of it because I have no money for a costly and protracted legal battle.

I have no idea how many stories there are like mine in the profession of education. Statistically speaking, it’s probably not many, but it seems likely that there are at least a few other former teachers out there who were willing to put up with the long hours, mediocre pay, and lack of respect or dignity, but who had their hearts broken one too many times as the system (or, more accurately, the petty individuals who comprise it) chewed them up and spit them out. Or maybe I’m the only one, and I just happen to have stumbled into every pitfall I’ve encountered along the way. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m tired and my heart is broken and I don’t think I can do it any more.