Former Teachers Are Sharing The "Final Straw" That Made Them Quit, And Oh My God, They Really Do Need To Be Paid More
Recently, I was reading this Reddit post and thought to myself that I have seen a lot of talk from teachers on the internet lately about being frustrated with school — the students, the parents, and the admin.
PBS Kids / Via giphy.com
I wondered why; so, I decided to ask (former) teachers in our very own BuzzFeed Community to tell me the final straw that made them quit unexpectedly. Here are their answers:
1."I didn't quit teaching altogether; I am still a teacher. However, I was teaching kindergarten at an inner city public school, [and] I left in the middle of the school year and went to teach fourth grade at a private school, with a pay cut. I have never been happier!"
"My final straw was my school's lack of parental and administrative support. In a classroom of 25 kids, about 12 of them had behavioral problems, three of them should have been classified for special education, and a few more needed services for speech or occupational therapy.
I was struggling to get through a single lesson with the behavior problems, and I couldn't help the kiddos who needed it because there were too many. I was burning out fast and looking for retail positions and receptionist jobs.
I began hating my job and was getting depressed. Now, my new school? I love it! It has smaller class sizes, any behavior issues are handled, and parental support is through the roof."
2."Veteran seventh grade science teacher here. I could not teach my class because four students were disruptive. I asked for help but no one responded. This was a daily occurrence for me and my colleagues because the kids are out of control."
"Later [on in the day that I asked for help,] I stopped by my principal's office to talk about what happened. She said she 'Already knew what happened, from the students.' I was told to go home and that I needed to 'get a union rep' because I was 'under investigation.'
I went home, typed my resignation, and sent it to EVERYONE. The district, knowing I was in the right, allowed me to go on medical leave until the end of the year and retire. They suggested that the principal look for a job elsewhere, so at least she is gone.
I would have liked to continue teaching because I love most of the kids and my colleagues, but the administration listens to the students and parents and gives teachers no support. I do not need the disrespect, overwork, stress, or burnout that is teaching today."
3."I quit when my principal did not support me while I was recovering from cancer... I was a first-year teacher without a state-required mentor, so it was already a struggle. Getting cancer at 22 made me re-evaluate everything."
4."I quit when I was asked to trial a new program and then teach other teachers how to use it. I said I can’t and I won’t. We had a new principal, and I was told, 'I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.' Was gone shortly after winter break. Never going back."
5."After 12 years of being a middle school educator, my last straw was being assaulted by a student, then docked pay for leaving for the day. The student's consequence: write an apology letter. It was time to move on; my safety and salary were at risk daily."
ABC
—Anonymous
6."By mid-January of my last year teaching, I was burnt out after dealing with a personal traumatic experience. My last straw was an assistant principal questioning my every move in the classroom."
"I spent what I didn’t know would be my last day crying during each class change and lunch, and then wiping my tears and putting a smile on my face to play a high-energy review game with students.
I went home that day, enjoyed my weekend, had a panic attack on Sunday, and spent the next two weeks in bed. I never went back. Left most of my stuff for whoever ended up in my classroom the next year."
7."I was a sixth-grade special education science teacher. When the school admin tried to push me to move the lessons faster than my students with IEPs needed, I quit."
"The special education department thought I was great, but the admin thought I was moving too slow and was not good at the job. It was a charter school during an inspection year. I didn’t work so hard for a Master’s degree to be told students don’t deserve the time or support they require to succeed."
8."I didn't even make it to a real teaching job."
"My last college semester before graduating was when we did our 'student teaching.' It was so bad, I was like, 'Screw this. There's no way I'm doing this for a living.' So, I enrolled in more schools to get a different degree, and now I'm in a field far removed from my original undergrad studies.No regrets."
9."A sixth-grader anonymously reported to a state 'safe to tell' program that he had overheard a conversation from an eighth-grader that a different eighth-grade boy had brought a gun on campus."
"My principal and security (so three people total) decided to pull 10 kids out in the hallway at a time, have them pull everything out of their own lockers, and search each child’s stuff. But they waited to search the student who has known gang affiliations and had already brought knives and other weapons to school.
No gun was found, but why did they not pull that student first, and WHY did they have students OPEN THEIR OWN LOCKERS?"
10."I was teaching kindergarten in a public school after a decadeslong career, and it was one of those years where it was just one thing after another: my assistant quit, the replacement broke her leg before she could start, a rotating door of subs meant there was never any routine, I had students with IEPs and no support... it just went on and on. I was becoming physically ill from the anxiety and stress."
"Finally, a new assistant was able to start, and she was a DREAM. I thought the year was finally turning around. But three weeks later, she left sick, and was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. She passed away within a month.
During that month, the school gave me yet another replacement, who was just rude, mean, and negative. After everything that had happened, I told my principal I just could not work with someone who treated me and my students that way. He said, verbatim, 'You have to.'
That was on a Monday. I gave my notice that Friday. In the middle of March.
I knew that if I tried to keep going, it was going to destroy my health, my sanity, and my overall well-being. If I had been younger and earlier in my career, I could have pushed through. But the years weigh on you, and I just had nothing left to give anymore. My assistant’s funeral was my last day in the classroom. My heart is still broken, but I know I made the right choice."
—Anonymous
11."My final straw was last year. I heard a female student yelling in the staircase next to my room. When I went to see what was going on, the student was trying to go after another girl."
"There is a center rail separating the upstairs and downstairs. There were two teachers there already, one in front of the offending student and another behind her. At that point, the student decided to jump the center rail to go up the stairs towards me. I put my hands across both rails to try and stop her. When she got to me, she grabbed my wrist in two places and twisted it.
Long story short, after 10 months of pain and multiple rounds of oral steroids and steroid injections, the doctor finally had to operate. Two months later, I still cannot use my left hand or wrist.
I'm leaving at the end of the year. I'm 60 years old, and even if I lose money in my pension, it's worth it."
—Anonymous
12."I quit because I was tired of suffering under an incompetent, unprofessional, lying principal. He said things about teachers, staff, and students that were not true. I found out after I quit, from a guidance counselor, that he changed the final grade of one of my students."
—Anonymous
13."I did not enter the teaching profession to become a daycare provider, prison guard, or babysitter. It is very unfortunate that you can spend anywhere from 50 to 100% of classroom time addressing issues of misbehavior and outright disrespect from the students instead of teaching them."
"I fear the day when this current generation of K-6-graders runs this country.
I gave up when a first-grader literally would not sit down once during a 50-minute computer lab. This young boy destroyed the learning of his 15 fellow classmates. I don’t drink alcohol, but I almost started at the end of that day. That's the day I decided to quit the profession."
—Anonymous
14."There have been so many red flags that should have been my final straw, but my last day was just the cherry on top. I taught Spanish, and there is always a jokester who teaches the other kids bad words. Well, my final year I had a student teach everyone how to say 'Ms. Williams is a C U Next Tuesday.'"
NBC
"Not only did they teach their period, but in fact taught my other five classes. After the fourth day of being called a c—t, I had had enough and reported the student to administrators. Their response: 'Kids will be kids!' What?!
My response was simply, 'Well, adults will be adults. I quit.' The looks on everyone’s faces were amazing. I now make double and work less as a property appraiser, and I have never been happier. F them kids!"
—Anonymous
15."I taught high school English for three years. There were a lot of issues leading up to my resignation: general apathy from both students and parents, overtesting, behavior problems, crappy pay; all the usual suspects. In my last semester, I had (what was supposed to be) an above-grade-level ninth-grade class. I assigned The Hunger Games."
"We did a good bit of reading in class and watched parts of the movie. Multiple students failed the test. They could have at least gotten a C by just watching the movie, even if they never opened the book.
After grading those tests, I thought, 'If I can't get you to read The Hunger Games, I don't know what to do with you.' I submitted my papers shortly after that."
—Anonymous
16."When a parent called me 'Hitler' for disciplining her son after he attacked another student."
HBO
—Anonymous
17."I worked in a self-contained special education classroom with high support needs students, and had gotten two concussions from the same student in the space of a month. They weren’t 'severe' enough to warrant time off."
"I started having panic attacks on my way to work and crying every day on the way home. The final breaking point for me came on a random Wednesday when a less experienced colleague asked me a simple question and I, a master teacher with 15 years of experience, couldn’t think of the answer and burst into tears in public.
The burnout was real, and I felt like an absolute failure. I realized a job that I had always given 100% of myself to wasn’t giving me anything in return, and there was no way to give more than 100% to meet the unreasonable expectations of teacher culture. So, I left.
I’m a consultant now for schools and an advocate for more special education support and better teaching practices to benefit teachers and students. I’m making a bigger difference than I ever made in the classroom, I'm keeping my sanity, and I’m much happier."
—Anonymous
18."I quit when my school decided that just passing students was more important than the students actually learning anything."
—Anonymous
19."I have a Bachelor’s in biology and a Master’s in science education. I was hired as a substitute 'Health Sciences' teacher at a public high school when the regular teacher, who had written the course curriculum, went on extended medical leave."
"This was in a Bible Belt community that suffered high teen pregnancy and super-low vaccination rates.
I had previously taught this subject matter in two other school districts so I wasn’t concerned about knowing my stuff... but the lessons I was given to teach were faith-based, skeptical of vaccines and modern medicine, included nothing about nutrition or exercise or smoking, and taught abstinence-only sex ed with no discussion of STDs, birth control, or sexuality. The regular teacher’s visual aids always used quotation marks around 'virus' and 'vaccination,' and at one point used the phrase, 'so-called vaccine.'"
"The sex-ed (Family and Home Life) portion reinforced stereotypical gender roles within the family and implied that it was only the husband’s decision when to have sex. The boys were to have an additional class — which excluded the girls — on the mechanics of sex, the idea being that it was, in turn, the man’s job to teach his wife about sex on their wedding day."
Paramount Pictures / Via youtube.com
"The other science teachers, all men over 50, did not see anything wrong with the fact that we were teaching 1950s values in 2015.
I lasted less than two weeks… I could not in good conscience teach that crap even though better information would have been a real lifeline to some of those kids. Now I work for a pharma company that develops vaccines."
—Anonymous
20.And finally: "PARENTS."
"I worked at the same institution for four years and went through it all with them—even the pandemic, teaching online during lockdown and dealing with all the challenges that came with it.
One day, I caught one student bullying another, so I stepped in and put him in his place, as any teacher would. The next thing I knew, his mother was threatening me. She even rallied other parents and accused me of 'psychological abuse' for calling out her son —the bully.
The situation was completely mishandled by the institution. I received no support whatsoever. Instead, they suspended me without giving me the chance to explain what really happened or defend myself. That was it for me. I walked away without looking back.
Ironically, after everything was resolved and the parents finally calmed down, they begged me not to leave, insisting upon how much they 'needed' me. Yeah, right. As if. See you never."
—Anonymous
Let me know what you think in the comments below. And teachers or former teachers, feel free to vent your frustrations!
If you want to write in but prefer to stay anonymous, feel free to check out this anonymous Google form. Your answers could show up in an upcoming BuzzFeed article!
Please note: some comments have been edited for length and/or clarity.
