Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, November two. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America.
Speaker 1: The pandemic was a big inflection point for workers of
Speaker 1: all industries, but teachers were put in an especially difficult spot,
Speaker 1: dealing with remote learning, back to school craziness, and concerns
Speaker 1: for their own health. Many teachers quit and others are
Speaker 1: still thinking about it. Leslie Gray Streeter, author and contributor
Speaker 1: to The Washington Post magazine, joins us to talk about
Speaker 1: conversations she had with teachers that left their profession because
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. Many felt guilt, anger, and heartbreak over
Speaker 1: their choices. Thanks for joining us, Leslie, Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. We've been hearing a lot about the great
Speaker 1: resignation and you know, people leaving their jobs for something better,
Speaker 1: just maybe not feeling like they're appreciated. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: everything really changed with the pandemic. Uh. For this story,
Speaker 1: wanted to focus on teachers, and you know, we've been
Speaker 1: hearing that a lot of teachers obviously left their jobs,
Speaker 1: a lot of them are still thinking about possible leaving.
Speaker 1: I guess we saw one in four American teachers reported
Speaker 1: considering leaving their jobs by the end of the last
Speaker 1: academic year. And you know, replacing teachers is not so
Speaker 1: easily done. UM. So for your latest story, you spoke
Speaker 1: to seven former teachers kind of explaining why they left,
Speaker 1: what drove them to do it, and kind of what
Speaker 1: they're doing after that as well. So Leslie, help us
Speaker 1: walk through some of this. What we're teachers saying about
Speaker 1: the conditions of the classroom last year. Well, I think
Speaker 1: that like so many people and other professions who participated
Speaker 1: in the Great Resignation, UM, there were already issues beforehand,
Speaker 1: like maybe there wasn't enough payment or there wasn't enough
Speaker 1: flexibility even before COVID and COVID exacerbated a lot of
Speaker 1: those conditions, and people are like, is it worked it
Speaker 1: for me to return? Even if you know, when it
Speaker 1: made things, things are made even worse. And I think
Speaker 1: that for so many of the teachers that I spoke to,
Speaker 1: that was the case, whether it was feeling like you know,
Speaker 1: we've always talked about teachers being underpaid or being expected
Speaker 1: to spend their own money on supplies or to act
Speaker 1: as you know, combination social workers and parents and suppliers
Speaker 1: of decor all of it, you know, And I think
Speaker 1: that so much is that was made worse when you
Speaker 1: also there's no separation for so maybe teachers who were
Speaker 1: teaching UM remotely because they might have their own kids
Speaker 1: and their own families, their own things to do, and
Speaker 1: there was no separation. The woman I spoke to the
Speaker 1: game of the story line Higgins, she spoke about that
Speaker 1: about she's trying to parent her toddler literally five time
Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom, and she's monitoring a bunch
Speaker 1: of middle schoolers, and added to everything else she's trying
Speaker 1: to do, it just was not it was she was suicidal.
Speaker 1: She said she was absolutely depressed. And for other teachers,
Speaker 1: for instance, UM our teacher named Peggy, who talked about
Speaker 1: how she already had stress, is trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to meet the emotional needs of these kids beforehand,
Speaker 1: and she said she didn't return in part because she
Speaker 1: knew that she would be so distracted by trying to
Speaker 1: then addressed the trauma that was piled on from COVID,
Speaker 1: which was packed onto the previous trauma they already had,
Speaker 1: and she goes, I wouldn't be able to concentrate on
Speaker 1: academics because I'd be trying to figure out what was
Speaker 1: how could I help this kid who's t firaling like
Speaker 1: the rest of us work. So it just was things
Speaker 1: that piled on. Yeah, the first teacher that you mentioned, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you you mentioned she had a toddler. She
Speaker 1: had to take a bathroom break. You know, she found
Speaker 1: it so stressful that she had to say, okay, three
Speaker 1: minute break for everybody, just so she could run and
Speaker 1: and do and do something real quick. And you know,
Speaker 1: obviously you're in a zoom session. The kids are at
Speaker 1: home now, they're just kind of sitting there and and
Speaker 1: you know, she you know, it all bears down. I
Speaker 1: think someone you spoke to said it best, right, And
Speaker 1: you mentioned all those things that teachers do that we
Speaker 1: know that they do, right, social workers, surrogate parents, all
Speaker 1: that Teachers were already wearing so many hats. The pandemic
Speaker 1: just added more hats to that equation and it became really,
Speaker 1: really tough. Um, So tell me a little bit about
Speaker 1: the conversations that you had with some of the teachers,
Speaker 1: because one of the things that popped up a lot
Speaker 1: was guilt. They felt guilty that they were leaving the
Speaker 1: profession that they you know, something that you know, they
Speaker 1: worked a lot to get to something that they always
Speaker 1: had wanted to be for a variety of reasons. But
Speaker 1: they felt guilt and heartbreak having to leave it, like
Speaker 1: they were leaving their careers and leaving their responsibilities to
Speaker 1: the children. Well absolutely, I mean I think that if
Speaker 1: you know any teachers, and I think you know most
Speaker 1: of whom we had teachers, and we probably know some
Speaker 1: now in our adult lives. Um, they go into education
Speaker 1: not for the money, not for the status or the cloud.
Speaker 1: They go into it because of the calling to them.
Speaker 1: It is something that they feel they were providing as
Speaker 1: a service to their communities and to the future leaders
Speaker 1: into humanity. And they go into this and some of it,
Speaker 1: you know, starts when they're young and they might not
Speaker 1: know as much. But the on particularly the career teachers
Speaker 1: who stuck around for a while, they did this because
Speaker 1: they love it, and there is a real feeling of guilt.
Speaker 1: It's not like leaving other jobs or you though this
Speaker 1: was just a job to me. Um, they take these
Speaker 1: things very seriously. Every single teacher I spoke to, no
Speaker 1: matter what part they were in, what stage they were
Speaker 1: in their career, said to me, I went into this
Speaker 1: because I loved it. I went into this because I
Speaker 1: felt I was supposed to do this, And so thinking
Speaker 1: of yourself as a teacher, like you know, myself as
Speaker 1: a journalist, have always thought of himself as a journalist
Speaker 1: capital j like it was my calling, Like I had
Speaker 1: to do this, And then you learn maybe that's not it,
Speaker 1: or maybe you don't have to stick with that enough
Speaker 1: to where you are stressed or suicidal or just not
Speaker 1: thinking that you can get the job done. Obviously, COVID
Speaker 1: loomed large, and a lot of these decisions and you know,
Speaker 1: impacted it in many different ways. Some of the teachers
Speaker 1: even felt anger, you know, at the current situation. Um,
Speaker 1: whether it be mass policies, whether it be crazy school
Speaker 1: board meetings that we know we saw, Um, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of them felt like they were bargaining chips. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know when parents were saying, hey, we got to
Speaker 1: send the kids back to school. But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the teachers had fear for their own health as well.
Speaker 1: And you profiled a couple of teachers. I think there
Speaker 1: was two that had some type of severe asthma and
Speaker 1: you know, for them going possibly getting a respiratory's disease,
Speaker 1: that's pretty scary. And there's one who was pregnant, who
Speaker 1: had suffered a miscarriage earlier and was identified by her
Speaker 1: doctors in writing that she was recommended to cheat remotely
Speaker 1: and she was denied. And I think that, like anything else,
Speaker 1: all of us felt. I think most of us, I
Speaker 1: know I did, felt some trepidation about at what point
Speaker 1: do I do? How do I do my job in
Speaker 1: a way to protect me and my family and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And when that one teacher who had
Speaker 1: already felt that she was not protective of a florityan
Speaker 1: teacher after what happened at Marjorie Stillman Douglas, even though
Speaker 1: she was like hours away from there, she felt that
Speaker 1: vulnerability and it's a PTSD. So then she's like, are
Speaker 1: you gonna taketure of us? With gun laws, with mass laws,
Speaker 1: with being able to stay remote, what are you going
Speaker 1: to do? And she didn't felt they were do She
Speaker 1: didn't feel they were doing enough, so she left, and
Speaker 1: once again she felt angry. The other teacher I interviewed
Speaker 1: in Florida, which is where I lived at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the pandemic and had a school a child in
Speaker 1: Palm Beach County Schools, which we left and still you know,
Speaker 1: has grappled with math man needs and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: The teacher said, you know that she was watching these
Speaker 1: parents on these Facebook pages. She was lurking and going,
Speaker 1: I'm going to send my kids to school anyway, even
Speaker 1: if they get COVID. I mean, how how could you
Speaker 1: feel you know about that? Yeah, and particularly in Florida.
Speaker 1: You know, the Florida Education Association said that there was
Speaker 1: a nine thousand uh shortage of classroom and staff shortages there,
Speaker 1: so and I guess that was from the month of August,
Speaker 1: but there's nine thousand people more that they could have
Speaker 1: needed to to help with all of that stuff. So
Speaker 1: definitely a tough situation there. And then one of the
Speaker 1: other things that came up to with the teachers that
Speaker 1: you spoke to, you personal life outside of the classroom,
Speaker 1: which is so important. And when you're working so many
Speaker 1: hours throughout the zoom, you know, can't even take a
Speaker 1: break with the rest room, you know, then you have
Speaker 1: to grade, then you have to work on all this stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, even that personal life aspect of it. You know,
Speaker 1: when you're living and working all from home, you know,
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, that was a big shift,
Speaker 1: and and that was also hard to adjust to. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: there was a young man that I spooked to He
Speaker 1: was the only male teacher that I spooked. And I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you a lot of people probably wanted to
Speaker 1: contribute to the story, but you know, you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: if you're still working there, or if you want to
Speaker 1: maybe go back, you're not necessarily going to want to
Speaker 1: go on record. So I understood that this was a
Speaker 1: brave thing a lot of the teachers did. But Stephen
Speaker 1: Lane for all teachers that have have left the professional sense, yeah,
Speaker 1: and loved exactly, although he said maybe I'll go back
Speaker 1: one day. But you know, if he was a young man,
Speaker 1: he is a young man who's in authorities who said
Speaker 1: he didn't realize how much he wasn't home until he
Speaker 1: was teaching and went, wait a minute, I'm never here.
Speaker 1: It's because he built his life around teaching. It's like
Speaker 1: the lines from landsladded, she changed because I built my
Speaker 1: life around you, you know, And it was like I
Speaker 1: built my life around teaching, and now I have to
Speaker 1: change that. Are what are these teachers doing now after
Speaker 1: they've left a profession. I know, some feel they're in
Speaker 1: a better place and a new job. Some others have
Speaker 1: said they haven't necessarily settled yet, they don't know what
Speaker 1: they're doing. But most of them, I think all of
Speaker 1: them feel happier with the situation. At least they feel happier,
Speaker 1: if not. I mean the one a couple of the
Speaker 1: woman from plumb Beach County who said, listen, I wasn't
Speaker 1: going to retire for another couple of years, and I'm
Speaker 1: kind of angry. I felt like I was supposed to
Speaker 1: do that, forced to do this. But there is a
Speaker 1: sense of relief, certainly with a lot of them. Lenna Higgins,
Speaker 1: the first teacher I spoke to in the beginning of
Speaker 1: the story, is writing a lot and she's running a business.
Speaker 1: She has a game that she started, a board game
Speaker 1: with her husband, so she's doing that. Um. A couple
Speaker 1: of people, like Stephen Lane that I mentioned, is now
Speaker 1: writing curriculum for a private company, so he's still using
Speaker 1: his education background. There's a woman from California who's now
Speaker 1: in Columbia at a project that is teaching teachers and
Speaker 1: training teachers how to teach from a culturally sensitive social
Speaker 1: justice perspective with its mind on disparities, and that's why
Speaker 1: she left because she felt that she always felt that
Speaker 1: there were these inequities and disparities and teaching and that
Speaker 1: it was you know, three days after her kids went
Speaker 1: back to school, they had a subsidized test, and it's like,
Speaker 1: welcome back to this place. We haven't been for a
Speaker 1: year and a half. Here's a test that's going to
Speaker 1: determine what how you do for the next year. It's like,
Speaker 1: that's it's enough. It's enough. So um, I will also say,
Speaker 1: like I said, so many of these teachers, every single
Speaker 1: one of these teachers cares, like they said, they care
Speaker 1: so deeply, and they really want people to understand that
Speaker 1: this was not a decision that was made lightly. You know,
Speaker 1: this is not a decision that they went oh with
Speaker 1: and learn what's the next big adventure. It was something
Speaker 1: that with some of them, held onto the last week
Speaker 1: before you know, the schools start school district starter until
Speaker 1: they had they would have until a certain time to
Speaker 1: make the decision. They would it to the very last
Speaker 1: day because they just wanted to make sure that they
Speaker 1: were making the right decision. And they ultimately all said
Speaker 1: they knew they made the right decision, you know, and
Speaker 1: to your point, you know, for the majority of teachers, right,
Speaker 1: you get into it because you do deeply care. As
Speaker 1: you mentioned, we all know a teacher or had to
Speaker 1: have had a teacher that made an impact on us,
Speaker 1: and it was because they made those extra steps to
Speaker 1: help you learn, help take care of you, all of that,
Speaker 1: and and it was so tough throughout the pandemic, like
Speaker 1: it was for many people in many industries, but we
Speaker 1: rely so much on teachers. As you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: it just takes the toll on the person, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's pretty unfortunate. So obviously we hope there's a lot
Speaker 1: of discussions on improving things in the classroom. Hopefully we
Speaker 1: get there, but for now, um, you know, these are
Speaker 1: just kind of it seems very emblematic of what a
Speaker 1: lot of teachers were going through throughout that whole thing. Leslie,
Speaker 1: I appreciate, and I just I just want to add
Speaker 1: very quickly, so many teachers have written me to say
Speaker 1: thank you for doing this, even teachers who weren't involved
Speaker 1: in the story, because they're like, no one was telling
Speaker 1: our story and nobody was explaining how we felt. So
Speaker 1: thank you so much for doing that Leslie Gray Streeter, journalist, author,
Speaker 1: and contributor to the Washington Post magazine. Thank you very
Speaker 1: much for joining us. Thank you so much. Goodbye. I'm
Speaker 1: Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget
Speaker 1: difference days, big news stories. You can check me out
Speaker 1: on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So
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