Why I quit teaching
he writer has taught English in private schools in the District, Maryland and Massachusetts.
I was a teacher for 30 years, except for one five-year hiatus. This year I left the profession. The short explanation is that I was burned out. I arrived at school at 7:45 every morning, I rarely left before 5:30p.m. and I was often there later. As a new school year gets rolling, I offer two lists. Keep in mind that these are drawn from my experience in private schools, which are regarded as an ideal place to teach because of their small class sizes.
Teach five classes or so.
Prepare lessons.
Create assessments such as quizzes, tests and other assignments.
Grade assessments.
Take long vacations.
Teach five classes or so which is like doing five performances every day in which you stand up in front of 15 people and entertain them for an hour. Or its like being a pitcher in a game. You are always part of the play.
Prepare lessons. Research. Reread a chapter of, say, The Scarlet Letter and an article about Puritan culture, prepare discussion questions, plan an activity, figure out how to pace the class. To keep students interest, you need to shift gears.
Create assessments. Write up the assignment, create a rubric, draft detailed instructions. Quizzes should be fair to everyone but also test whether students have done the work. A good five-question multiple-choice quiz can take 45 minutes to an hour to create.
Grade assessments. One essay for a class of 15 means reading some 60 pages of student-written work, writing and editing comments, and making a judgment about each grade, all while wondering: Is this fair? Did the student improve? Did he or she really read the book? Will the parents complain? Am I expecting too much? Am I expecting too little? Some teachers read papers three times.
E-mail with colleagues. Answer an e-mail asking why you gave two quizzes in a week. Send an e-mail expressing concern about a students sudden, dramatic weight loss.
E-mail with parents. This often involves calculating updated course averages, because parents want to know what they want to know when they want to know it. Sometimes it means untangling a misunderstanding. No, your sons iPad use was not appropriate for class. He was not taking notes. He was playing a game. I did not take it away from him for no reason. Dont take things personally. Sometimes you get to write a thank-you for a parents kind words about how youve helped his or her child.
Stay up to date on your material. Read secondary sources on the books youre teaching, read about teaching techniques and so on.
Respond to a student crying in the bathroom. Hunt down the students counselor.
Write a college recommendation. Go back through your grade books and papers. Check the schools Web site to see if the student was the captain of the soccer team. Send an e-mail to find out more about her role in the choral group. Make it unique.
Chaperone a dance.
Chaperone a camping trip. And like it.
Attend a game.
Attend the school play.
Attend the school concert.
Attend faculty meetings.
Perform at back-to-school night. Prepare what youll say to parents; write, print and photocopy handouts. Get your clothes dry-cleaned, if you can afford it. Shine your shoes.
Learn a new grading input program (about once every two years).
Learn a new program for posting homework, which will inevitably be counterintuitive to operate and have numerous glitches that you have to figure out how to deal with.
Calculate grades and drop the lowest quiz. Make sure its accurate.
Write comments for each student. Sixty students, at a third of a page each, comes to 20 pages of tactful evaluation. Reread these for unintended messages. Include something that shows you really know the child. Proofread, proofread, proofread.
Write exams. Come up with 12 pages of questions that are not too hard and not too easy, plus an essay question that will help them show what they know without freaking them out.
Grade exams. (Ugh.) This is usually done during vacations.
Be compassionate, rigorous, interesting, funny, smart, innovative, experienced and patient.
And dont be defensive about it, but fend off a stream of snarky remarks about your summer vacation.
I think teachers are underpaid and over worked and that's just at the private schools. To be a public school teacher with twice or even three times the class size has to be pure hell. I used to go through it teaching a classroom full of adults all day for five days how to operate the computer system I was going to install in their hotel. Since most of the jobs I did were new openings, I often found myself having to teach the class and even sometimes the owner, how to operate a hotel in general. I liked teaching, but I usually had a week or so break in between and was well paid. However I can't see anyway they could pay me enough to teach classes in a regular elementary or high school, public or private.
I taught in undergraduate and graduate programs as adjunct since 1969 off and on.
I loved it.
Time prevented me from accepting tenure track offers.
For me, university and Seminaryteaching, like Chaplaincy and the Rabbinate are labors of love.
I did and still do them when time permits.
I make my money in the community of commerce.
I am grateful for the chance to give back.
E.