Burnout is driven by too little support, too little funding and a general lack of respect for the profession
This is a hot topic to talk about right now in our society. The rhetoric around it is shocking. The way that some people talk about public education is disheartening and appaling. Those people paint educators to be public enemy #1.
“If you’re first generation [in college], there’s a lot of pressure to be successful,” he said. “Teaching does not necessarily stick out in the minds of people as a place to go to make money.”
This makes me so sad, but I understand it. I'm the first generation in my family to go to college, so I feel similar pressure. When we think of success, we often think of money. My brother also went to college, but has a career that doesn't require a degree. He makes triple what I make and sometimes that makes me feel unsuccessful. I completely understand why people don't think of teaching first.
The pay is low — an average of about $49,000 a year to start — and housing costs are high
Teachers have to be paid more. We will never be able to recruit quality teachers if we can't pay them what they are worth because we can't and shouldn't ask them to be martyrs.
At Elsie Allen High School, psychology teacher Paul Fleischer works to show an interest in his students' lives and culture. He understands the importance of diversity among teachers, but he also knows “there’s nothing I can do to be Latino.”
This is so important for white teachers to remember. We can't change our race, but we be intentional about learning about learning and connecting with them.
Santa Rosa also changed school board elections, with members now chosen to represent districts within the city, rather than being elected at-large. The resulting board is now far more diverse.
I'm glad they did this. Having a diverse school board is just as important as having a diverse staff. Even though the students don't see board members every day, the policies they pass impact their school lives.
A Latina teacher hung Mexican and American flags in his fourth-grade classroom, not far from where he teaches today. “That just spoke to me as a kid,” he said. Now, as an English teacher, he incorporates Latino authors into his course.
This is why what we put in our classrooms matter. Even white teachers can put things in the classrooms that make students feel welcome and seen.
A classmate, Sebastien Jean, 17, who is black and Hispanic, remembers that his elementary school teachers were all white, so he started acting what felt like white, absorbing what he called the “Caucasianness of it." “I sort of lost my flavor,” he said.
I saw this happen at my old district. We had less than 5 black students in our building of 400 students and we had 0 black teachers. One of my black female students started trying to fit in with the white students, but when she did that she lost her identity. She has since graduated and talked about how she felt like she lost her culture during those years at that district and how she always felt a little lost. She said she had to find herself again after her family moved. She also said that it was a game-changer for her to have a coach who was black at her new school.
In the neighboring Wright Elementary School District, nearly two-thirds of students last year were Latino. There was one Latino teacher.
This is even more mind-blowing than the previous statistic. I think it is so shocking because my experience as a white student has been the opposite-the teacher demographic reflected the student demographic.
In the Roseland School District in Santa Rosa, 92 percent of students last year were Latino, but just 14 percent of teachers were. That’s a gap of 78 percentage points, one of the biggest in the country, The Post found.
This statistic is min-blowing. I wouldn't expect that.
And yet researchers have found significant positive results when black and Hispanic students have teachers who match their race or ethnicity: better attendance, fewer suspensions, more positive attitudes, and higher test scores, graduation rates and college attendance. Teachers of color also have higher expectations for students of color, which may fuel the other gains.
I have found this to be true through my personal experiences as a coach in our building. Our POC teachers in our building tend to have higher expectations for our students, have less classroom management issues, etc.
People of color are less likely to go into teaching and less likely to stay in it. Education requirements, low pay, unhappy workplaces and lack of respect all can contribute. The result: At every step on the road from high school student to classroom teacher, people of color fall away.
There are a lot of factors contributing to teachers of color leaving the profession, but one that stood out to me is the lack of respect and unhappy workplaces. We can't control our pay, but we can control our environment and the way we treat people. This is why it is so important to make our environments inclusive, inviting, and supportive.
Teachers may stay in the profession for decades, so it takes time for the workforce to transform.
I wonder if we will see a shift in demographics faster than expected due to teachers leaving the profession faster than normal. In my district and building, most of the new teachers are POC, which is very important since the majority of our students are POC.
Not many teachers at Elsie Allen High School can connect with students in the same way. While 80 percent of students are Latino, just two of 56 teachers are — 3.5 percent. Nationally, a Washington Post analysis of school district data from 46 states and the District of Columbia finds that only one-tenth of 1 percent of Latino students attend a school system where the portion of Latino teachers equals or exceeds the percentage of Latino students.
Sometimes I think this is just our school, but then I'm reminded by statistics like these that it is almost everywhere. When I was in high school, I was completely unaware of this reality because it wasn't my reality. I'm a white person who had all white teachers growing up. I had people who looked exactly like me, so it was easy to relate. It's important for students to have teachers who look like them. The same is also true. We need teachers who don't look like us too. I didn't have a non-white teacher until I was in college.