Just had to share this: while I’m not a K-12 teacher, I am a university educator, and I can corroborate everything Micaela is saying about support for teachers: it’s no wonder they’re quitting in droves.
I strongly believe we’re going to look back on the Covid-19 Pandemic in a few years and recognize it as just as big a watershed in American life as WWII—especially in education. The big difference between the Pandemic and WWII, though, is that because our governments didn’t recognize the pandemic as a watershed moment while it was happening, they didn’t mobilize an adequate response, which left individual citizens—especially teachers, nurses, and caregivers—holding that bag. Carrying that weight would exhaust any human. Worse, while state budgets have largely recovered since 2020-2021, including spending on higher education—that money often isn’t trickling down to support exhausted faculty with replacement hires, equitable pay raises, teaching and research support, and mental health services. Universities like mine are using the money to pay off debt for campus expansion plans that fell flat during the pandemic, and hiring more administrators. This is why we’re seeing so much faculty burnout now. I was the chair of my department for the 3 years “post” pandemic (2022-2025), and I can tell you that the physical and psychological fallout was only starting to hit the fan at that point; everyone’s coping mechanisms had finally dried up. No joke, I probably facilitated an ADA or FMLA accommodation about once a month on average (out of a faculty of 42 people). In 2024 I had 6 faculty (nearly 15%!) resign their positions, some mid-year.
Naturally all those problems are much more intense at the K-12 level, which is why I never blame high school English teachers when my freshmen can’t identify the main verb in a sentence (which the majority of them can’t). If I were trying to manage 35-40 distracted, exhausted, often under-resourced students in a classroom, I would be a lot more concerned about their physical and mental wellbeing (and mine) than whether they know the ins and outs of English grammar. Survival comes first, and that’s what a good chunk of our students and most of our teachers are trying to do every day on our school campuses—just get through the day in one piece.
It’s basic math: you get out of something what you put into it. And if we continue to divest from public education (what the statistics I linked above cover up is that 4-year state institutions like mine are on average only 21% publicly funded: the vast majority of our funding now comes out of student pockets or from foundation investments and endowments), we’ll get exactly what we pay for. We’re trying to get blood out of turnips education-wise in this country, and we’re squeezing teachers and students both beyond what they can bear.
So, to sum up, I’m with Micaela, though I feel less burnt out than drained—like a turnip that someone’s been trying to get blood out of. I worry about my students, too, a lot. Our governments stuck them at home and on screens for too long; then, when they came back to class, their teachers weren’t given the resources they needed to support their recovery. Little surprise, then, that when they made it to my first-year writing course, with major deficits in their learning, and saw the standards they were up against—not to mention the tuition bills, which have a lot of them working full time while taking a full class load—they panicked and turned to ChatGPT to write their paper for them. Do I get disgusted when I am asked to use my 30+ years of experience teaching writing to respond to a bunch of essays written by robots? (And in case you’re wondering, yes, we can tell in like 2.5 seconds when they’re using AI.) Sure I do. But if I charge them with academic dishonesty, it wastes hours of my time, and the charges are usually thrown out (while it’s easy to recognize AI writing, it’s hard to prove it, and students know this and just stick to their denials). If I try to set things up so they *can’t* use robots to write their papers, it’s more hours of my time with no educational purpose or payoff. And all the while my university is encouraging me to use AI tools to grade the AI papers my students are turning in…. So I have to say it does occur to me to just get out of the middle and let the robots have at it.
I recognize I work in an industry (yes, it’s an industry—see the note above about the 79% average private funding of public universities) that is reneging on our 19th-century commitment to general education. I recognize we’re rapidly headed back to the old system in this country where only the top 10% who can afford it can enjoy an education in the true meaning of that term—as a drawing out of students’ best selves to prepare them for full citizenhood. Instead of an education, everyone else will get a certification—from public universities that are turning into largely online certificate mills, like the University-of-Phoenix-style enterprises they used to scorn.
I recognize all this, but I’m not quitting; not yet at least. There are always a couple of students each semester who have the preparation and support to push their literacy forward, and I want to be there for them. I want to help them hone their writing skills so that they’re ready to express and advocate for themselves in those moments when they really need to: trying to get a job, or stand up for themselves in abusive or unfair situations, or persuade someone they love that they’re amazing and worth taking a chance on. And for the rest of my students who just aren’t there yet—who are distracted and exhausted and apathetic and either turning in nothing or AI essays—I’d like to at least point them toward the path toward their best selves and let them know it’s open when they’re ready to walk it. That attitude doesn’t make me special or brave, by the way. It just makes me a teacher.
The Rookery 