Those Who Can't Teach Anymore

The most easily recognized teachers in our culture are on the big screen. So when we think about good teaching, it’s almost impossible not to think of Robin William’s character in Dead Poets Society standing on a desk and inspiring his students. This might be part of the problem. When teaching is associated with unrealistic Hollywood characters, it can create impractical or ridiculous assumptions about what teachers do. In this episode, we hear how the stereotypes of teachers may be contributing to teachers’ decisions to leave education. Music: Theme Song By Julian Saporiti “NPC Theme” by HoliznaCC0 is in the Public Domain. “Sunny Afternoon” by HoliznaCC0 is in the Public Domain.  “Infrastructure” by Scott Holmes Music is licensed under a  CC BY-NC license. “Just a Blip” by Andy G. Cohen is licensed under a CC  BY license. “Room With a View” by Jahzzar is licensed under a CC BY-SA license. Movie Clips: Freedom Writers (Paramount Pictures) Dead Poets Society (Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures) School of Rock (Paramount Pictures) Ferris Bueller (Paramount Pictures, United International Pictures) Transcript:  Episode 3: “What Would Robin Williams Do?” There is a picture-day-esqu photo on my parents’ fridge of me sitting on my dad’s lap. I am wearing a tie-dye shirt and my orange hair is in its natural state of an Eddie Munster widows peak. My dad is in a blue button down and has on a tie. My cheeks crowd my eyes, my smile is so big. My dad, who doesn’t always smile for pictures, has a cheeky grin.    This picture was taken around the same time that my dad squatted down to eye-level with me and said: “When people ask you where you got your red hair, you tell them the milkman. Okay?”   He didn’t make a big deal about telling me this. It was just a directive, and I said okay. I figured, yeah, that makes sense.    So as adults would come by, ruffle my hair and say things like, “Oh my, what pretty red hair. Where did you get hair like that?”   I’d look up at them, smile, and tell them, “The Milkman.”    They would guffaw, cough down a drink, blush, and I’d try to explain, “You know, because he delivers things.”    And they’d laugh out an “I’m sure he does!” and find my dad who would have a grin settled between his bouncing shoulders as he muffled a laugh, and my mom would say something like “G-uh, Darcy Joe”   Not to be heavy handed, but the stereotypes of what a milkman may or may not do when visiting people’s homes is what makes the joke land. This joke was lost on me until high school. I didn’t understand the baggage associated with being a milkman.   Language matters. Words like milkman have connotations - they carry weight or have stereotypes attached to them. That’s why I can’t flip someone off and say, “Why are you upset,this means joy to me.” There are too many representations of middle-fingers that situate the digit as a symbol of the obscene. Repetition and representation give meaning.    The middle finger or terms like milkman or teacher, carry a history of expectations and stereotypes. Last episode we heard about the historical inheritance of teachers, which is significant in how we view modern teachers. But history isn’t the only thing that impacts how we view teachers. Today, we’re going to look at the teacher stereotypes in pop-culture and how these stereotypes can be contributing to teacher attrition. This is Those Who Can’t Teach Anymore, a 7-part podcast series exploring why teachers are leaving education and what can be done to stop the exodus. I’m Charles Fournier. Here is part 3: “What Would Robin Williams Do?” Molly Waterworth: I've gotten to the point where I see any TV show or movie where some sort of plot device hinges on the inspirational teacher. And I just roll my eyes.   This is Molly Waterworth. We heard from her last episode, and she just left education after teaching English for 8 years. She points out a stereotype of inspiring teachers in media: Molly Waterworth:I just can't.  I can't stomach it because it's so saccharin. It completely obscures the fact that these inspiring teachers that are either drawn from real life or the product of someone or someone's imagination, it completely obscures the fact that their inspirational teaching is very likely the outgrowth of massive mental health deficiencies. And like a complete imbalance of where they spend their time and where they're getting like their soul fed. Inspiring teacher stories make me feel awful.    That shouldn’t be the case, right? Inspirational teacher movies should INSPIRE. And they can and they do - they inspired me - but what Molly points to is a nagging reality in many inspirational teacher stories.    Dead Poets Society Clip   As you can hear in this scene from Dead Poets Society, Mr Keeting, played by Robin Williams, pushes his student, Todd Anderson.. And in this unconventional way Mr. Keeting helps Todd start to gain some confidence and see his potential. Similar scenes occur in other famous teacher movies, like Mr Holland’s Opus, or Freedom Writers.    These movies project a fantasy of heroism onto education, and people love it. Inspirational teacher movies are usually underdog stories: A  teacher rails against convention and inspires and does amazing things for others no matter the personal cost. We are attracted to this as a culture. We want heroes that are selfless. We want to see ourselves as capable of being like Robin Williams’ character in Dead Poets Society.  And the way these movie teachers influence kids…man, that’s the dream.  But, several if not most of the teachers in those stories that inspire don’t have the healthiest work-life balance. They give everything to their students - time, energy, love, inspiration. And these movie teachers inspire in the public comments like, “We need more teachers like this” or “I wish teachers would be more like (whatever movie teacher).” But we need to ask, what is expecting teachers to fit a stereotype asking of real teachers?   Think of Freedom Writers, a movie based on the real-life Erin Gruwell, who is played by Hillary Swank. She is the epitome of the inspirational teacher stereotype. Halfway through the movie, her husband leaves her because she is spending so much time focused on her students,  Freedom Writers Clip  The film creates a feeling that the husband might be unrealistic. As an audience, we’re rooting for Erin Gruwell because she does amazing things - her husband points this out. And don’t get me wrong, Ms.Gruwell is phenomenal and her story is amazing, but there might be danger in presenting this story as a precedent for what good teaching looks like. Yes, she is a good teacher, but at what cost? In most other films about different careers, it’s likely the main character would realize that work is taking too much and family is more important, but not in inspirational teacher movies. Expecting teachers to do what Gruwell does is expecting teachers to forfeit their own lives for students. It’s expecting martyrdom. This is a stereotype.   And the reality is different. Molly Waterworth: We're not martyrs, and we're not perfect. And there are things that can be said about the profession as a whole and certainly about individual teachers that needs improvement, absolutely. But I think a lot of it maybe stems from just this sense that teachers aren't entirely human - that we are saints. And so therefore, we shouldn't worry about all of these factors that are making our jobs harder, because we have this big calling on our lives that turn us somehow into people that don't have needs. This language that surrounds teaching is significant. It feeds the stereotype of selflessness, which in turn has an impact on how teachers are treated. Right now teachers are feeling burned out because this stereotype is unrealistic - it’s creating an expectation that makes teachers want to leave education.  I met up with Rachael Esh at Welcome Market Hall in Sheridan, Wyoming on the eve of her very last day as a teacher. Rachael Esh:  It's a bit of a stereotype with teachers. It’s like, Oh, this has been your calling since you were this age, or since this teacher impacted you. This idea of a calling is that you don’t teach for the money, you do it for the kids because it is what you were meant to do. It is your destiny or purpose. A quote unquote “calling” can create a sense of guilt in teachers when they realize, crap, I’m not getting paid enough for this, which is in contrast to the narrative surrounding  teaching like Molly points out: Molly Waterworth: People don't get into this for the money, why would they? But they're in it for the kids, and they're in it for that sense of purpose and mission. That's like, “Yeah, but I also would like to be paid.” So to have a calling is to feel like teaching is more than a job, more than a paycheck, it is a clear directive from some higher power for the direction your life should take in service of others. Rachael didn’t feel like that stereotype matched her experience. Rachael Esh: And I don't feel like that's usually the case. It's more of a roundabout zigzag pattern. This surprised me. I grew up wanting to be a teacher because, as Rachael said, I had some amazing teachers leave an impact on me, but I never thought teaching was my calling. It was something that sounded cool, and it was made cooler by movies like Dead Poets Society. I wrote the movie’s motto, “Carpe Diem” on all of my notebooks. And I liked reading and writing and teaching people, and teaching would give me a chance to coach. Not once did I get the sky part and shine a light on my career path. It wasn’t a calling, and of the 30 teachers that I interviewed, hardly any of them felt like teaching was their calling either. For Rachael and Molly, they had different plans with where their lives were going to go. Rachael Esh: So my undergrad I actually got at Ohio University in environmental biology, and so I thought I was gonna maybe do field work or something like that. Molly Waterworth: I declared my major as geography, but I did it with the intent of being able to go into the forest service. But I found out pretty quickly that I really didn't care about any of my classes. And I found out that I was going to have to take calculus and I wasn't interested in doing that. So I kind of bounced around into various humanities areas. And both Rachael and Molly landed in education because they each had a summer experience in college that put them in front of kids. Rachael took an internship teaching environmental education and Molly went to China with a group from college and got to help kids with their conversational English. They both found their way to being educators because of positive experiences teaching kids. Rachael Esh: So I knew I either wanted to go on to park service or education after working with kids then. And so it kind of just worked out that getting my degree in education was just more accessible, and I kind of wanted to separate my fun time, which was like outdoors, from my work. So I decided to kind of go into education. And I mean, the kids are never boring. So you're like, well, heck this. This beats an office job any day of the week. And when Molly returned from China, she declared first as an elementary teacher.  Molly Waterworth: I think that when I envision myself being a teacher, I thought of myself reading with kids, and talking about literature and talking about books and big ideas and stuff like that. And so at that point, I had the very obvious revelation that I should be a secondary English teacher because that would afford me that opportunity most often. So that was kind of my meandering path into into There was no bright light for either of these teachers, no calling. Nothing so profound. Like most people, they stumbled onto their desire to do a job because they took advantage of an opportunity and realized, “Hey, this isn’t bad.” And Teaching wasn’t a last option for either of them. They weren’t failing at other things in life, which is tied to another stereotype of teaching. If teachers aren’t depicted as martyrs, they’re often seen as selfish or deviant or lazy or dumb or boring, like in Ferris Bueler’s Day Off. Ferris Bueller Clip And this image of teachers perpetuates the idea that teaching is a last ditch option for people that can’t do anything else. This stereotype often leads to a willingness to discredit teachers as experts in their field. Not being seen as experts in their field is a major reason teachers gave for leaving teaching.  For Molly or Rachael, they became teachers by choice. They didn’t need to fall back to something easier. It wasn’t a School of Rock scenario, where Jack Black’s character, Dewey Finn, hits rock bottom before becoming a long term sub proving that someone with no qualifications can be a better teacher than trained and dedicated teachers - a trope that we see over and over again.  In the film, Jack Black’s character even draws attention to a common saying that is tied to education.  School of Rock Clip Dylan Bear is a PE teacher in Pinedale, WY. We sat at a picnic table in front of his house with a view of the Wind River Mountain Range, while we drank coffee, snacked on a loaf of banana bread he was gifted from a student, and talked about these sayings and images surrounding education.  Dylan Bear: I think another thing, we've gotten a lot of quotes, like funny quotes in the society, like, oh, teachers, they take these jobs for June, July and August. I think that's something that needs to stop.  What Dylan has noticed is the negative lens with which culture and Hollywood has viewed teachers. Like I mentioned earlier, we stereotype teachers as good or bad, the marty/savior type that saw teaching as a calling or the boring/lazy person who saw teaching as a backup plan.  But, Dylan, like Molly and Rachael, didn’t see teaching as a calling. He didn’t see teaching as a fall back career either. Dylan Bear: So I started off as an engineer, and those were just not my people. And I was looking more for a little more social environment, a little more high energy versus analytical, consistently, day in and day out. And so I went from engineering to math in secondary math education because I liked working with kids. And then after a few years of that three years deep, looking at all the papers all the time, I just couldn't do it, so I switched from math. I was actually sitting in Prexy's Pasture and Laramie. And the special ed teacher came and sat down next to me and she said, What are you thinking about? Instead, there was my longboard. I said, I don't know if I can do math the rest of my life. Would you rather be teaching math or out playing a field, you know, and I thought like instantly. Dylan would rather be out in a field. Teaching was a good path for Dylan - not a calling and not a last ditch option. He takes his job seriously, and he is someone that plans on teaching for some time. And when Dylan started feeling a little burned out, he moved towns and got a change of scenery, so that he could keep teaching. He isn’t naive to the reality of burning out or how difficult the job is, nor is he jaded in thinking that anyone could do this job. The key word here is reality. The reality of a teacher is that teachers are human, not a stereotype. We make mistakes and we have successes and we make some profound impacts on kids and we make some mediocre impacts on kids.  Dylan Bear: Some teachers are really good, and some are really lazy. And some kids are really good, and some are really lazy. So it's like, we don't want to paint a broad brush over everybody. And I think sometimes we do an education because there's so many people in education. It's like one of the leading job forces out there. So you hear these stories that are negative about one or two teachers, and then you say all I'm doing the same with kids. I hate when people say, kids are always on their phone. It's like, no, no, some kids are on their phones. Some of them are waiting for you to talk and give them a good lesson. I think education gets those broad brushes which devalue people. And that's a dangerous world.  Dylan recognizes the need for grace and the danger of broad generalizations of any groups. He recognizes the fact that people are human, but sometimes we only get a snapshot of education, which creates these generalizations that feed into the stereotype of teachers as either good or bad. Dylan experienced this first hand when he had a student continuously refuse to take off his hat.  Dylan Bear: I was like, This is absurd. So I'm a climber, and so he was playing badminton, and I popped his hat off and ran up and jumped up the basketball hoop and climbed in the rafters and hung it from like, the highest point in the gym, like, 50 foot up. And yeah, not very smart, but it was like, I didn't think about it, but kids Snapchatted it. And all the kids came like, “Oh, we saw you but it was out that was so funny. That it's like you have to be aware of that.”  The snapchat of Dylan only includes his climb. It doesn’t include the warnings he gave the student from that day and previous days. It doesn’t include Dylan’s positive relationship with the student and the students’ family, or all of the normal/positive interactions Dylan has with his other students, or the mundane aspects of his job that he does everyday. The Snapchat lacks context, and this is how stereotypes begin and are fed. A single image becomes the representation of the whole - even if it is a fragment of the reality.   This is the kind of thing that becomes an overgeneralization - a stereotype of teachers. These stereotypes are on social media and in movies and they contribute to cultural narratives about education that are unrealistic. Some of these glimpses and snapshots might be part of what teachers expected education to be, which is misleading and could be contributing to the disillusionment leading to teachers quitting. Here’s Molly again. Molly Waterworth:  I think that the image probably came from a couple of places, a selective memory of my high school and middle school classrooms. So thinking back to those good experiences that I had as a student, I was like, “Okay, I want to create that for other people.” But I also had it in my head, the the image of the cool, thoughtful, worldly literary teacher that you see in like Dead Poets Society or any number of  other movies like that - opening up doors and exploring identity and figuring out who we are all along the way.  Dead Poets Society Clip I love Dead Poets Society, and Freedom Writers, but I remember telling my wife, after our first week in real teaching jobs: “This sure as hell isn’t Dead Poets Society.” I had been fooled with what teaching would actually be, and this is also an image of what the public seems to see of educators. They want the engaging classroom, the teacher that inspires, and don’t we all. Or they expect the lazy, boring, slacker who got into teaching because their real goals didn’t pan out. But education is more complex than a movie.  Molly Waterworth:  The crushing reality of grading was something that I hadn't quite prepared myself for. I think that I knew going into teaching, because obviously, you know, that you're going to have to grade and that's part of the job. So the grading part was overwhelming. You never see in movies, like staff meetings, or having to figure out the copier or the deeply existentially difficult process of figuring out the culture of the building in your first year. Just the kind of mundane but deeply tangible on a daily basis struggle of making sure that everything fits in your lesson plan. Like that's not glamorous. But it's, it's the part that makes or breaks you as a teacher of just balancing the day to day and making sure that you're hitting your standards and teaching the stuff that you don't care about, but you have to do anyway. Like, Robin Williams isn't gonna do that. I would love to have a b-roll version of Dead Poets Society where Robin WIlliams’ character, John Keating, sits for 4 hours grading papers, intermittently standing up to stretch, get a coffee, shake his head and mumble things like, “I swear we went over that.” Molly Waterworth: You never see an inspiring teacher movie where they are tracking missing assignments. You never see them answering the onslaught of emails at the end of the semester, asking how to get my grade up. You never see that. You see the inspiring parts and that's it. Never the work that it takes to get there. So we see teachers that either act as martyrs like Keating who, don’t forget, gets fired at the end of the film after a student kills himself, or we see teachers that make real teachers cringe. Molly Waterworth:  I remember watching Glee when that was out.  And it was not just unrealistic, but it was just so I thought it was insulting the way that the teachers were showing their like, as just unserious. Too involved in teenagers' lives. And, like, really, really concerned about both of those things. That I was just I couldn't do it. I couldn't put up with it.  And again, why does this matter? Why does it matter that depictions of teachers are unrealistic? It honestly wouldn’t matter if these depictions didn’t seep into how teachers are currently being treated. If the cultural view of education remained realistic. But this is how stereotypes work. We may recognize a stereotype as wrong or dangerous, but they can still seep into our behavior.  And they influence what parents expect from teachers, what students expect from teachers, and even what teachers expect from themselves. If teachers buy into the stereotypes, they may be striving for a sense of perfection and martyrdom that is unhealthy and unrealistic. So it’s up to us, all of us, to push against these stereotypes. Like any other cultural stereotype, we need a massive cultural shift in how we think about teachers, which often starts with how we represent and talk about teachers.  Unless we become conscious of our biases or of these stereotypes, things won’t change, and in the context of teaching, teachers will continue to quit.  The misconceptions surrounding teachers and education are very much influenced by what folks see on a consistent basis. This isn’t to say that there haven’t been realistic depictions of teachers. I love Tina Fey’s character in Mean Girls. She was quirky and smart and imperfect. Her character felt more real to me, but this is an outlier in teacher representations.  Stephanie Reese: Culturally, I think the media shows teachers as “Man, they just work tirelessly.” You might recognize Stephanie’s voice from last episode. I met up with her at Blacktooth Brewery in Cheyenne, she’s the general manager there. Stephanie taught PE from kindergarten to college, and she left education after 8 years. She points out how some of the perceptions of education bleed into the expectations placed on teachers.  Stephanie Reese: They just love what they do so much. They love kids. They're willing to put in all these extra hours, because they just love what they do. And they're okay with that. And, and that doesn't actually give teachers a voice. And that, to me is bullshit because teachers are tired, they're exhausted, they're stressed to the max there. Some may love it. And fine. If you have that intrinsic motivation to love something without getting anything back. That's amazing. You are a superhero.  When being a teacher is associated with loving kids as Stephanie points out, does that mean that leaving education means a loss of love for the kids? Or that not wanting to put in the extra hours is because teachers don’t love the kids? This rhetoric is dangerous and it isn’t helpful when thinking about why teachers are leaving. When teachers decide to leave education, they often hear, “You can’t, you’re so good for the kids” or something to that effect. This is said in praise, but it actually ignores what teachers are dealing with and it pushes this cultural stereotype that teachers ought to be willing to give everything for the kids. The reality is, the list of what teachers do, the extra work teachers have, is tremendous and all of that work rarely makes it into films. Here’s Dylan. Dylan Bear: It’s funny when you asked me to do this, I looked up, like, what are the job requirements for teachers and there was like, on the, on the description, it was, like 30 bullet points. It was incredible, like, lift 50 pounds, walk 100 yards. When Does anyone do that? We think teachers are just this, like square. But it's not, it's this open ended job that you can work your tail off forever, you know, or you can do the minimum and you still get paid the same. So it's like, I think a lot of people want to know, like, here's your job, and here's what you're gonna get for it. And that's not the case in teaching.  And that list of job requirements is long and ambiguous and continuously added to. A big portion of what it means to be a teacher isn’t simply “to teach” or “to inspire.” It’s to manage a huge amount of expectations, which doesn’t often get included into the stereotype of teachers, and if it does, it’s only for a moment.  Stephanie had strong thoughts about what teachers are expected to do.  Stephanie Reese: This isn't going to be a positive one, Charles, I hope that you're not like, brace yourself, right? I'm not gonna sit here and say, oh, yeah, teachers are here to inspire teachers are here to you know, try to spark some sort of love or interest in something and help every single kid and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like all that sugar coated shit. Fine. That might be the case. But to me, and I know a lot of teachers who agree, it's babysitting. So our roles are just sit tight, do your best, try to get in something that's worth value. Or maybe try to teach his kids to be decent human beings.    The stereotype often clashes with the reality of teaching. Still many teachers try to live up to the inspiring teacher stereotype, which can be contributing to the sense of burnout lots of teachers are experiencing.  Many teachers, whether they intended to or not, have wrapped their identity around education, which is kind of a cultural expectation - they are one with the school. This can make being in public and trying to have a personal life kind of awkward especially in small towns.  Rachael Esh:Anywhere we would go. I'd be like, I can't go there. All my kids are gonna be there, you know? Or like, do you want to go bowling? No, I don't want to go bowling. So I have to talk to seven of my students online, like no, like, you know, so there's just places that I don't even want to go because I just get bombarded with children. Which is, I love them. But you know, you want to like, be away from work for a while and you're like, I've done this all day. I want adult time. It's adult time now. they'll walk by when I'm having a beer. I'm like, don't, don't you look at me.  The teacher advocating for healthy boundaries or focusing on mental health in a genuine way is not a common teacher stereotype in pop-culture. This has only started bubbling up more recently on social media with teachers and former teachers drawing attention to their struggles in the classroom. There have even been some new television shows that have started to address what teachers are struggling with. They are pushing against the stereotypes. This kind of representation can help restructure how we think about and discuss teachers.  Seeing teachers as stereotypes either creates standards so high it is absolutely unrealistic or we are creating a villain to be a scape-goat for all of our worldly problems. Both of these images are contributing to teachers leaving the profession, and both of these images are very common cultural tropes. To break free from stereotypes, we need to first recognize they are there and how they are working.  I teach about stereotypes when I teach rhetoric. One of my favorite lessons to teach is about binary opposition. We get to address stereotypes and how we, as humans, often categorize ideas and language into this or that, and how such categorization is often a logical fallacy.  Here’s a quick look at how the lesson goes.  I start by asking students what a binary star system is, then draw it on the board. Binary stars are two stars that orbit each other. They rely on each other for survival. If one dies, the other dies. In this binary, one star is larger than the other, it carries more weight. Even so, if the other star dies, the larger star will also die.  How we categorize language and ideas is similar. Things are good or bad, and we often privilege one side of that opposition. And we wouldn’t know good without bad. The poet Wallace Stevens wrote, “Death is the mother of Beauty,” which means, without death, we wouldn’t know beauty.  At this point, a few of the students are nodding, others are usually staring, but as I move around the room, their eyes all follow me. This is when you know that you’ve got ‘em. Now, I move to the board again and ask the students to picture the perfect and stereotypical 1950s couple. I give a few seconds - they don’t need long. Then I ask, “So, who are they?” Right away, students establish a white, able-bodied couple, made up of a man and woman. This is when I turn my back, marker ready, and say, “Okay, tell me about the woman.” They yell over each other rattling off the same image of a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman with a light color poodle skirt, wearing minimal makeup. She cooks, cleans, and takes care of children. Her only vices are gossip and the occasional cigarette. I then have the students describe the man. He’s tall, has dark hair, wears a dark suit, and works in an office. His vices include drinking, smoking, fighting, and adultery.  In less than two minutes, my students always describe Don and Betty Draper perfectly. Then we continue with other opposing stereotypes under men and women. We agree that these are stereotypes as a class, but I point out that they came up with these opposing lists in about 5 minutes total. It takes that long because I can’t write as fast as they yell out ideas. I tell them, even if they don’t believe in these stereotypes, they are ingrained in their brains because of the culture in which we live, and if they’re not careful, they might unconsciously let them dictate their behavior At this point, I pause the class and take a different colored marker and circled  qualities on both sides of the list. Then I tell the students, these are things that make up who I am. I have a lot of qualities under both men and women circled: I cry more than my wife, I am emotional, I like to cook, I’m terrible with vehicle maintenance, but I am also a woodworker, I was an industrial ironworker,  I’ve been in fights, I was a college wrestler. We talk about monoliths, and the reality that in a binary, most people live in the gray. We’re not one or the other, and that doesn’t make us less-than.  Even so, we tend to categorize ideas based on binary opposition.  Thinking back to the binary of men and women, I ask the students who is good and who is bad. Kids argue and defend, but we don’t have a consensus. Then I ask who wears what on a stereotypical wedding day. Men wear black, black is associated with bad. Women wear white, which is associated with good, (which is problematic in its own right).  Inevitably one of the students says this isn’t fair.  They’re right - it isn’t. That’s the danger of binary logic, of assuming things are either good or bad. It creates an all or nothing scenario and double-standards.Binary logic is a fallacy.  Now, if we only think of teachers as either good or bad, we are forcing them into unrealistic stereotypes.  When teachers are associated with being martyrs, saints, nurturers, or people following a calling, and if all of this is seen and represented as good, then as soon as a teacher doesn’t want to give their life to education or be like the teachers in the inspirational movies, then there is a cultural damnation that they must be bad or selfish or deviant or lazy or mean. It sounds ridiculous, but teachers are either leaving because the expectations for being a teacher are more than what they’re willing to give, or they are seen as lazy and unintelligent. Either way, teachers are leaving as a result. As my students point out every single year, binary logic is simplistic and unfair and most things aren’t simple enough to be one or the other. But, this is often how we interpret the world, it’s good or bad, Democrat or Republican, wrestling or basketball. You get the idea.  So what can be done? As I said earlier, we need to first recognize that there is a stereotype and why that stereotype might be dangerous. Then, the next step would be to listen to real teachers and be able to differentiate stereotypes from reality.  The way teachers are talking about leaving education is not cinematic, it’s real, and it’s happening.  Unlike the stereotype, real teachers are listening to their friends and family.  Molly Waterworth: And I was talking about it with Ryan, and he was like,” Molly, you cannot keep teaching. You just can't because it ruins it ruins you emotionally.” And I'm like, Yeah, you're really right because I live for months with just dread, dread, and exhaustion. And you don't want to see anybody that you love feel that way. And it sometimes it takes that external viewpoint of like, No, this is wrecking you to to actually recognize that like, Oh, this isn't just something that I feel internally terrible about. It's obvious to other people. So this is a problem. They realize that education doesn’t have to be a life sentence of martyrdom.  Rachael Esh:  I've given this job and these kids everything that I have, and I don't have anything left. And that's just the reality. And it's like, I had to pick myself over them. And it's, it's like, I love them dearly, and I care about them. But I can't put my mental health on the backburner for the rest of my life.  When people decide to become a teacher, I think everyone thinks like, oh, my gosh, you're a teacher, and you're going to be my kids teacher. And you're going to be a teacher forever. And like, that's your, that's your identity.  I've always felt like  this wasn't necessarily my forever career, like some people have. I was like, I'm gonna do this and I want to see how it goes. And the first few years, I was like, yes, like this is, this is my jam. I'm learning so much. I just started thinking I was like every year is just the same. I'm like  a permanent sixth grader, and I was like, I am not the kind of person that can stay in a job for 30 years if I don't have any room to grow in it. I just started seeing that cycle. And, when summer comes, it's like, such a huge relief. And then when you start going back to school, just the anxiety about thinking about that already. I was like, no, I would rather have a job all year that I am not going to be completely stressed out about.  What I heard teachers tell me is that they are dynamic humans, not cultural stereotypes. I feel that too. Teachers live in that liminal gray space in-between, just like everyone else. They are neither wholly good nor bad. So it would be great to see a cultural shift, teachers included,  in how we discuss teachers - it can start by framing them as complex humans rather than cultural tropes. This will include allowing teachers to voice concerns they have about the profession, so that things can be addressed and we can keep great teachers.  Now, a common cultural reaction to this last statement and to teachers airing their grievances in general, is to say that, “Well, they’re just whiners.” So, if this was your reaction, it is a good time to review that lesson on binaries. If you thought the teacher sharing a concern was a whiner, then it seems like  you would prefer that teacher to remain silent. To, in essence, be a martyr. But just like binary logic, expecting teachers to be martyrs is not helpful and is based in stereotypes.  So it would be worth reflecting on our own stereotypes about teachers, and try to humanize them. They really are just humans. But if folks continue to struggle to separate real-life teachers from the stereotypical, dramatized, fictionalized, news-worthy, or social-media teachers, we’ll continue to struggle with holding onto brilliant teachers who won’t fit into the restrictive categorization.    Next time, we will talk about the purpose of public education. Many teachers are leaving because our country cannot reach a consensus on what public education is for and who it’s for.  That will be next time on Those Who Can’t Teach Anymore. Thank you for listening. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review, and share episodes with everyone you can think of. This episode was produced by me, Charles Fournier. It was edited by Melodie Edwards. Other editing help came from Noa Greenspan, Sarah-Ann Leverette, and Tennesee Watson. Our theme song is by Julian Saporiti. All other music can be found on our website. A special thanks to Rachael Esh, Molly Waterworth, Dylan Bear, and Stephanie Reese for taking time to sit down and chat with. This podcast is funded in part by the Fund for Teachers Fellowship. With movie clips from Freedom Writers (Paramount Pictures), Dead Poets Society (Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures), School of Rock (Paramount Pictures), Ferri Bueller (Paramount Pictures, United International Pictures)   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many of the problems modern teachers are facing aren’t new, so we’re going back in time to find out how our education system became a system that teachers are currently fleeing. Come to find out, modern teachers inherited low pay, limited respect, and a system that strips communities of their cultural traditions. In this episode, hear how Indian Boarding Schools and the American Industrial Revolution have left traces on modern education, and how these traces are contributing to teachers’ decisions to leave education.   Music:  Theme Song By Julian Saporiti “Sonata No.13 in E Flat Major, Op. 24 No. 1-II. Allegro, Molto, e Vivace” by Daniel Veesey is in the Public Domain. “Railroad’s Whisky Co” by Jahzzar is Licensed under a CC BY-SA license. “Ugly Truth” by HoliznaCC0 is in the Public Domain. “Upsurge” by Jonah Dempcy is  a  CC BY-NC license. “Green Lights”  by Jahzzar is licensed under a CC BY-SA license. “Pizz” by Andrew Christopher Smith is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA Transcript: I had a band teacher once hold me after class and force me eat a beef and bean burrito. He sat in front of me on the piano bench to make sure that I ate it. I was a freshman, in the middle of the high school wrestling season, and I was cutting weight for my first varsity tournament – where I’d end up getting my lips knocked off. My teacher, Mr. Duran, was short, wiry, wore jeans with a braided leather belt and a button-down shirt. He had round-framed glasses, combed his hair to the side, and more than once told me to listen to the greats like Chick Webb and not just the white guys that made it on the radio.  He was in his 30th year of teaching, and he was not shy about giving advice. While I ate the burrito, Duran talked about playing baseball in college and how abruptly a life of sports could come to an end but how long a life of music could last. This was mature guidance, albeit, guidance that I see more value in now than I did then. Duran would garnish each class with stories that worked to guide us towards being kind human beings. There were days in Jazz band where he would sit in the center of the tiered room, legs crossed, saxophone neck strap still on, and tell us about his past. When Mr. Duran was in college at the University of Northern Colorado in the 1960s, the Count Basie Orchestra went through town and stopped at the university. UNC was known for its jazz programs and one of Basie’s saxophone players dropped out and they needed a replacement. Count Basie was one of the most influential musicians from the Swing Era – he was like a swing minimalist. Duran jumped at the opportunity. He got to travel and play with the band and experience life as a musician – more specifically as a musician of color. One time he and a buddy from the orchestra went into a diner and were refused anything more than water. Duran was Mexican and his friend was Black, and it was the middle of the 1960s. In protest, they sat in the big window of the diner for 3 hours, sipping their water, putting themselves on display for anyone who walked by. I love that story – this man, my teacher, saw inequity and faced it with defiance. Duran’s lessons were eye-opening. I didn’t realize that those stories served as parables on ethics and kindness until I became a teacher and started telling stories of my own to serve the same ends. Duran used his history to help us become better humans. And isn’t that why we turn to history? Well, today, we’re going to take a lesson from Duran and examine the history of education in the U.S. And because the history of education is tremendous, we have to narrow it down. So we’ll focus on two aspects of history that set precedents for modern education, for the current system from which modern teachers are exiting.. We are going to start with Indian Boarding Schools, and then we’ll take a look at the American Industrial Revolution. This is Those Who Can’t Teach Anymore, a 7-part podcast series exploring why teachers are leaving education and what can be done to stop the exodus. I’m Charles Fournier. Here is part 2: “Inheritance” Caskey Russell:  I'm going crabbing this weekend. I own a boat with my brothers. And yeah, we go out and catch crab. And there'll be salmon season soon. So I kind of got back into the ocean style lifestyle. This is Caskey Russel. I got to catch up with him over a zoom call this summer. He is the Dean of Fairhaven College at Western Washington University. He grew up in Washington and is from the Tlingit tribe. I know Caskey because he taught for 17 years at the University of Wyoming, he was a dean of American Indian Studies, and he was my thesis chair and educational guide when I was at the university. Some of Caskey’s research for his PhD program dug into the history of Indian Education, specifically Indian boarding schools. Caskey Russell: My grandmother and her brothers, aunts and uncles, all went to Chemawa Indian School, in Salem. And it was a mixed bag. If you are asking yourself, wait, who’s this Caskey guy and what do Indian Boarding Schools have to do with teachers quitting? Here’s how. We know that historical atrocities leave a trace on modern institutions, so we need to recognize that Indian boarding schools have left their mark on modern education. They are a  part of the system of inequity modern teachers have inherited. Indian Boarding Schools are an example of the deculturalization that has occurred in education. One of many. Attempts to strip communities of their cultures happened with just about everyone in this country at some point that didn’t fit into the male, able-bodied, straight, white, Anglo Saxon Protestant category. Traces of these inequities remain in education, deculturalization still happens, and teachers working towards inclusion in a system that was based on exclusion often run into roadblocks – think book bans or accusations that teachers are trying to indoctrinate kids - and these roadblocks are pushing teachers out of education. So to better understand the inequities in modern education, this thing that is frustrating teachers to the point of quitting, we need to look at where some of those attempts at deculturalization originated. We need to look at Indian Boarding Schools. And we need to listen to someone like Caskey.  Caskey Russell: They liked the sports. They like some of the music, but my uncle Stanley Pradovic, I remember he said, “I used to dream of feasts, seafood feasts that they had in Alaska.” And  my grandmother was able to keep the Tlingit  language because she didn't go to boarding school, but her brothers did not.  You step back and look at the whole system and how destructive and just kind of the cultural genocide aspect. My grandmother would say she didn't know her brothers because when she was born, her brothers were gone away from her earliest memories. And so she didn't get to know her brothers right away. It did break families up. And I was just chatting with my mom last night. My mom said the other family had no control over what it was determined for them. And again, not having control over that seems to be the key to it, nor having input in the education nor valuing…and then having a different model, different cultural notion of success. And then the military and the Christianization, all that together, just adds problem on top of problem, instead of being empowering and enlightening, that really becomes conforming, sort of thing. What happened to Caskey’s family was a result of centuries of efforts to deculturalize tribes. Early European colonizers of the US  set a precedent of trying to assimilate tribes into a single monolithic culture. Colonizers disregarded tribal traditions and languages and failed to see that tribes already valued education for their youth. So the assumption that public education started with Horace Mann in 1837 is an assumption that values eurocentric education over the public education that was already in the Americas.  Part of this is because the purposes of education differed. Many Native communities saw educating children as a means to pass on generational knowledge and teach children how to be a successful part of the community. 17th-century Plymouth settlers specifically saw education and literacy as a method to keep Satan away. Children needed to be able to read so they could read the Bible. A pilgrim minister explained: “[There] is in all children, though no alike, a stubbornness, and stoutness of mind arising from natural pride, which must, in the first place, be broken and beaten down; that so the foundation of their education being laid in humility and tractableness, other virtues may, in their time, be built thereon” (42). But tribes did not beat down their children, did not read the Bible, and were able to survive and thrive in what Pilgrims saw as wilderness. So Pilgrims worked to impose their educational priorities onto tribes as a way to cast out Satan, and ultimately gain control of Indigenous people. This effort to assimilate and control only compounded over the next few centuries By the 19th century, congress was also making efforts to deculturalize and assimilate tribes. Thomas Jefferson who had a big role in the removal of Native Americans from their lands also had a One Nation idea when it came to Native Americans – an assumption that required assimilation through education. In 1816, Jefferson explained the value of education: “Enlighten the people generally and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. Although I do not, with some enthusiasts, believe that the human condition will ever advance to such a state of perfection as that there shall no longer be pain or vice in the world, yet I believe it susceptible of much improvement, and most of all in matters of government and religion; and that the diffusion of knowledge among the people is to be the instrument by which it is to be effected” (101)). Jefferson believed a democratic, not a moral education which was what kids were getting at the time, was essential to democracy and he’s right, but his One Nation idea required a monolithic ideal that did not value other cultures. He wanted tribes to conform to his image of being American. This focus on conformity was baked into the American educational philosophy. The Civilization Act of 1819 saw Thomas McKenney, the first head of the Office of Indian Affairs begin a process of Native American deculturization  – they created a tribal school system run by white missionary teachers hoping to gain control of tribes through the power of education and assimilation. When Andrew Jackson became president in 1829, he saw some of the educational progress made by tribes as dangerous to America’s goals of gaining control of lands.   So, in 1830, America passed the Indian Removal Act, which brutally uprooted tribes and relocated them. Thirty years later, the Indian Peace Commission began reservation schools or day schools. But again, the cultural genocide that all of these acts and efforts had hoped for weren’t as effective as the government Wanted. This is when the government stepped in again. Paired with the Dawes Act of 1877 that worked to split reservation lands into private property began the start of the boarding school movement in 1879. Each step was a process working towards killing cultures in an attempt to control land, people, and ideas – all largely through some form of education. The start of the boarding school experiment can  be attributed to Captain Richard Henry Pratt. Caskey Russell: Pratt actually had a number of prisoners of war under his charge at St. Augustine, Florida. Besides being given military uniforms, they would teach them. And so the way he sold the first  boarding schools was that instead of being at war with natives, you can educate them. The US could educate them, and kind of eradicate native culture through educating towards whiteness. Caskey explained that the thought was that education would help the government avoid the expenses of war. Caskey Russell: So there are a group of Plains Natives that were transported to St. Augustine, that was his kind of first experiment. And then he was able to go to Congress and get some money. And he took them to The Hampton Institute and eventually to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School So Pratt’s experiment led to the establishment of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania in 1879. This was around the same time that Pratt made a famous statement to congress: Caskey Russell: He says to Congress, “You have heard Sherman say the only good Indian’s a Dead Indian. I would agree with this one kind of difference that you can kill the Indian save the man.” That's what education can do. That's the motto. And so, there was based on military kind of military boarding school style, and they opened up across the country. And they were often religiously affiliated, and religious institutions given  them control of them. Which, you know, was another part of the boarding schools was the religious education, the eradication of tribal cultures, tribal religions, and the inculcation of Christianity, the various sects of Christianity across the country. Each step taken by congress, in the name of education, was an effort to prioritize one culture over others, one idea of success over others - often through religious means, because again, early education was morality based. And they did this through legislation and through educational policy. Even though many of these efforts are pretty old, we still feel the educational effects of prioritizing a single culture or single idea of success.. Elizabeth Smith, a veteran teacher of 20 years who teaches on a reservation still sees this today.  Elizabeth Smith: Even though I can count on my hand, the number of students that I've taught that have graduated and have a white culture, sort of experience with what would be known as success, quote, unquote   Caskey sees this idea in what is tested or valued as a bottom line in public education. These are things that dismiss differentiated cultural values. Caskey Russell: Did the schools reward students let's say for instance, this the schools Wind River  reward students for knowing the traditional clan system,  speaking Arapaho or Shoshone for knowing traditional ways, whether it's kind hunting, traditional use of land, traditional plants respond medicine, knowing being prepare, or being an apprentice for ceremony, none of that none of that culturally important stuff that was really important to Native people, especially young people they could dream of, you know, I'm going to fulfill these goals, these roles, these social roles one day, none of that's important, it seems like an American school system, right? When you're going to take the SAT or the ACT, are they going to value the hours you spent with your grandparents trying to learn the language or learning stories or learning traditional ways? Of course not. This is a part of the inheritance of modern education, something teachers have to grapple with consistently. How can we educate students to be a part of a community that through legislation or policy doesn’t seem to value all traditions and cultures within that community? Or how to reach a measure of success that isn’t culturally misaligned or based on morality? Caskey Russell:A handful of them might be successful in kind of the white American ideal. But that's not the only measure of success, nor is it maybe a healthy measure of success, right, for Native people. It would be wonderful to let other ideas of success, community success, success as a human being within a community flourish in the school setting. This question of how to honor a diverse spectrum of students lands on teachers in the classroom. Though legislators and school boards may make efforts to dictate what can and can’t be taught in the classroom, the reality is it’s teachers and administrators who are working with kids – and kids from a wide spectrum of communities who have often been forced into a specific, standardized idea of success, which might not be culturally conscious. This is exactly how Indian boarding schools started, they forced kids from diverse tribes into a standardized idea of success initially using arguments for morality to do so. We recognize this as bad now, so why are forms of it still happening?   A big concern of some of the teachers who have decided to leave teaching was the start of limits and  restrictions about what can and can’t be taught in the classroom. Many of these limits originate from argument about morality that are backed by religious groups that want to dictate what is happening in the classroom. Think of Mr. Wacker from last episode who is still frustrated with the banning of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye for moral arguments or Mr. Atkinson who felt his curriculum being squeezed by people who didn’t appreciate class conversations about varying cultural perspectives on current events.  And, as we saw with the history of Native American education, this is not new – even though many founding fathers, who were deists themselves, advocated for the separation of church and state and were adamant that education focus on democratic values rather than religious values. John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail:  “I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.” John Adams does not reference education and say study the Bible. And fellow former president James Madison did not mince words in a letter that pushed against church use of government land, which would later include schools: “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.” And these beliefs worked their way into legislation with the inclusion of the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment, which Thomas Jefferson said was “A wall of separation between the church and state.” And though we know Jefferson’s view of education wasn’t very inclusive, if we combine this idea of the separation of church and state with a modern inclusive reading of Jefferson’s thoughts that education is to “Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty,” We get a pretty good idea that education is a means to inform a free-thinking, diverse population that has different belief systems.  The founders knew the danger of letting religion seep its way into government - they just broke free of a country that allowed that to happen. So to have a system of education that would inform the whole mass of people without perpetuating the deculturalization we saw with the Indian Boarding schools, which have their origins in religious schooling, that system would need to accommodate the diversity of that mass of people.  This means that teachers would need the trust of the public and  freedom to use their expertise to do their jobs, which would likely include selecting a wide range of materials to accommodate a diverse student population. This freedom and trust is not something being granted to modern teachers. There is currently a trend of parents, legislators, and school board members criticizing teacher efforts to support diverse student needs, often through moral critiques. Which stems from a lack of trust and the same morality based fear that sparked early deculturalization efforts in the United States. So, this isn’t new. This is another part of what teachers have inherited from previous generations of educators, a lack of professional respect that translates to a lack of autonomy in the classroom, low pay, and a smattering of other things that are driving teachers from their jobs. Here’s Elizabeth again: Elizabeth Smith: And let me clarify, you know, when I say I love teaching, I do love teaching. To say that I love where I'm at right now, no, I do not. I am not satisfied with the way my job is going. I'm not satisfied with the way I feel inside every single day coming home from work. It's like a battlefield. It is intense. It is stressful. My family has noticed it and made comments on it, you know, and I don't have the patience to deal with my own children. And what am I going to do if I don't do this? I've got 20 years of expertise invested in this. And I've spent a lot of time learning how to do the things that I do and I enjoy improving it. As of now, she is planning on staying in education. And all of those 20 years have been spent teaching on reservations. She attributes this in part to why she loves her work so much, why she’s planning on staying. There is a different level of respect that she sees in these schools and a higher level of appreciation, which goes a long way. But this doesn’t mean that there still isn’t a lack of professional trust or respect that she feels from being a teacher.  Elizabeth Smith: There's so much micromanaging and so many expectations that are put on us that are really insulting, actually, to our intelligence and to our professionalism. And I understand that there are teachers who are unaware of the ways that they're doing things are unprofessional and unintelligent. So I get the admin has to make some allowances and come up with some plans for how to deal with teachers that are not as aware of themselves and their skills as they should be, you know, so I understand that but the blanket statements.. To address where these blanket solutions may originate from, we are going to take another look at history through a little different lens than what we’ve been using so far.  When I asked teachers about what pushed them out of education, they echoed Elizabeth’s frustrations. Lack of respect was a major reason people left. But this is not new, like the history of inequity in education, the lack of professional respect has been a thread through public education’s history. So we are going to pull on that thread and look at the tradition of not valuing or respecting teachers.   Stephanie Reese: As a teacher, you're going to be marginalized, and you're not going to be taken seriously. Ron Ruckman: I think a lot of administrators, They just don't have any idea there, and they don't really think of us as professionals, you know, they don't really think of us as being able to do our job. Christie Chadwick: As a teacher, we're managing all these expectations. And I think that that's not acknowledged by the general population. Teachers want to be seen as professionals. This came up in interviews in reference to being trusted to make decisions about curriculum, in being more autonomous, and in getting paid better. When thinking about why teachers have inherited a lack of professional respect in the present, it might have to do with the American Industrial Revolution: Colby Gull: We were built on an industrial model. Get them in, stick the widget on him and get him out the other side of the door. Right. And that's just not how humans work. This is Colby Gull, he is the managing director for the Trustees education Initiative in the College of Education at the University of Wyoming. Colby has been a teacher, a coach, a principal, and a superintendent. He’s run the educational gamut. And he points out that the structure of education does not necessarily promote the growing and sharing of ideas. Colby Gull: And we live in now the idea economy. And we're still not teaching in the idea economy. We're teaching in the industrial economy where you buying and selling goods. But our economy now is based on ideas and sharing of ideas and debating and discussing, and I don't know, people make a lot of money with their ideas.  And this structure of education, this factory style model, which looks similar to the military approach seen with Indian Boarding Schools, started and gained popularity during the American Industrial Revolution at the end of the 19th century. Along with this more industrial model the precedent for the amount of respect teachers received was set. I see several ways in which history has handed down a dismissive attitude toward teachers.  As Common Schools gained popularity in the mid-19th century, young women were also moving to cities for better economic opportunities. And these women were hired as teachers in droves because they could be paid substantially less than men. This compounded since teaching was seen as respectable employment for women - it matched the stereotype that women were naturally nurturing. Both the image of teachers as nurturers and the trouble with pay is consistent with what we see today.  Here’s Stephanie Reese, a former PE teacher who left education and became the general manager of Blacktooth Brewing Company. Stephanie Reese: Absolutely money matters. I was in so much debt. You know, with loans, whether they're student loans, or just credit card, or whatever it is, I had a lot in college, had a lot while I was teaching. and teaching just doesn't give you that opportunity.. And  level increases are a fucking joke. Unless you've been in, you've been in I call it like, like you've been in the pen. You've been in for 34 years, you've given one kidney, you have four degrees, master's degrees, preferably doctorate even better, and you've given up your will to live, and those those things will give you more money. Part of the consistently poor pay has to do with the hierarchical structure in education. After the Civil War, the first iteration of the department of education was created, in order to track what the nation’s schools were doing. So there was an expectation for the availability of public schooling. Once the American Industrial Revolution hit towards the end of the 19th century, factory jobs boomed. More people flocked to cities meaning there were more kids and more of a need for teachers. With more men transitioning to better paying factory jobs, even more women were moving to the classroom. The large number of women serving as teachers was accepted at a time when women weren’t given many professional opportunities. Administrative roles – principals, superintendents, and the like – were held by men. And many high school positions were still held by men. So a hierarchy that prioritized male control and male decision making was very clearly in place. Mark Perkins, a former teacher and administrator and current parent and professor of Educational Research methods at the University of Wyoming, points out that this hierarchy has remained even if the original gendered reasons for its creation haven’t. Mark Perkins:  I think there's a power hierarchy. And I don't think that teachers have been empowered enough to express their professional expertise. I think that teachers are approached as a service industry. And so, we want teachers to parrot curriculums. We want them to be experts in their content, as long as their expertise doesn't contradict with our preconceived notions of reality. So I think there's a sociological phenomenon that goes on in schools.  I think it's a common phenomenon. The system of becoming an administrator in some cases  was once based on seniority. So the most senior teacher would inherit the role of principal. This changed when a degree was required to become a principal or superintendent, which also prevented women from gaining access to these administrative positions by making them require a degree because women weren’t often able to access such an education. So these days, some administrators are in the position without having had a tremendous amount of time in education, which can make administrator impact or insight into the classroom difficult. Ron Ruckman, who just left teaching after 23 years, explains that the lack of experience can be glaringly obvious for some administrators who are disconnected from the teachers. Ron Ruckman:  You know, and then there's other administrators that just don't want to have anything to do with your classroom, you know, and they want to make decisions, but they don't want to, they don't communicate with you or ask you things. There's a lot of that especially in rural districts. We've spent so much time and money in this district doing initiatives and buying products. And, you know, I can't imagine how much money we've just wasted, you know, buying stuff that, you know, on, based on a good salesman that convinced somebody that they needed it. Whereas had they come and asked us would have been like, no, no, that that would be a really dumb thing to do. That's not going to work. You know, but there's just that kind of an apt idea that teachers really are, you know, don't really know what they're what, you know, they don't really know anything other than their subject. And we're, we're pretty smart. Most of us, you know. (Beeping) This was perfect timing. That beeping was for a fire. Ron is the Battalion Chief for the Pinedale fire department - he has a lot of roles in his community because he is intelligent and capable and because of not being respected for being intelligent and capable, he quit teaching to pursue the other things he’s good at.  Some of the ways teachers are not seen as capable has to do with how education is standardized. In the late 19th century, as cities got larger and more and more kids were put into schools, urban schools started to split students into grade levels. Around this time and into the early 20th century, there was a development of what historian David Tyack (Tie-yak) described as the One Best System of education – this saw a focus on specific, easily assessed, and easily sequenced subjects of study. This also did more to highlight non-academic items like good attendance, behavior, and willingness to follow directions, which all aid in creating people who would fit into an industrial economy. This structure was useful when more and more students were placed into a class. And by the early 20th century, politicians and administrators were seeing schools as being a solution to the nation’s woes. Traces of these industrialized values are very present in modern classrooms, and it makes Allison Lash, who taught art in New York City and Austin, Texas, sad at what she sees. Allison Lash: A friend of mine had said one thing about why he's doesn't like education is just that you go to school to learn how to work, basically, to get you ready to go out in the world and work. And that's sad. Like, I just want to live. I don't want to worry about working and how to make money and pay your school loans and your bills. It used to bother me that kids would get rewarded for being in school every day. And it's all about money. It's all about how many kids are in their seats every day for the school district to make money. And it was sad, it was sad that kids would win awards for like, being their everyday awards. Like who really cares? They're totally ignoring mental health and even if the kid is sick, you stay home. It's really sad when you go into elementary school and you see the kids quiet and lined up in a line and like “shhhhh,” and I remember teaching that and  I know that I guess order is not wanted, and I don't know if needed is even the right answer. Teach kids to be a good person. The rise of industry during the American industrial revolution also saw a rise in unions and strikes. Because teachers were mostly women, and many of the strikes of the time were more militant and potentially violent, women were less likely to take part in strikes and efforts to gain better pay. This was not helped by the fact that men held leadership positions in education, so they did not make efforts to better the work environments of teachers because these men just weren’t affected. The  National Education Association, which was founded in 1857, wasn't just for teachers, so administrators, men, were also in charge of Union happenings. It wasn’t until 1910 when Ella Flagg Young was elected as the NEA president that the union started taking more steps to help teachers. But the difficulty in changing and revising educational structures is still present. Chris Rothfuss, a parent and Wyoming State Senator and member of the Senate Education committee, knows this all too well. While we have a coffee in Laramie, Wyoming, Chris explains that change may require a cultural shift inspired by younger generations .  Chris Rothfuss:  I think a large part of the reason why we develop into what we are really is the way this country industrialized and grew and had a middle-class work ethic through the mid-20th century, that shaped a lot of the way things are done. And the philosophy about why things are done, the way they're done, where there is a common viewpoint that I think is handed down from generation to generation that if you just work hard, put your nose to the grindstone, that you will be successful, and things will go your way, and you'll have a good life. I think part of what's changing that, is that this emerging generation is realizing that while that may have been true, a lot of what allowed that to be true, was frankly, taking on debt that is generational debt and handing that debt down to the next generation. So effectively exploiting the future for the benefit of the present. This younger generation isn't enthused about that as they're learning more about it, and rightly so. And they don't see a path to a traditional life as being what they aspire to. A potential reason for major shifts not having occurred in the past might have to do with economic uncertainties. For every economic depression and war to occur in the 20th century, money was pulled from education to help the war or economic problems, but that money was not necessarily given back to education. Teacher pay was often cut when other unionized jobs like factory work was not cut because there was an assumption that teachers, being mostly women, would not need to support their families. During WWII, when more women went to work in factories, those women who were still teaching saw how much better the pay was for the women who went to work in factories. The impact of war and economic troubles also resulted in  a more factory-like structure in the classroom. This was often a result of trying to accommodate a larger student population with less resources, and it was also an easier way to measure student achievement. This created an educational structure that overwhelms teachers, which makes best practices more difficult and stretches teachers thin. Molly Waterworth, who just left teaching this year after 8 years in the classroom, explains the reality of being overwhelmed as a teacher.   Molly Waterworth:  The reality is that if you have 150 kids, there's no way that you're going to grade all of their work in seven and a half hours that you have with them during the day. There's no way. It's just a mathematical impossibility.  The truth is, teachers have inherited being paid poorly, being overworked, and not being treated with respect. Sadly, much of this is associated with the trend of women in the profession within a patriarchal society. And the teaching profession is still dominated by women. The NEA reports that about 3 quarters of teachers are women, and teachers still get payed about 74% of what equivalent degreed professions earn.  So, teachers are leaving education, but the reasons they are leaving are a result of problems that have been percolating since the start of public education in the United States. Efforts at deculturalization seen with the Indian Boarding Schools have left an impact and pattern on modern education, just like the treatment of women and industrialization of education has left an impact on how teachers are currently treated.  This does not mean that public education needs to end, but like any inheritance, we need to acknowledge and deal with the problems. We need to see that there have been attempts to address inequity in education with efforts like Brown v Board in 1954, Title IX in 1972,  and the disabilities act of 1975. But continuing to return to a standardized, one-size-fits-all approach that matches an industrial structure of education just does not work – it doesn’t value teacher expertise, nor does it meet the students with unique cultural backgrounds or needs where they are. And because teachers have been tasked with addressing these inequities with limited freedom and trust and resources, many are calling it quits. This needs to change – teachers need to be able to disclaim this inheritance for their sake and for the sake of their students.  Next time, we will look at how the perception of teachers might be influenced by pop-culture.  TEASE: “Robin Williams isn’t going to do that.” That will be next time on Those Who Can’t Teach Anymore. Thank you for listening. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review, and share episodes with everyone you can think of. This episode was produced by me, Charles Fournier. It was edited by Melodie Edwards. Other editing help came from Noa Greenspan, Sarah-Ann Leverette, and Tennesee Watson. Voice Acting by Rory Mack, David Whisker, Rick Simineo, and Markus Viney who also offered editing help. Our theme song is by Julian Saporiti. All other music can be found on our website. A special thanks to Elizabeth Smith, Caskey Russell, Stephanie Reese, Ron Ruckman, Molly Waterworth, Christy Chadwick, Colby Gull, Mark Perkins, and Allison Lash for taking time to sit down and chat with me. This dive into history was greatly aided by two books: American Education: A History by Wayne J. Urban and Jennings L. Wagoner, Jr. and Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality: A Brief History of the Education of Dominated Cultures in the United States by Joel Spring……This podcast is funded in part by the Fund for Teachers Fellowship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are witnessing a mass exodus of teachers from education. My wife, Jennie, is one of those teachers that left. She, like many educators, was tired of not being treated like a professional. Even for me, a high school English teacher, the job is getting harder. So I go in search of answers. In this episode, we hear from Jennie and two other former teachers about why they left teaching. From struggles with mental health, to low pay, to a lack of autonomy in the classroom - they give insight into why we are losing good teachers across the country.This episode was produced by Charles Fournier. It was edited by Melodie Edwards. Other editing help came from Noa Greenspan, Sarah-Ann Leverette, and Cody Fournier. All music is by Julian Saporiti. A special thanks to Jennica Fournier, Shane Atkinson, and Jaye Wacker for being inspiring teachers and taking time to sit down and chat with me. This podcast is funded in part by the Fund for Teachers Fellowship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brilliant teachers are leaving education in droves, and they will continue to leave unless something changes. In February of 2022, the National Education Association reported that 55% of teachers were thinking about leaving education earlier than they had planned. The history and politics surrounding education, portrayels of education in pop-culture, and difficulty of teaching conditions have been feeding into why teachers want to leave. If we don't take time to listen to teachers and work towards fostering an environment that makes them want to stay, great teachers will continue to leave the profession.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices