According to Smithers and Robinson, there are five main reasons for teachers leaving the profession: workload, new challenges, school situations, salary, and personal circumstances. Among those five main reasons, workload was the most important factor in affecting teacher turnover, while salary was the least important. (Smithers & Robinson, 2003).
Workload Being a teacher is not an easy job. Teachers must teach their students, as well as complete paperwork, lesson plans, assessments, etc., and at times this can be overbearing. There is an increase on assessment and accountability of teachers, which means there is an emphasis on testing, evaluation, and passing state standards. Teachers are required to teach to state standards and for their students to pass standardized tests, adding another requirement to be placed upon teachers. Also, many times, teachers are expected to sponsor a club or activity on top of everything else they must do. This means spending more time at school working. Meeting these requirements and juggling these tasks can be hard and frustrating, especially for new teachers with little experience.
New Challenges New Challenges often cause new, inexperienced teachers to leave the profession. For the most part, their first few years in the classroom are spent trying to get organized, get a grasp on the pace of teaching the material, and learning how to effectively manage a classroom. Disruptive or troublesome students can make a teacher’s job that much more difficult by having to deal with the students and in some cases having to take disciplinary actions
School Situation School situation encompasses many different things. It can be how the school is run, who runs the school, what type of programs are available to teachers, geographical setting of the school, and much more. Geography can play a major role in affecting a teacher’s decision on whether to leave the profession. In rural settings, the main reasons for teachers leaving was due to cultural differences, the geography (i.e. being too far away from a city or town), and professional isolation. (Williby, 2004). For urban settings, the reasons for leaving were an emphasis to oversee extracurricular activities and whether they were teaching at an at-risk school. How the school is run is also another factor causing teachers to leave. A lack of administrative support is damaging to a teachers self-esteem, poor facilities cause teachers to become frustrated, and insufficient mentoring leaves the teacher with nowhere to look for advice, and ultimately cause teachers to leave.
Personal Circumstances Since teaching requires a lot of time and effort, sometimes personal circumstances can affect a teacher’s decision on whether or not to leave. The most common personal circumstance that causes teachers to leave is family. This encompasses everything from pregnancy, spending more time with family, and taking care of family. For women who get pregnant while teaching, they may find it more cost effective to leave and become a stay-at-home mother (Kersaint, 2007). For other teachers, quality time with their family and taking care of their family is very important and the workload of being a teacher doesn’t allow them much time to do this. Age is also another personal circumstance that causes teachers to leave. Typically, it is younger teachers or older teachers approaching retirement that usually leave the teaching profession. For older teachers, there is a direct correlation with early retirement and pension-plans. (Ingersoll, 2001). This means that it is more likely for an older teacher to retire if they have a pension plan."
i am underpaid and do not mind because i am proud of what i do for this country. i am certainly overworked.
i get up at 6am - teach kids until 3:00, which is a chore in it's own right - and then go home EVERY night - grade papers - assess whether or not what i did was effective - then prepare the lesson for the next day depending on how the class did.
this whole process is about 12-16 hours daily - and is very mentally draining.
to say that us teachers have an easy job, or that our hours are ideal is comical.
i live my job. i eat, breathe and sleep it.
i lay in bed and think about how i can be a better teacher.
part of me wishes i just unloaded trucks for a living - i would make as much money.