Why are teachers leaving the classroom? This week Ali and JoDee sit down with Robyn Barberry, a former teacher and author in progress to answer this question. Together, they discuss the mental health struggles that led Robyn to leave teaching, some of the main issues teachers are facing today like pay, and the unrealistic expectations that are being placed upon teachers.
If you would like to be included in Robyn’s survey, please click to link to fill out the survey: https://shorturl.at/kmyX2
Connect with Ali and JoDee:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teachershift
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teachershift
Teacher Shift LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/teacher-shift
Ali’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisimon/
JoDee’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodeescissors/
Website
https://www.teachershiftpodcast.com/
Episode Transcriptions
https://www.teachershiftpodcast.com/blog
Why are teachers leaving the classroom? This week Ali and JoDee sit down with Robyn Barberry, a former teacher and author in progress to answer this question. Together, they discuss the mental health struggles that led Robyn to leave teaching, some of the main issues teachers are facing today like pay, and the unrealistic expectations that are being placed upon teachers.
If you would like to be included in Robyn’s survey, please click to link to fill out the survey: https://shorturl.at/kmyX2
Connect with Ali and JoDee:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teachershift
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teachershift
Teacher Shift LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/teacher-shift
Ali’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisimon/
JoDee’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodeescissors/
Website
https://www.teachershiftpodcast.com/
Episode Transcriptions
https://www.teachershiftpodcast.com/blog
Ali 0:06
Teachers are natural innovators, entertainers and problem solvers. They dream of growing old into the profession, teaching their kids kids. But sometimes career goals shift, and that makes opportunities outside of the classroom seem intangible questioning, who am I, if I'm not a teacher? I'm your host, Ali Simon.
JoDee 0:28
And I'm your co host, JoDee Scissors.
Ali 0:32
And this is Teacher Shift.
JoDee 0:43
Why are teachers leaving the classroom? Well, one former teacher is doing the research to reveal the reasons for these mass resignations. Today, we'll learn about some of her findings, and what led to her choice to leave to.
Ali 0:59
Robyn Barberry is a former teacher and author in progress of Early Dismissal, the alarming conditions behind the mass resignation of American educators. She has found occupational love in her new role as a customer service rep for a small business in her community, which has also enabled her to be the wife and mom she has always wanted to be, while pursuing her dream of being a professional writer. Welcome to the show today, Robyn.
Robyn 1:25
Thanks. Thanks for having me.
JoDee 1:26
Robyn, thanks for connecting with us on Facebook, you have a really interesting story. And you may know this, we used to be called the Great Teacher Resignation before we made our own shift into Teacher Shift. But you started your work and you saw the red flags prior to the crisis that we're seeing in terms of teacher retention. What made you go on this journey?
Robyn 1:49
It's sad to say, it's almost comical the revolving door when you work as a teacher in a school, how many people stay and how many people leave. And it used to be that, you know, teachers went to their school and they retired there after 35 years. But I just kept noticing that it was a different cast of characters at the beginning of the school year. And as time went on, that percentage shifted over and over again, where it was like, oh, you know, like a couple of your friends were gone. And then I guess by post COVID, you had almost a whole new makeup. You had been there, but for five years, and you are a senior member of the staff after five years. So I just noticed like, Where's everybody going? And I think that's one of the questions you guys are asking with your podcast is where's everybody going?
JoDee 2:33
Yeah, you're right, Ali, and I both left pre COVID for different reasons. But you know, as you're sitting back as a former teacher, watching what's happening, and everybody's saying, great teacher resignation, great teacher resignation. And I'm thinking, wow, this is a serious retention issue. And what are we going to do about it? Because the solutions, were immediately like, we have to hire more people. Well, what's happening with the people that are actually in the building and why are they not staying?
Robyn 3:06
It's funny that you ask. So that's what the survey is about. The survey is, I'm trying to figure out why is everybody leaving. And funny the way that it happened for me was, I was in a situation where I was having a very serious mental health crisis. And I was having panic attacks. I had never had panic attacks in my life and all of a sudden, I'm having these panic attacks. And tried to get myself reset on medication, therapy. You know, but my doctor at one point was like, Robyn, every time you go in that school, that stress is going to be there and quite frankly, it's only going to keep getting worse. And I knew that I had to leave. But I kept blaming it on myself. You know, I've got a messed up brain. I've got this mental health condition. But then I watched other friends who I thought were pretty like solid and stable, leaving the profession. And I think the one that really got to me was my cousin and I are working together. We were working at a very prestigious, all boys Catholic High School. And people just started dropping. And when she came over to my house and said, I'm gonna go. I'm leaving. I'm like, No, but you're like, you're a department chair, you're, you know, you were a coach for a long time. Like you're really put together like... and I stopped and realized, oh, my gosh, like, it's not, it's not just me, like something's going on. And I started, like, you know, like, you see the movies and like somebody's like, solved a case or whatever. They realize there's a problem. And they're like, lashing back at like, oh my gosh, like this person left, and this person left and like, every story of a teacher leaving, just hit me. And I was like, I gotta do something about this. Like, you know, what am I going to do? And I had been moping around for months like miserable thinking I was a failure, like, and then I realized, like, I wasn't a failure, the system is a failure, and something's got to change.
Ali 4:50
Wow, I love your reflection on how you're looking back at that time in your life. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for you to leave something that you were clearly passionate about and sounds like you were at a great school. I also really tuned in when you said at this point, people who've been in the classroom for five years are like the veterans. And that was definitely not the case when I first started teaching. We had people who had been teaching for 20, 30, 15 was like a early veterans, you know? And the truth is that, really, that is happening now. Or there's the schools, they don't have as many long term teachers who've been there. And so I think JoDee, and I talk about this a lot. Like, what's the systemic problem that's causing all of this to happen? Like, we want to unpack that. And that's really what you're looking at, in your survey that we're going to let teachers know and our show notes, how they can take that survey. So that hopefully that can better inform your data and the book that you're working on.
Robyn 5:47
And more than the data I'm collecting narratives. And to be quite frank with you, I have to set aside little blocks of time when I can read these because they just tear my heart out. At the core of what the problem is, is that these are people, these are human beings. Here's a little theory, public school system is based on the factory system. We all know that the bells and everything, and the students are the product. Well, they expect the teachers to be the machines. They expect the teachers to be the robots to create these products. And they forget that we have human needs. You know, you learn in biology that every living thing needs like air and space and water. And you know what, so do teachers. And we need a little bit more than that, because we're human. And we have other obligations and families and things like that. So I do want to share with you real quick, a couple of books, my background is blurred. So it's going to turn out kind of messy. But things that I'm using for research that go right along with what you're talking about. This book is called, Work Won't Love You Back by Sarah Jaffe. And that's kind of where this idea comes from that, you know, we've encouraged, particularly women to take this role of what's essentially mothering, and turn it into something more clinical. And we expect women, because we do things out of the love of our heart, because we're socialized to do that, to do this for little bit of money, and lots and lots of demands because we love these kids. That's one book. The other one I'm reading, let's see if I can get this in, Humans Are Not Robots. And this is by Robert Hawkins. I haven't started it yet. But I'm really looking forward to reading that one too, because that's a whole big philosophy that I have, is that it's hard not to vilify the administrator sometimes because I jumped to that very quickly. But I think they just forget, like that we're not robots, and that, you know, we can't go and go and go, and we can't work under certain circumstances, and that we do have brains and we have mental health that robots don't ever have to worry about. You know, I guess maybe eventually, AI will replace us, I'm not sure. But, you know, this idea that work, won't love us back. And that we're not robots is really kind of funny that I stumbled upon these books, because this is exactly what my survey is telling me. People are tired of feeling like machines. People are tired of not being loved back.
JoDee 5:52
You just talking about the factory metaphor is really resonating with me, because I remember this moment of thinking like, it is the admin. It is the admin. And then one day I was having a conversation with one of the leaders in my school building. And she said to me, JoDee, I'm just two steps ahead of you. Someone's telling me what to do. And then I'm telling you what to do. And so as I looked at the bigger picture, I realized, like, I'm doing what she's telling me. She's doing what her boss and then that's what the admins telling her to do. And then somebody's telling the admin what to do. And then the further you go out, the more disconnected it was from the student. And that was what really was the tough thing to swallow was that someone out there is telling me what this child needs, and they don't know this child at all. You know, as the teacher, you're like, you know, your big mama bear advocating for your students. And I kept thinking, that is not at all what this child... whatever system you have built, is not for this child, because the one size fits all does not work here.
Robyn 9:27
Yeah, and I'm gonna mention that later, because that's also true for teachers. So I'm gonna mention that later. But it's interesting that you bring that up, because I've been I told my husband last night, I'm like, I want to find the man behind the curtain. Who is this man behind the curtain?
Ali 9:40
Who's the Wizard of Oz? Right?
Robyn 9:42
Right. Like, who's making us do all this? You know, is it the taxpayers? Is it you know, the executive branch of government? Is it the legislative branch? You know, or is it like something that... is it a form of AI that's running in the background? And we don't know who started this machine or how to make it stop. And you know, I'm here to put a cog in the system and say, Nope, we're rebuilding this.
Ali 10:05
Well, and I love that what you're doing with this survey is you're using the qualitative data, right? So you're hearing from teachers. Because numbers are important, we know how many teachers are leaving. And actually, there's even some issues with how they're collecting data. Because not every district collects data and the same way. But those stories that you're getting, and you're reading, really put the human connection with the numbers, right. And I really want to loop back to something that you said earlier, because it resonates so much with me. You mentioned the calling, kind of the vocation, that teachers, we do this profession, because self sacrificing. And we get oftentimes, most of the time, underpaid for the work that we're doing. And I think part of it is like when you're doing a vocation, when you're called to do something, it's okay to, to not pay people as much and to maybe not talk about money, because you believe in the cause so much, or you're, you know, you feel like this is what you should be doing. But the truth of the matter is we have teachers who are not making enough money for their basic needs. There's been article after article in in the news about teachers who are, you know, receiving government assistance, They're trying to live like a middle class life, and they're not able to, with their pay as an educator, which I think is really unfortunate. So I'm wondering, what have you heard around that specific topic?
Robyn 11:32
So one thing I want to point out right away is that teachers who are single parents struggle I feel like the most because a lot of them don't have the support for childcare that they need. Their kids, I was reading one of my entries about how the single mom has to get her kid from elementary school, bring the kid to her school, and stay and work late into the night. And, you know, the kids just kind of chillin in the classroom, because she can't afford a camp or an after school, you know, thing for this kid to get to. So it's not even just the economic costs themselves of food, water, shelter, you know, all of that. It's also the social cost of not being able to be able to afford those things. And I will say, I've taught in public schools, and I've taught in private schools, and private school teachers get paid significantly less. Significantly less than... I was making. When I left the school that I just left, I was making about $25,000 less per year than I should have been making. I was a 16 year teacher with a master's degree making $54,000 a year.
Ali 12:42
And that's not well known fact about private school teachers, because I also did the same thing, public school and private school. And the general public does not know that about that private schools pay their teachers less. So I'm glad that you shared that.
JoDee 12:55
I was thinking about when I was going through your survey the questions about money, would I go back? You know, if it is money, what percentage would I want to see if I were to go back into the classroom. And the district I work in, we were paid pretty well. We had really good benefits, but it was a mega district. It's one of those places, you know, close to Washington, DC, where everybody's under a microscope. But I was like, I don't know, even though I was paid pretty decently, probably didn't match the hours that I worked at all or the skills that I had. But I just couldn't come up with a number that would require me to go back or be an incentive to go back. Because, for me, it wasn't about the money. It was, it was the workload. It was the mental health challenges. It was the scripted factory style curriculum that they were asking us to regurgitate. And I don't know if there was a dollar amount on that because it was the working conditions and the workload that were really bogging me down. And so for you, you spoke a little bit about mental health challenges. Are the working conditions a big contributor in the mental health challenges that teachers go through?
Robyn 14:16
So oh, 100%. I'll get to that in a second. One thing I want to add to what you're just saying, is I met Jeannette Wahls, the author of The Glass Castle.
JoDee 14:24
Oh, I love that book.
Robyn 14:25
Yes, she gave a little speech and she was talking about somebody had asked about like, well, you know, you grew up literally dirt poor like drinking water out of the street poor. But now you you know, you're probably doing pretty well. You know, does that change everything? She's like, No, I I'm very wealthy. I will tell you that right now. I'm very wealthy and not robbing Barbary, I'm Jeannette walls right now. But the thing is, I still have problems. But the difference is that a lot of times my money can take care of the problems that I have. So if that teacher instead of making, you know, $53,000 a year is now making $100,000 a year. She's a single mom. She can afford to send that kid to camp. She can afford to send that kid to daycare after school. You know, like I said, food is one thing. But teachers are not living a middle class life. They're not living the upper middle class life that they should be living. And I hate saying that, because I'm not trying to say it's a better lifestyle than anything else. But with a master's degree, you should be able to take your family to Disney World. I've never been able to do that. So that's just my my personal take on that, as for the effects of working conditions on mental health, I will tell you right now that retrospectively, it took me a while to figure it out. I felt almost like I was blaming myself for my mental health, like, well, Robyn, like you're not taking care of yourself. But I look back at the circumstances, the conditions that I was working under, in this supposedly nice school. Now, when I started there, it was an amazing school, even during COVID, I had it so good. But then a new administration came in and they wanted to kind of change the culture. We all know what that means change the culture of the school. I was a department chair. And they decided to start lumping more responsibilities on us. One of them was I had to check every member of my department's grades once a week. I had to do it on a particular day, like Friday. And I was like, Hey, we have a seventh class like schedule cycle like planning period every Friday that I can do that in and still get my other stuff. It needs to get done on Friday. So I have to log into this program and look up everybody's grades and basically write them up if they didn't update their grades that week, on top of all kinds of other things, like just little extra piddly paperwork, that seemed like from an admins perspective, wouldn't take that long. The probelm was eating into my time, was eating into my planning and my grading time. And then I got to the situation where coverage was a big thing. So then I'm covering classes, you know, having to go to some other teachers classroom, it's not my space, and take my stuff. Oh, I forgot this. I forgot that too bad I gotta get by without and I forgot the stack of essays I was about to grade. And that cut into my time. So it ended up being I was like, Okay, well, I need quiet to work, because I genuinely do have ADHD, and I need quiet to work. So I'm going to start coming into work like an hour early. Now I have four children, and I lived an hour away from that school. I was blessed to have grandparents that were willing to help and understood. And then I would get there, and then somebody would come in in the morning and ask me to do something. Okay, now, I'm going to start staying later in the day to do this. So what was happening is that it was environmental on the one front, to where I did not have an adequate working environment, where I could get done all of the tasks that they were asking me to do. So that was one part of it, constant disruptions, constant meetings, and it was tapping into my time and my space. Remember how I said like living things need certain things to grow and thrive and function. I need time and space. That's me. And I think that's a lot of teachers. So I think the working conditions are kind of based on that. Then it started filtering into my home life, because the amount of stuff that I was bringing home with me. And what ended up happening was that I had no cushion. I had no buffer. And because of that, it just the work just took over. And my brain couldn't keep up. And my body couldn't keep up. And that's where the panic attacks started coming. I just started obsessing over the things that I wasn't getting done. I was losing sleep. Right before I left, my doctor had put me on the highest possible dose of an anxiety medicine. And it started messing with my heart. And I would wake up in the middle of the night. And my heart rate would be really off, I'd have like an arrhythmia. And I started thinking I was having a heart attack, and then that would turn into a panic attack. So my lack of sleep was filtering in. And then you know, sleep is very important to your mental health. And a lot of teachers don't get a lot of sleep. So yeah, definitely. I feel like their demands were becoming unreasonable and unrealistic. They were asking me to do stuff that I didn't have the time or the resources to do. They also threw in, oddly enough that they wanted me to run a podcast club. And I said, okay, like we need here are the three things we need. We need like two headsets and microphones. And we need like to be able to use that space in the back of the library that no one's using. And I asked and I asked and I asked, and I wasn't given a response. And then I got yelled at because now we have a famous National newscaster who went to the school and I was like, I bet you if I like just shoot him an email, he could probably donate this stuff. Oh no, he already makes enough donations. So I think they were insinuating that they wanted me to buy them. So first of all, it's the time and the space. Second, it's the resources and the supplies that we're not being given.
JoDee 20:07
I'm really sorry, you had to enter that. And it's unrealistic. They're asking for your time. Teachers don't have business hours, yes, we're giving a planning period. But that little planning period is for planning. It's for our students. And we don't have dedicated time to take care of the business stuff. We also don't just have a budget that we can look to and say, Hey, I need to buy $400 worth of equipment, let me go look at my personal teacher budget that's given to me by the school or the district. We don't have that we have out of pocket, out of our own paycheck. And in your survey, I was calculating how much I spent each year because my husband would ask me every year for tax purposes, how much did I spend in my classroom? And it was usually between $500 and like $1,200. And that was just like, basic needs, that my students, like we had to have.
Robyn 21:01
Pencils. Paper.
Ali 21:02
Well, and I think what I was hearing throughout your story, and the kind of the climax was the panic attacks in your case, but I was trying to step back and remember what it was like for me when I was in essentially a very similar situation, right? Where you, you don't have a lot of time, more things are piled up on you, you're doing extra things at work. When you have anything happened to you personally, like in your case, the panic attacks, everything just crumbles. Like you can't, it's not sustainable, and it's not healthy. We need that buffer. We need those clear boundaries, so that if my mom dies, I can easily step back for a minute. That there's support there. That there's, you know, it's not like someone else couldn't fill my shoes for a little bit. But when you're doing all of these things, and then you know, something big happens. Maybe it's not even that maybe your dog gets really sick, and you have to take them to the vet, and you're gonna have to take them, you know, for multiple treatments or something, I'm dealing with a sick pet right now. So that's on my mind. You just don't have any room. Whereas in other professions, if you do extra things, if you're taking on, you know, if we compare different tasks levels, one, you're compensated, right. And they're cognizant of the amount of time that they're asking you to do these things. And there's some push and pull factors to like, if you're doing a lot of overtime, because you have a really big project at your job that's not teaching that when that project ends, sometimes you get comp days, right? And you know, your your boss will say, Okay, you worked so much overtime, here's a couple of comp days. That doesn't exist. It's just this expectation that we're martyrs, and that we're just going to keep giving and giving until literally, we don't have any more to give. And what, what I see is the biggest problem is that that's how we're losing teachers. Like, I wanted to be a teacher. That was what I wanted to do. And I loved it so much. And truthfully, if I didn't marry someone in the military, I'd probably still be a teacher right now. But we have to create a system that supports the teachers or rebuild it, because if they're not supported, then they can't support the young people in a healthy way. So I do want to wrap us up because we're getting to the end of our time. And I have one last question that I wanted to ask you about. So in our survey that you filled out before this interview, you mentioned being neurodivergent, and how that's your best teacher brain skill. And I wondered if you could expand on that?
Robyn 23:31
So basically, I feel, I feel like I struggled in school. And that's part of the reason I became a teacher. Long story short, I wanted to major in art. My dad's like, Oh, I'm not paying for you to go to school to major in art, become an art teacher. I'm like, Alright, fine. And I thought about and I thought about how like art and creative writing and expression were like, my favorite things in school because they just let me be me. And I wanted to give kids that option. So that was kind of where that came from. And my gift is relating to those expressive kids. Those kids who can't sit still or shut up or do all those things. My class has always been the one that those kids look forward to. Now retrospectively, I'm starting to realize that like those type A kids probably hated my class. But I have maintained close contact with a lot of my kids over the years and they just always told me that which is always fun. Like because I get bored really easily. So I didn't want to have a boring class. So I never did. It was always, it was entertaining, but also really rich and just lots of fun. It was always very relevant to them. I never really like grew up grew up, like I never forgot what it's like to be 16. So or like ADHD. So I think I just I always known how to connect to the kids.
JoDee 24:45
I think you're a perfect example of a teacher that knows how to keep students engaged, but also go deep. There's a balance there. And that is how like, if we look at any research about best practices for students, and how they learn best. Engagement, and rigor, they go hand in hand, you can do it.
Robyn 25:15
I agree. So I think the biggest question that you guys are asking with your new, new revamp of the podcast is, if you're not a teacher, what are you. And if you're not a teacher, you're a student, because you're learning a whole new profession. And we're kind of programmed to do one thing as teachers. And I took on a job that challenged me in a lot of ways, because I had to deal with a lot of math. And I always joke that I became an art and English teacher so that I would never need to do math. And now I deal with numbers every single day. And I'm being trained by a former teacher, she's a former middle school math teacher. I have to ship out packages. I work for a promotions company. So like cool pens and T shirts and things like that. Like, I organize inventory. I have to count shirts, fold them. I folded like 900 shirts last week, and I have to ship stuff out. And when I ship stuff out, the numbers are long strings of tracking numbers. And that's really hard for me. I was shipping stuff, like double shipping the same order to the same person. Shipping stuff to the wrong place. We had a thing came back with like a passport with stamps all over it, because it was certainly in the US. But they were very patient with me. And they were very kind. And one of the things that one of the women I work with said is like, you have to let yourself be a beginner. And I've never had to do that. And it's humbling. And the girl, the girl who's training me, she's a former teacher. And she basically made a little IEP for me, because she noticed that I was struggling with the numbers, and all the data entry and stuff that I have to do for managing these accounts. And she took my workload and she chopped it down. And she's like, instead of doing invoices and order acknowledgments and proofs, I'm just gonna have you work on this one thing. And then when you get good at that, I'm gonna give you something else. So she's been working really, really hard with like getting me to learn this job. They're so sweet. And so loving the one that said, please don't yell at me, but I did this. Why would I yell at you? And I said, because in teaching you get disciplined all the time. So I'm still having trouble, still having a really hard time. And one of them was like, have you had your eyes checked recently? I'm like, no, like, when I was teaching, I never had time to go to the eye doctor. You know, I kind of lost my really good health insurance when I left teaching. So I haven't had money. I was living in a really bad financial state after I quit teaching. I had nine months to find a job. And I found it in like the ninth month, so I didn't have money to go the eye doctor. Finally I do. Went to the eye doctor, my vision had gotten really bad in two years. She clicked the things and I looked through and I saw the world clearly for the first time in two years, and I just about cried. And I went to work the next day with my new glasses. And I was able to read the numbers really clearly. Because someone took the time to notice that maybe I needed glasses, and maybe I just needed a little bit of extra training. And you know, like maybe go take a break, go outside, take a little walk around the block, go next door and get a coffee. There's a book called Work Won't Love You Back, but you know what it can and it will, and you have to find the right place. And, you know, like I said, when you're no longer a teacher, you got to learn something new. You got to let yourself be a beginner. You got to let yourself be a student.
JoDee 28:20
I love that story so much. And I love your boss, or your manager. I mean, that's that's a teacher skill. You said they're a former teacher, they did exactly for you what they would have done with teachers. And I have to say in my everyday job, there are some times where I access my my teacher skills to be able to meet an adult's needs that I am I'm working with. It's just part of who we are. And I'm so glad that you found that person and that you are with them. And that is a lesson that teachers can do anything. You just got to be a student first.
Ali 28:58
Well, I'm really looking forward to learning more about the research that you've been doing. And when your book comes out. I know that JoDee and I will be some of the first ones to buy a copy. But I do want to share with our listeners, we're going to link it in the show notes that the survey that Robyn is conducting right now is for all teachers, current and former of all ages and environments. Robyn would like to hear from the underrepresented educators, particularly men, teachers of color, the LGBTQ+ community and people with disabilities. So take a look in the show notes for that link. And also check out her Facebook group, Early Dismissal. Thanks for being on the show Robyn.
Are you interested in suggesting a topic for Teacher Shift? Being a guest or recommending a guest? Please see the episodes page on our website to make a submission. And if you'd like to write for us, see blog page. If you liked Teacher Shift, give us a five star rating and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Apple podcasts, Spotify and Amazon music. Today's episode was written and recorded by me, Ali Simon and my co host, JoDee Scissors. Executive produced by Teacher Shift. Produced and edited by Emily Porter. Original Music: Emoji by Tubebackr.