Abstract
When teachers talk about leaving the profession, they are commonly described as “burnt out.” But for many, argues Doris Santoro, that’s not the real story. In truth, most teachers enter teaching because they want to pursue moral commitments to the well-being of their students, colleagues, and communities. In-depth interviews with experienced teachers as well as studies of teachers’ resignation letters suggest that moral concerns are what led many of them to quit, as well: They leave not because they’ve become exhausted by the demands of the work but, rather, because school policies are preventing them from doing the good and just work they aspire to do.
Keywords
When teachers talk about leaving the profession, they are commonly described as “burnt out.” But for many, the real story is that they have moral objections to school policies and practices.
Imagine that a man goes to the emergency room, complaining of an agonizing headache, and the doctor — noting that the man’s dizzying pain could be the result of dehydration — recommends he drink more water. If the doctor had bothered to inquire about the source of the headache, though, she would have learned that a 20-pound anvil fell on the man’s head. No amount of water will solve that problem.
When they describe themselves as frustrated, exhausted, and disappointed by their work, many teachers find themselves in an analogous situation. Rather than inquiring into the source of their discontent, school leaders and policy makers dash off the first diagnosis that comes to mind: Those teachers are “burnt out” and need to learn how to relax. Much like the concussed patient, they get a recommendation — schedule a weekly massage, perhaps — that does nothing to fix what truly ails them.
A quick internet search will yield innumerable hits for the phrase teacher burnout (e.g., ASCD, 2018; New York Teacher, 2019; Rankin, 2016). It is the term most commonly used to refer to teachers who appear unhappy in their jobs, say they’ve considered quitting, or seem resistant to adopt the latest reform initiative. Moreover, teachers are encouraged to be on alert for the “warning signs” of burnout, so they can avoid falling into the professional abyss of no return.
The expressions of concern about teacher burnout correctly imply that something is amiss in many of our public schools. As the most recent PDK Poll (2019) shows, 50% of today’s public school teachers have seriously considered leaving the profession. If teachers are burning out, it is because they are asked to do too much with insufficient support and low salaries; school resources do not come close to meeting students’ needs; and reform efforts come fast and furious, without enough time for anyone to adjust, implement, assess, and reflect.
And yet, calling it “burnout” tells the wrong story about the kinds of pain educators are experiencing because it suggests that the problem lies within individual teachers themselves. To say they’ve burned out is to portray them as weak and exhausted, defeated by the pressure, with little hope for rejuvenation. Not only does this diagnosis lead policy makers to prescribe ineffectual remedies, but it likely contributes to the more significant problem I call teacher demoralization.
Colloquially, the words “I’m demoralized” are usually taken to mean “I’m really upset, bummed out, sad.” But as I use it, the term describes teachers’ feelings about the moral and ethical challenges they face. Many teachers become dissatisfied not because they’re exhausted and worn down but because they care deeply about students and the profession and they realize that school policies and conditions make it impossible for them to do what is good, right, and just.
Demoralization can happen in any profession that aspires to contribute to the greater well-being of the society — or, as Howard Gardner and his colleagues have put it, that aspire to do “good work” (Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi, & Damon, 2001). For work to be good, it has to be conducted in ways that align with its social purpose. If the work cannot be done ethically, then its social value and purpose are compromised, and its practitioners, such as teachers, become demoralized.
As a teacher educator and public school advocate, I question the idea that teachers leave simply because they’ve burned out. The better and more accurate story is that teachers want to engage in good work that benefits students, communities, and the profession, and they become frustrated when they cannot do so. Like the story about teacher burnout, the story of teacher demoralization can be depressing because it acknowledges that many educators are unhappy with their jobs and have considered leaving the profession. But, unlike the burnout narrative, it allows for hope and possibility. To say that teachers are burned out is to imply that they are spent and done. However, to say that they are demoralized is to acknowledge that they remain passionate and energetic and would love to be given opportunities to teach in ways that are just and good.
Changing the narrative
I have been studying what I call the moral sources of teacher dissatisfaction and attrition for nearly 15 years, ever since I received a copy of Lisa’s resignation letter. Lisa and I had taught together in San Francisco in the mid-1990s. A fierce advocate for students, a brilliant educator, and someone who intended to stay in the classroom for the long haul, Lisa gave an explanation for leaving the classroom that did not align with what I, a new education professor, was reading in the research on teaching.
The research I’d seen offered the following explanations for why teachers leave the classroom: They aren’t successful in the classroom due to poor career fit or lack of preparation; they dislike working in “high-poverty” schools and leave when they have the opportunity; they leave due to low salaries; and, the most elusive explanation, teachers leave because of “some sort of dissatisfaction” (Will, 2017).
I ticked through these one by one: Did Lisa resign because she was unsuccessful? No, she had been teaching for more than 12 years and was valued by her students, their families, and her colleagues. Did she dislike teaching poor children? No, she preferred to work in schools with a high proportion of students living in poverty. Did she resign because of low pay? No. Like many teachers, Lisa thought teachers should be paid much more, but salary did not rank highly on her list of professional concerns.
Well, then, did she quit because of “some sort of dissatisfaction”? This one warrants a closer look. Periodically, the U.S. Department of Education conducts a survey of teachers and principals’ attitudes about their professional lives (now called the National Teacher and Principal Survey, it was called the Schools and Staffing Survey from its inception in 1987 through 2012). Further, it conducts a smaller Teacher Follow-up Survey, focusing on a subsample of teachers who left the profession the year after being surveyed. According to the most recent findings, 55% of those ex-teachers left due to “dissatisfaction” (Will, 2017), but the publicly available data do not offer more detail as to what kind of dissatisfaction they had in mind.
To the extent that they have studied teacher dissatisfaction, researchers have focused mostly on what I would call material sources (e.g., Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2017), such as the availability of classroom resources, the quality of school facilities, the capacity of school leaders and colleagues, curriculum mandates, and student demographics — i.e. factors that can make it easier or more difficult for teachers to do their jobs.
However, I did not find research that examined the moral and ethical conflicts that caused dissatisfaction in experienced teachers (though Levinson, 2015, has written on a similar theme). As a teacher educator and philosopher of education, I found this curious. If you ask teachers why they entered the profession, they tend to offer morally inflected answers: fostering the development of children, seeking justice, promoting the civic goals of public education, liberating minds through academic study, and so on. When a teacher refers to the purposes of their work as appealing to a sense of goodness, rightness, and justice, I hear a moral reason — what philosophers would call a normative claim.
I wondered: If teachers are entering the profession for moral reasons, couldn’t teachers like Lisa be exiting for moral reasons? Lisa explained, “I felt like I was becoming less good.” Someone who didn’t know Lisa might interpret her words as indicating that she just wants to have noninterference and do her own thing. Instead, I heard the moral intent behind it: I can’t teach students as they deserve to be taught, and I won’t do wrong by students.
In more recent years, a proliferation of teacher resignation letters have reached the public through social media. I and others have studied the function of these letters and what stories their authors are telling (Santoro, 2017; VanDerHeide, Dunn, & Deroo, 2017). It is not unusual for resigning teachers to claim, “I don’t recognize the profession I’m currently in as the one I entered.” These claims should be investigated on at least two levels, the material and the moral. For instance, what has materially changed about one’s work (responsibilities, time for curriculum planning, modes of teacher assessment)? And, what has morally changed about one’s work (a sense that I am no longer serving my community, treating students as they should be treated, or upholding the integrity of my profession)? Furthermore, how might changes in material conditions affect moral conditions? For instance, in Lisa’s case, she began teaching in an untracked school. Over time, and capitulating to the demands of higher-income parents who started sending their children to the school, students began to be sorted by so-called ability levels. This structure ran contrary to what Lisa believed served students well.
I sought to learn more about the moral commitments teachers brought to their work. In my first study, I interviewed experienced teachers from high-poverty schools who left the profession due to what felt like unresolvable value conflicts. I called these teachers “conscientious objectors” because they refused to be complicit in practices that they believed were harmful to students and to the profession. (Since that time, others have argued that when experienced teachers leave the profession, they are involved in a form of protest; e.g. Glazer, 2018.) In my second study, I interviewed teachers who taught from 5 to 35 years and who experienced significant value conflicts in their work but found ways to remain in their jobs. I combined the insights from both studies in my book Demoralized: Why Teachers Leave the Profession They Love and How They Can Stay (2018).
Good work compromised
If we take the term burnout seriously, it suggests that a teachers’ personal resources have been used up: They are like a burnt-out candle — no more wick or wax is available, and that candle will never burn again. But that’s a faulty metaphor, I think, because it suggests that teachers have a quantifiable amount of resources upon which to draw. One might have a 12-month burn time, for instance, while another has a 60-month burn time. But how would we know this in advance, and what would we do with that information?
Burnout suggests that a teacher has nothing more to give. However, teachers whom I would characterize as demoralized were most frustrated because they could not teach the way they believed was right. They had energy in droves, exemplified by their leadership roles in their schools, districts, and unions, their passion for their own professional growth, and their ongoing attempts to improve the context of teaching and learning.
Undoubtedly, each individual possesses limited resources that they can provide at each moment. However, the moral rewards of teaching are renewable, not finite. If teachers are able to access what makes their work good, then they are often able to keep going. When teachers can no longer see the value in their work — because they believe they are causing harm to students or denigrating the integrity of teaching by adhering to policy and practice mandates — they become demoralized.
Demoralization occurs when teachers can no longer access what made their work good. Although newer teachers may experience demoralization, I interviewed experienced teachers to disentangle demoralization from disillusionment. Disillusionment happens when the work is not what it was imagined to be. Demoralization occurs when the good work that was previously realizable is no longer possible.
Demoralization is a professional problem, not a personal one. It arises due to the context and conditions of the work, rather than with deficiencies in the individual teacher. Unlike burnout, demoralization cannot be resolved through meditation, prayer, regular visits to the masseuse, or faculty outings. Demoralization can only be addressed through actions that attempt to resolve value conflicts in the work.
Disabled and distressed
Gina walks with a cane and settles herself gingerly into an antigravity chair. “This,” she grimaces, “is what being Teacher of the Year gets you.” She is at the end of a year of disability leave and eyes returning to her classroom with a mixture of sadness and trepidation.
Months ago, Gina felt like a fraud as she faced her colleagues from the podium where she received her district’s teacher of the year award. She had become ashamed of her work in the last several of her 17 years teaching. Her shame arose from the dumbing down of her instruction to meet curriculum mandates, the unrelenting negative press about her beloved profession, and the inequitable practices of her district, where the most privileged students received an education unrecognizable to the majority of the low-income students of color her school served.
Her decision to prioritize her teaching over her health enabled a chronic disease to flare back up. Her physical condition might be a harbinger of burnout, but we can’t say that Gina was burnt out yet. She still loved engaging her high school students with substantive literature that enabled them to analyze their own lives and to criticize social conventions. But, at the same time, she believed that her teaching was being undermined by her district’s narrow interpretation of the Common Core State Standards that slashed time spent reading literature. She devoted weeks attempting to develop meaningful Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) with incomplete data at the behest of her school leader, only to be told that all faculty would use the same SLOs. Her colleagues resisted collaboration now that only a few in the building would be eligible for merit raises.
Education reforms aimed at teacher accountability, she argued, didn’t affect the scofflaws. “The teachers who don’t care weren’t made to care because of [these accountability efforts]. They just bullshit differently now. The people who were really damaged were the people who were already invested and caring and dedicated.” Gina valued teaching as a cooperative endeavor, but she became demoralized as her colleagues left the school, district, and profession. Her passion was for students to feel connected to literature and to learn how to express themselves in writing, but the demands for her to attend to empty, but time-consuming, projects such as developing SLOs left her no time for those passions. As Teacher of the Year, she was ashamed that she was chosen to represent good teaching.
Pressured to pass
Edwin thought he would be a professor of Latin American and Puerto Rican Studies because of the intellectual challenge and connection to his family background, but he became more interested in working with high school students because of their energy and authenticity. He has worked at a large New York City comprehensive high school serving a majority immigrant population for 11 years.
Graduation rates are always a concern for a school like Edwin’s. For this reason, he is under considerable pressure when he teaches courses for seniors. The rotating cast of principals has advocated for individual students by asking Edwin to be mindful of publicly available statistics and their consequences. He capitulated, worrying his job was at risk when a principal asked him to “look into his heart” and consider passing a student who had rarely attended class and completed no work when she did. Worse, the students who received such advocacy were usually the most privileged. “I told them it’s not fair to go to bat for [just some students]. If you guys would put some of that effort in with these kids from Uzbekistan, who put in tons of effort, but who have trouble passing the Regents Exams, these kids would graduate.”
Edwin cringes when recounting this gaming of the system. “It cheapens everything I do.” Although he is at risk for demoralization because the actions of his school leaders undermine his integrity as a professional, he doesn’t feel demoralized. Unlike most teachers I’ve spoken with, he has a plan to “quit up” and become a school leader. In that role, he hopes to address the systemic inequities that plague his school and schools everywhere. “I know they’re squeezing administrators, too, but at least it’d be better to have a little more status to fend off some of the external pressures.”
Morally mad
After earning her doctorate in a male-dominated discipline at an Ivy League university, Monica chose to enter the teaching profession and has remained for 14 years. She was “drawn to the act of teaching” and was “intellectually excited” to work at the middle school level. Her ongoing goal: “to make irresistibly interesting classrooms.”
Monica teaches in a district that is regularly recognized in lists of top U.S. schools, in an affluent suburb of a major city. Monica’s enviably high salary, well-resourced middle school, and well-prepared and highly educated colleagues have not protected her from demoralization. She was proud to live and work in a district that had collaboratively determined the schools’ priorities for the upcoming years: fostering creativity, supporting inquiry, and building on students’ strengths. Monica had always treasured the ways in which teachers were treated as intellectuals who were respected in the community.
However, new district and building administrators brought an unfamiliar and unilateral approach to leadership. They introduced sweeping reforms that seemed antithetical to the priorities that had previously been established, and they expected unquestioning compliance from all staff. Consultants responsible for rolling out new initiatives presented “offensively simplistic” material with dubious claims such as “Student Learning = Time + Instruction.” This account of student learning stunned Monica, who is well-read in educational research, as facile and inaccurate. When she asked questions, every response the consultants offered presented a binary: You are on board with what we have presented and you are a good teacher, or you are opposed to supporting student learning and you are bad. According to Monica, the school leaders and consultants weaponized this binary in ways that left teachers voiceless and morally suspect if they asked critical questions. She explains, “And you can’t ask questions because you are, like, questioning the morality of something that no one could disagree with. To ask a question is to challenge it and to challenge it is to be against it.”
Throughout her career, Monica believed her intellect, her ability to question, and her concern for students were assets sought after by the district. Now, demands for compliance left her in a state of “moral madness” — what used to be valued as good teaching is now viewed as a liability (Santoro, 2017). Reflecting on how she was made to feel when she approached her leadership about the claims made in the training, she says, “It is a crazy-making environment for teachers who are using our intelligent minds to think critically and who care deeply about the integrity of our work as teachers.”
The moral is the story
Better hydration would not address the pain of the patient hit in the head by an anvil. Likewise, the proposed remedies for burnout (self-care, boundaries, resilience) are unlikely to alleviate the pain of demoralization. Gina was ashamed that the profession lauded those who worked themselves into disability and mourned the ways her district prioritized procedural compliance over deep learning, especially for teachers working with the least-privileged students. Edwin’s professional integrity was impinged when he was pressured to pass students to appease his school leadership while hard-working students with less cultural capital found few advocates. Monica felt as though she was going crazy — previously, school leaders had valued her advocacy efforts, but now she was seen as selfish and morally suspect for speaking up. For Gina, Edwin, and Monica, their ability to engage in good work was threatened. In the face of these challenges, a gift certificate for a massage would only feel insulting.
Given the profound need to attract and retain quality teachers, we must appropriately diagnose the sources of teacher dissatisfaction. These sources are often material: Teachers deserve competitive salaries, reasonable workloads, and safe working conditions. However, teachers’ dissatisfaction may also stem from moral concerns. And only by addressing the moral sources of teachers’ anguish might we stem the tide of teacher exodus. Demoralization is the more accurate diagnosis for teachers who find they can no longer do good work.