Next week is American Education Week. The St. Mary’s County Board of Education recognized the week with a resolution at their regular November 13 meeting. This year’s theme is “Raise Your Hand For Student Success.” The resolution was presented to St. Mary’s County Teacher of the Year John Snyder, President of the Education Association of St. Mary’s County Anna Laughlin and President of the Collective Education Association of St. Mary’s County President Faith Abernathy.
Laughlin, however, during the public comment portion of the school board meeting, dampened the celebration with concerns from teachers about the burdens being put upon them. The following are her comments:
“Lee Iacocca once said ‘In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else.’ Not everyone can be successful at teaching. Not everyone has the desire to follow that path. Unfortunately, that path has now become so difficult that even those with the desire find themselves unable to meet the challenges.
“As this week of celebration draws near, I feel compelled to make you all aware of the challenges that are causing people to pack it up and leave the profession. I want you to listen because I hear too much lip service about how difficult our lives have become, but there are never any solutions and things only get worse every year. If something doesn’t give soon I fear that people will stop going into the profession because the sacrifice is just becoming too great. It’s not that people love their students any less or that we no longer hold the lofty goals that brought us to the profession, it’s that the profession has become so demanding that it sucks the life out of us. Our health suffers, our families suffer, and our quality of life suffers.
“We all knew going in that our jobs would require more than the 35 hours we are compensated for. A 35 hour week became 45 hours of labor when I was a novice. It is now 60 to 80 hours per week. They are working the equivalent of 2 full time jobs while be compensated for one. It isn’t even so much the salary as the fact that personal sacrifice has become a burden that is no longer bearable no matter how big your shoulders! Add all the demands to justify your existence through endless hours of paperwork to the stress of high stakes testing and the knowledge that someone else’s performance could end your career.
“According to the national Center for Education Statistics, 33% of new teachers leave the profession after 3 years, 46% are gone in 5. Of those leaving the profession each year, 56% leave because of job dissatisfaction. These are people who came to the profession full of hope and energy, looking forward to spending their adult lives in the service of children. The united teaching profession has been warning you for years about the short sighted f
