Young Teachers Stepping into the Classroom with Passion and Concerns

More than half of America’s teachers are considering leaving the profession, according to a February poll by the National Education Association (NEA), and burnout is on the rise. Students training to walk into their own classrooms soon say they bring a passion to education but are aware of the hardships they are about to encounter.

 “It feels very cool to be someone who came from literally nothing to be a teacher because, in my experience, most of my teachers came from rich areas,” said Chicago teacher Kaelin Tibbs. “I teach a bunch of tiny, tiny children that are going to go out and change the world in their own way.”

Tibbs, a kindergarten-through-eighth grade music teacher, had multiple goals when they had first started their education major at Carthage College, but one of them was striking; to not be like the bad teachers they had experienced. It is an eye-opening reminder that, for most, that good, life-changing teacher comes far and few.

“I did not have the best teachers growing up,” said Tibbs. “In fact, I’ve had arguably some really terrible teachers. The only good ones I really had were my music teachers. I had one teacher in specific, my middle school band teacher, and they were the first person in my entire life that told me I was good at something; that impact and assurance was incredibly important to me.”

Poor classroom experiences may be connected to burnout. According to the poll done by the NEA, teacher burnout is commonly linked with a decrease in student academic performance. UW-Madison education student Jack Chiapete experienced this first hand.

“I think there were many points as a student where I felt discouraged, and you could pin that on a teacher feeling the same way,” said Chiapete. “If I have a teacher who pushes me in the wrong direction, I will probably go in that direction. I’ve had teachers who have pushed back on me to make me not want to do the work.”

Chiapete, currently a student-teacher specializing in second grade, has just started his journey into the realm of teaching, and according to him, this job is all about passion.

“I like helping kids,” said Chiapete. “I’ve been doing childcare in a way since middle school with babysitting, and I know it’s something that I’ve always liked, and then I kind of realized this is what I want to do.”

Tibbs and Chiapete’s reasoning for becoming teachers starts from the same motivation, to do better than those before them.

Yet there are fewer students eager to take on this journey. The rate of students coming into education is lower than most years, according to resident assistant and special education major Sophia Hua Ling Knox.

“There’s been a decrease in the past couple of years, at least in the elementary level,” said Knox. “I think some specialty areas have a decent number, but the special and elementary education departments are somewhat lower.”

According to Knox, the decrease can be attributed to COVID-19, but it can also be traced to even before then, with the main stressors being lack of pay, the poor treatment teachers receive, the sheer intensity of the work, and the lack of mental health resources.

Tibbs said they have dealt with the latter personally.

“There’s a lot of pressure to be like the best at your job right away, even though I’m a first-year teacher,” said Tibbs. “My school is great, my principal is great, but we aren’t in the best scenario right now, so I don’t necessarily get the support I need for being a first-year teacher. While I do know some teachers, who have experienced support with their mental health needs, I personally have not experienced that.”

Chiapete said he feels anxiety about his profession, but he hasn’t felt too much stress yet.

“I haven’t really felt my mental health drained that much,” said Chiapete. “Although, based on what I’ve seen, most teachers who are getting burned out and discouraged are for similar reasons; lack of support for the staff, lack of communication with the district, those kinds of things. To me, the fix-all would seem to be more support given to the staff.”

Knox shares the same sentiment as Chiapete, but again sustains the point that teacher burnout has been prevalent before COVID-19 and even earlier, and the reasoning as to why it is so widespread is far more complex than one could imagine.

According to her, there are so many variables that shape this sort of burnout.

“For the past three years, I know there’s been a huge decrease in resources,” said Knox. “There’s been a substitute shortage, which is very bad because, if a teacher takes a personal day, that puts on double the amount for other teachers, especially with COVID-19. There’s been a decrease in bus drivers, and I know one of my students hasn’t gone in two months because their bus got canceled. On top of all that, society puts such a high standard on teachers which can be good but sometimes feels like they’re asking too much of us. There are just so many factors that play into this.”

Students preparing to enter the field will walk in with familiarity with some of the new tools for engaging students, such as Zoom. For Chiapete, he utilized Zoom for one of his lessons, an application that’s seen as a substitute for in-person learning.

“I was doing science with my kids,” said Chiapete. “I took my humidifier and we’re working with clouds, and what worked really well was the fact that I was able to project like a video onto the screen with Zoom. I think that there are still kids who really do enjoy that aspect of online learning. The cloud experiment was such a hit that they’re not letting me take it home. The kids want to play with it every day.”

As for Tibbs, even with the hardships that come with entering a profession such as education, they find the experience to be incredibly rewarding on a deep level.

“As a person who came from poverty, it’s powerful to be there for these kids who also come from a similar situation,” said Tibbs. “To be that person who can show them that they can do great things too? Powerful.”

Finally, Knox understands the long road ahead and the many bumps that need to be worked out, but that hasn’t phased her. To her, the experiences she’s made make the hardships worth it.

“Obviously, education is something that can be challenging,” said Knox. “But to me, I find it worth the challenge because of the impact I could make on students. Knowing that I go to school, even now in fields where I go four times a week, seeing students’ faces light up when I come to class or hearing students talk about, ‘Are you going to be here tomorrow, I want you to be here for my birthday.’ Stuff like that. It just makes the job and the challenges, so, so worth it, and very rewarding.”