The topic of teacher retention is like tulips. Come spring, it’s bound to poke its head above the soil. Teacher retention is a hot topic this time of year, and for good reason. Few professions matter more to the functioning of American society.

I don’t buy the narrative in some corners that teacher retention is at a national crisis point. Things are not good. While there is no avalanche (yet), things are liable to get worse in the face of inaction. If inaction carries on long enough we may just see the system crumble altogether.

But that is not inevitable. In a lot of corners, much is being done to figure out this thorny problem. I’ll get to one in particular later. But first, a personal reflection.

Why I Left Teaching

Every former educator has a retention story. Reasons they “left.” Maybe even the reason. Of all the jobs I’ve held, both temporary and professional, teaching is the one I’m the most proud of and also the one that gave me the most nightmares.

(A quick genealogy of jobs I held before teaching: lifeguard, swim lesson instructor, janitor, wreath maker at a tree farm, resident hall assistant in college, laborer at a lumber mill, large machine operator for a forestry company, and virtual college counselor to high school seniors. Since teaching? Communications for two different nonprofits. And a whole lot of freelance writing/editing in between and through all of that.)

Teaching irrevocably changed me. There is the time before I became a teacher and the time after. Two different versions of me occupy those periods of time. The who I am after is better for having been a teacher. And the impact I saw through the hands-on, daily grind of working with students was incredibly rewarding. I may never feel such an immediate sense of making a difference again.

Yet when push came to shove, I left. I have not, as the saying goes, looked back. (Even if I’ve glanced in the rearview numerous times to reflect on my years in the classroom. To analyze the mistakes. Process the regrets. Marvel at the transcendent moments. And wonder about what it would have taken for me to stay.)

Why did you leave? It’s a question I get commonly. Or if not that, this: Do you ever miss teaching? I shouldn’t be surprised. I come from a family of educators. I still know a lot of active teachers and folks who left teaching but stayed in the education world.

I almost never give the full answer to those questions. I could write a whole book about it. So I usually go with the quippiest answer: the money. Meaning, it didn’t pay enough. And this is somewhat true. My last year of teaching in Indiana, I was making around $40,000 (this is a few years back now). Not too bad when you’re single but I got married during my final year of teaching and we were trying to save up for a down payment on a house. What really thinned out my salary was the insurance premium I had to pay to add my wife to my health insurance plan. We both needed insurance and we had to be on my plan. But doing so quadrupled what got taken out of my paycheck each month. Come my final semester, that $40,000 was not stretching so far.

But a major part of me still wanted to teach. I made a salary ask of my school ($50,000; they didn’t or possibly couldn’t meet the request due to budget constraints; or, perhaps they didn’t want to, I was still inexperienced in the grand scheme of things). When that didn’t pan out, I applied to multiple suburban high schools as I thought high school might be a better long-term fit for me and figured the suburbs might pay a bit more.

I interviewed at one (I thought it went okay but never heard back). Never heard from the others to begin with. At the same time, to diversify my options, I had been applying to a few education nonprofits, thinking if I couldn’t find a teaching option that fit or paid enough I could tap back into my passion for writing while still impacting the education field. A few interviews later, I had a job lined up with a nonprofit for when the school year ended.

Looking back, it’s easy to name the reasons I left teaching. The demanding hours. The terrible commute (I lived 45 minutes from my school). The negative student behaviors. The lack of a lunch break. The lesson planning on weekends. The phone calls with angry parents. And those were all real. So too were the reasons being an educator was fulfilling. Building relationships with students and helping students succeed. My colleagues. Teaching a subject I loved. (I’m not being flippant about the pros list being shorter; it is shorter, yet it was heavy on those scales, let me tell you.)

But the more I think about why I am no longer a teacher, the more I come to see it as a sliding doors moment. What if my school met that salary request? What if that high school called me back for a second interview? What if the other high schools called me for a first interview? I could very well have stayed a teacher, at least for longer if not forever. But I didn’t. And ever since then I’ve given a lot of thought to why others may or may not follow a similar path.

What the Conversation About Retention Sometimes Misses

As much as I might feel that the ultimate reason I’m no longer an educator is a series of fateful events, I do strongly believe schools can and should do more to retain their educators. There’s a host of factors that, on the whole, keep teachers in the classroom or drive them away.

In 2022, a major survey of New Hampshire educators asked them how they felt about their jobs and what might lead them to leave. The top three?

1. School culture
2. A lack of administrator support
3. Low pay

Responses differed a bit by those who planned to move from one school to another versus those who planned to leave teaching entirely. Those who were moving schools rated school culture as the biggest reason. Those who were leaving the profession entirely? The pay. 

Take that survey just about anywhere and I imagine the top three concerns more often than not will shake out similarly. Still, the particulars are always trickier than what shows up in survey choices.

Sure, more pay. But how much? Author Daniel Pink, for his recent column in the Washington Post, asked, “Why not pay teachers $100,000 a year?” I love contemplating a moonshot idea as much as anyone. And I believe as strongly as anyone that teachers deserve higher pay across the board. It’s shameful that we societally reward teachers much less than comparable professions (in terms of the level of education required).

Now, I said a love a moonshot but I do not love Daniel Pink’s moonshot. He’s a smart guy. He’s written thought-provoking books. But it’s clearly an opinion from someone who attended Yale Law School, not someone who ever taught in a classroom or worked in a school. He didn’t think through the wide-ranging impacts of a one-size-fits-all approach (and he said a major string he’d attach to the pay increase is the elimination of summer break; I agree the conceit is outdated but that’s a sea change, not a tweak, and he didn’t seem to engage with the ramifications).

(Quick aside. You may have seen the recent buzz around a group of anonymous donors giving $12.5 million to United Schools of Indianapolis to be distributed as merit-based bonuses at the end of each school year. It’ll be interesting to see what impact, if any, that has on this network’s retention. Though it is interesting the cash infusion will only benefit the top performing 30% of educators in that network. Not saying that’s wrong. Only saying it’s quite different from a pay increase.)

I don’t have a clear answer to the how much question but at the very least we could start by paying teachers comparably to other professions that require similar levels of education/training/work effort.

That’s pay, what about the other two (which I’ll boil down to “culture”)? What I’m going to say next is painting too broad a brush but I don’t want this blog to linger into thousands upon thousands of words, so forgive the short cut. Like that New Hampshire survey, people switching schools (another type of meaningful retention that too often gets underplayed) often care most about culture or leadership.

For me, we have to address both the money factor and the cultural reasons in tandem because I firmly believe the longer educators stay at a single school (when it’s the right fit, at least), the better they become.

The reality is turnover hits schools hard. And how we improve school culture/leadership is just as meaningful (and difficult) as to how we improve teacher pay to reduce turnover as teachers switch schools. I’m not sure we’ve reckoned with that part of the teacher retention conversation.

What’s Happening Locally?

Indianapolis is home to really innovative schools and nonprofits. So I was not surprised to recently see an initiative in Lawrence Township garner a lot of coverage from outlets like Chalkbeat Indiana and Mirror Indy. The township has partnered with Teach Indy, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that focuses on attracting and retaining teachers in Indianapolis schools.

(If you’re not clued in to their annual Teachers Conference, you should be! Also, full disclosure, I used to volunteer for Teach Indy, interviewing teachers for their blog. I even wrote up four takeaways from a year of interviewing teachers last year. Really, everything you’re getting today about retention is just an extension of the thoughts I started then.)

Fifteen educators (including both teachers and administrators) at both the middle and high school level in Lawrence Township are participating in Teach Indy’s Reimagining the Teacher Role Cohort. This spring, they’re interviewing colleagues, looking to identify key issues, and dreaming up possible solutions to pilot come next school year.

The aim is to improve teacher retention rates. While they’ve rebounded since the pandemic (to 80% statewide for Indiana in 2023), they’re still lower than they used to be. And honestly, even pre-pandemic rates were not exactly the bar to shoot for. We can, and even need to, do better. Lawrence Township is looking to break new ground in this regard and for that I applaud them.

I have no idea what will come of this new partnership. But it’s bold and it’s leaning on teacher expertise. I’m excited to see what comes of it and how other districts and networks might learn from it.

Where Does That Leave Us?

If you stuck with me this long, you might be disappointed by what comes next. I have no big recommendation, no special wisdom. But if we (and I mean this in the broadest sense possible; I’m not just referring to schools or state government) care about addressing why teachers leave, why so few enter the profession, and why so many of them switch schools with regularity, I don’t think we’d be wrong to start with these two things.

1. Pay teachers more.
2. Listen to teachers more.

I know, I know. Look at me being reductive after trying to be nuanced for 2,000 words. But sometimes you just have to land the plane. Even if it’s in a swamp and you lose your landing gear on the way down. The noble trek must start somewhere.