Black teachers are fed up––and they’re quitting in droves

When she gets home from work, it takes Monise Seward two or three hours to decompress from the day. She sits there—just sits—to feel the stress leave her body.

Seward is a middle school math teacher in Metro Indianapolis. She’s worked in schools for the last nine years—previously as a special education teacher in Atlanta—but has been in the field of education for a long time, including homeschooling her children.

And, thanks to her Twitter following of 17,000, she has a front row seat to the industry’s changing landscape. Through her (now private) account, Seward cultivates conversations and amplifies issues facing school staff across the country. She even serves as a private confidant, getting direct messages from people who worry about backlash if they make their thoughts public.

“There’s layers to what teachers were experiencing before the pandemic,” Seward says. “And now it’s just been magnified; it’s worse.”

Through her online community, Seward has seen teachers quitting throughout the school year, even posting that they are resigning a month before the end of the academic year.

“People are leaving left and right in the middle of the school year. I saw people post online three weeks ago that they left,” Seward says. “Now, if you leave that close to the end of the school year, you have exceeded your wit’s end.”

What’s the state of Black teachers?

In its 2021 State of the U.S. Teacher Survey, RAND Corporation researchers found that about half of Black teachers reported they were “likely” to leave their jobs by the end of the school year, which was higher than other races.

“Teachers need to be well, teachers need to be whole, teachers need to be healthy for themselves and for the students they teach,” says Elizabeth Steiner, a policy researcher at RAND and an author of the survey. “Everything that was going on during the pandemic, and is still going on, raised the issue to a more urgent level than perhaps it seemed to be before.”

In New York City, the United Federation of Teachers told the AmNews that overall, in 2020, 3,017 teachers filed “Retirement Applications” and in 2021, 4,126 teachers filed papers. UFT Spokesperson Dick Riley also told the AmNews that as of Feb. 8, 2022, 726 teachers have filed. 

“March and April 2022 filings will be somewhat above the #’s in the table,” Riley said in an email. 

The month that teachers have filed more retirement papers than any other month? July, which is right after the school year ends in the five boroughs. 

In July 2020, 1,161 teachers filed papers. In 2021, 1,602 teachers filed. That number is the most since 2019, pre-pandemic when 1,583 teachers filed their retirement papers. 

As with so many aspects of life, Black adults serve multiple roles in schools—and not all of them are visible. Children of color are, widely, more academically successful when they have a Black principal, and that success continues down the ladder. Black students who learned from a Black teacher in elementary school are more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college—13% more likely if they had one Black teacher, and more than double that at 32% if they had at least two. 

So a decline in Black teachers would really have far reaching effects on students. 

“The Black kids won’t have any representation except for the few of us who grin and bear it and take whatever comes their way,” Seward says. “By being silent, we’re not doing anything for the kids who are coming after us if we continue to work in these conditions, and we continue to essentially beg people to see us as human beings, to see us as professionals.”

Mental health matters

Overall, the RAND survey found a lot of job-related stress among teachers. The percentage of teachers who reported “frequent job-related stress and symptoms of depression” was much higher than the general adult population. And, the survey found, the main stressors were the mode of instructions and their health. Teachers described experiencing depressive symptoms and burnout.

“Taken together,” the report says, “these results suggest that job-related stress poses immediate and long-term threats to the teacher supply.”

With the challenges of transitioning to remote learning, then hybrid, then asynchronous, plus those who had to deal with childcare, there’s been a lot of stress on teachers both in their jobs and professional lives.

To help address and alleviate those problems, districts and school leaders need to find a way of understanding what teachers want to see in their jobs and what causes them stress, like interacting with parents, not having enough substitutes or the right curriculum.

“Trying to figure those things out and do what they can to address them could be really important,” Steiner says. “Do the things that help teachers focus on their core jobs, which is teaching.”

Not only has the pandemic taken a huge toll on our mental health, but it’s also highlighted the importance of having mental health resources. Yet public schools often don’t have a full staff of counselors, social workers, or mental health professionals. And, Seward points out, mental health doesn’t stop when school lets out at 3:30. On her current salary, she doesn’t make enough to pay for therapy.

“Who’s going to address our trauma? Who’s going to address our social emotional needs?” Seward says. “We’re supposed to be OK because we’re the adults.”

Long-standing issues are the root of Black teachers’ exodus

Though it’s easy to focus on the pandemic and its challenges—new instruction methods, increased worries about personal health—as the root of Black teachers leaving the industry, it was really the breaking point.

On average, Black educators are paid less than their white colleagues—they’re the racial group least likely to earn more than $15 an hour—and have higher student loan debt. Plus, there’s the workplace culture with discrimination, hostility, and feelings of isolation, or being given more responsibilities as the representatives of their race. A Donors Choose survey found that more than 30% of Black teachers were tasked with disciplining students of color, teaching their school communities about racism, and serving as the liaison between the school and families of color.

In fact, Seward says nothing has changed. “The K-12 system is inherently the exact same way that it was before the pandemic,” she says.

“Some of us are going to work and not being viewed as experts in our area because some white people have this view that we don’t know anything,” Seward says. “Despite the number of degrees we may have, despite the number of years of experience we may have, some people will never ever see us as experts in what we do, period.”

Seward says she doesn’t think most people would believe what a public school looks like on a typical day.

Teachers are still spending their own money on classroom supplies. They’re still working off the clock. Seward has even cut back on her water consumption because, since she can’t leave a classroom unattended, she can’t go to the bathroom when she needs to.

Seward recalled the quote from author Zora Neale Hurston: “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

“We are guilted into overlooking everything and blaming it on the pandemic instead of people in charge, people who control the purse strings, allocating funds in a way so that we can get some services that we need in our buildings,” Seward says. “I’m not judging anybody who’s left.”

Teachers want respect

Whether it’s from students, parents, school staff, or policy makers, teachers are looking for one thing: respect. The respect they’re seeking comes in many forms: compensation, public policy, and accountability.