Teachers Are Quitting — And Warning About America’s Classrooms

What are you going to do when they're all gone? Watch this.

I ultimately decided to leave because I realized I needed an easier job.

No matter what I try to do, they just they it won't go through their heads.

Called a parent today and I said, "Just to let you know, your child has a F in my class because they come in and they don't do anything." And then they start screaming. She hung up.

Buddy, why did you struggle on this quiz? What What was hard about it? What was difficult? And they look me dead in my eyes and they say, "I'll be honest, I didn't read the passage." What do you mean you didn't read the passage?

School districts are trying to run like companies with the numbers. And it's that's not it's not the science of education.

Today, I walked out of my job. I did. I have 2 hours left of my school day and I'm leaving because I'm so stressed out. The students' behavior, their lack of trying, their apathy for school, parents that don't give a [ __ ].

I was getting so many questions after I just explained my directions. Take out your yellow notebooks, turn to page 14, and the kids just stare.

They're crying because they're getting blamed for literally any and everything that children are doing.

I spend 90% of my day managing kids' emotions, helping to regulate them, managing outbursts and behaviors and tantrums. I spend so much time managing behavior that sometimes I feel like I'm failing as an educator. I feel like I'm not doing the job that I was hired to do.

A few months ago, I did a couple videos showing how so many teachers are now quitting the profession because of the moral decline here in the United States, the issues with technology in the classroom, and other problems that they are dealing with in their administration. There are continuously more videos coming out about teachers saying, "I don't want to do this anymore. Things are not the same." and they are sharing their reasons why. And I want to show what teachers are actually saying this year.

This is what we're doing to teachers. It is way worse than most people realize. And I already know what you're going to say in the comments. This teacher's this and this teacher's that. I've been a principal for 14 years. I know this teacher very well. She's a friend of mine. I've seen her teach. I've seen her work with kids. I've seen her do amazing things. I've also seen the struggle that she and every other teacher that I know is going through. We don't trust them anymore. And now I know what you're going to say. Well, we can't trust every teacher. That's true of any profession. But here's what I'm going to fight back on. The solution to having a few bad teachers can't be to not trust all the teachers. Most of the good teachers I know have either already quit or are thinking about it.

Here's another reason why teachers are quitting right now. There are no consequences for students. In the state that I teach in, we can't even legally give somebody a detention anymore. I mean, I've had students in the past that have used the n-word, have you, you know, drawn swastikas and done like little Nazi salutes in class and stuff like that, and you can't, they don't do anything about that. It seems like the only thing that kids have any consequence for these days is if they do drugs at school or they come to school under the influence of drugs or alcohol or if they get in a fight. This is why teachers are quitting because like nothing there's no you can't punish them anymore like legally. It's against the law. Can't give them detention. This is what we're dealing with.

I just resigned midyear as a second-year teacher. The amount of harassment and bullying and the lack of administration support is disturbing when you have a room full of students who watch your every move as a teacher and seem to have more authority than the adults because mom and dad work in the same district. This has been by far the most unprofessional work environment I've ever worked in. What I thought was supposed to be a professional work environment turned into a hostile workplace where I was called abrasive for expecting the students to learn, allowing childishness for not knowing an answer when approached by administration, accusing me of something that I did not do, and prideful when administration thought standing up for myself was the incorrect thing to do when students went home telling things about me that were not true. And you know that's the scary part. That is the scary part when a student says things about you that is not true and can ruin can ruin a teacher.

What do you guys think? A first-grade little girl just slapped my third-grade student. And when the line supervisors were disciplining her, she said, "Don't worry. My mom must come up here and take care of it." No wonder why teachers are quitting.

Hi, my name is Melissa and this is my last day of being a teacher. I've been teaching for 17 years. I've taught eight years in Missouri, six years in Arkansas, and the last three years here in California. And I am just done. I'm done. As of today, I have made myself sick all this school year. Uh to the point of throwing up, panic attacks, high anxiety, not sleeping, hurting everywhere. And I finally chose myself over this job. I have loved being a teacher for probably about 16 of those 17 years, but I'm not going to make it to the end of this year. Sometimes you get in a situation so toxic that you have to decide whether your health or staying for the kids is worth it. And I decided about 2 weeks ago that it's not anymore. So today is my last day as a teacher.

So if you're a fellow high school teacher, I need to know if you are also experiencing this in the classroom. And I think it is one of the big issues that I'm starting to see with kids and school just in general right now. But earlier this week um we were you know just normal day and today for or that day specifically for the lesson we were doing guided notes along with an interactive assignment simultaneously. All right. So couple slides of notes and then we go to the assignment. Um and the assignment was over the battles of World War I. So maybe it was a website or a video that I would play in front of the class real quick. and they'd literally just have like four or five questions for that particular section. And I would give them like four minutes, five minutes, six minutes on a timer to complete those questions. And then we were going to talk about them as a class, answer them as a class, call on people to answer them. And I had multiple students that when it came to the assignment part, they just didn't do it. And I would ask them like, "Why are you not doing it?" And they're like, "Well, I don't understand it." And I was like, "Okay, what don't you understand?" And they're like, "I don't know where to find the answers." I was like, "Well, did you click on the website?" And they're like, "Oh." And then they click on the website and then they start scrolling and they're like, "Ah, this is too much. I don't want to do it. I'm not going to do it." And I was like, "What do you mean?" They're like, "It's too much reading. I'm not going to do it." What? And then I would call on students and they're like, "I don't know. I didn't do it. I didn't answer the questions." Like, they don't care. Like when I was in high school, if I got called on and I didn't do the assignment or the questions, I was like, embarrassed, but kids almost think it's like cool to not do it. Like they're just like, "Yeah, I don't want to do it. I'm not going to. I don't care." And I cannot be the only teacher that is experiencing this.

What's happened to the schools today? I've been teaching now for a while. I am a 36-year veteran now. I went ahead and went back to the classroom of which I love. I love teaching school, but one of the things I've really noticed that really bothers me if there's no honor among the students. They would rather lie to you. They would rather disrupt you. They would rather act silly in the sense of not wanting to listen, not wanting to take notes, not wanting to. They'd rather talk about nonsense. You know, the conversations about, you know, what happened over the weekend, who broke up with who, why all of that is so much more important than listening to authority. Listening to someone that is trying to have their best interest at heart, but it doesn't seem to be matter. You come home at night as a teacher and you you ponder these things and you think, "Am I doing making any difference at all? What am I doing now? How am I making the difference I thought I would make when the majority of the class won't even be quiet for more than five minutes without getting chewed out?" Then you realize that when you do take them to the office, the principalship and administration have changed so much. They're not hardline like they used to be. I take a kid to the office, he's usually back in my room within 5 minutes. And I've dealt with that and I ex I come to peace with it. But I come home at night thinking, what what have I done? What is it that causes students to be so dishonorable that choose they choose not to listen? They choose not to make an honest mistake and and apologize for that mistake. It's like we're raising narcissists. All of them are narcissists or psychopaths. They would rather disrupt the room with a noise like a cow or a sheep or make use those damn Chromebooks to make some kind of bing sound or something that that disrupts class. And yet they don't understand that they're not disrupting me as a teacher. They're disrupting their classmates and stealing their opp their opportunity to learn. But yet no honor, no one to say, you know, Mr. Clemens, I'm sorry. You know, that was me. I shouldn't have done that. Those days are over. They have learned to deny, deny, deny.

So where does this all end? I think we're starting to see it. I think we're in a scope. We're seeing that that the education system is really being dissolved with between how we are treating our teachers today and how the students are treating our teachers and how the few people that aren't in education anymore seem to know the answers to all of the questions. But they really don't because there is no answer. The answer comes when in the day you were taught honor. You were taught to own your mistakes. But we don't do that anymore. We don't own our mistakes. It's somebody else's fault. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I'm just sitting here doing my work. Well, they wrote down three things and that's their work. Well, what's the answer to that? I don't know. I think we need to throw those Chromebooks in the garbage. First thing, I think parents should have to come to school twice or three times a year and sit with their child all day. We have to have some accountability. There has to be a consequence for their actions. There isn't any. We've learned the most dangerous thing in history of man is empathy. When we start to say, "Well, they've got a hard home. Well, they've got problems that, you know, they can't handle. Well, they're just, you know, mom is a a [ __ ]. Well, you know, I mean, they can't see. They're special ed and they they don't understand." We have turned empathy into a weapon. And consequently, the government, I believe, is doing everything in its power to dissolve education.

A new teacher, for instance, a friend just passed the certification test, she can't become a teacher. She still has to to pass a PPR, which is kind of like, you know, are you stable enough to be a teacher? Then you have to go through 90 hours of education, which of which you'll be charged $500 a month for. What really? To sit in a classroom and be disrespected. To sit in a classroom and realize there is no honor. To sit in a classroom that the entitlement is over the top. I don't know. Make your comments. What do you think? Where are we going?

It is time to bring back notebooks. Real notebooks. I don't know where your kids go to school, but I cannot do this Chromebook [ __ ] anymore. My child does not learn by reading on a computer. My child does not learn by taking quizzes on a computer. My child does not learn by just working in a computer 24/7. I understand the need to teach technology to this next generation. I really do. But I think we have lost a lot of what made us great before. Like I don't know, writing because my kid doesn't know how to write. He's 11. He can barely write. Typing and writing are two different things. Do not try to tell me that they are the same thing. Our kids need to write to remember things. Some people need to read to remember things. Some people need to speak to remember things. There are different ways to learn and we are just shoving a screen in front of our kids and expecting them to be smart. And I will tell you something, I see a lot of kids as a mother. They are not very bright. Nope. Not. Not even a little bit.

So, if you don't know, I teach high school English, English one and English three specifically. And my biggest pet peeve right now, and it I've seen it become such a problem lately, is let's say I give out a quiz to my kids and there's a passage or something they have to read on said quiz and the questions are about the thing that they have to read. So, the answers are in the passage. They take the quiz, they don't do great. I feel like I failed as a teacher. I feel bad. So I sit down with them. Buddy, why did you struggle on this quiz? What what was hard about what was difficult? What did you find hard to understand? And they look me dead in my eyes and they say, "I'll be honest, I didn't read the passage." What do you mean you didn't read the passage? That's step one. And they're like, well, I read the first paragraph and it was really long, so I didn't read the rest. My gosh. Just read it. And they're like, "Yeah, but it's a lot. But you're going to fail if you don't." "Yeah, but I'll be okay." Like, it's just it's just a regular grade. I'm trying to give it to you. Just read the rest. That's my new pet peeve this year is kids just like don't won't read it and they'll just guess on the questions and then they go, "Whoops, I failed that." Like that's what that's what they do. I don't understand. I don't get it. I So parents, teachers, we got to get the kids to read. Read the passage, answer the questions, get a good grade. Mindblowing.

I quit teaching. This has been my fifth and final year of being a teacher. If you follow me on TikTok, you probably noticed that I have not posted in a couple months. I haven't posted since February. I have been kind of checked out and mentally and emotionally done with this job. I'm leaving. And it wasn't a decision that I have taken lightly. This is a decision that I have been thinking about all year. This year has been extremely challenging for me. I'm not sure if for those of you who are not in education are aware of what's happening in schools, but it it's not easy. I don't I don't think people truly understand what teachers are going through. Lots of children are are not told no at home, which makes my job extremely difficult when it comes to having them hold accountability for their actions and their mistakes and following directions and keeping their hands to themselves. This year I have been cursed at by both students and parents. I have been hit, punched repeatedly. And what hurts the most is the lack of support from the families when you are telling them and explaining what their child did. Instead of asking you, "Are you okay?" or "My child did what?" They ask you, "Well, what did you do to make them upset?" Or, "Are there cameras in the room?" The behaviors that I have had to put up with this year are behaviors that I have never experienced as a teacher. This so far I have cried so much more than I have like with all my teaching of years combined. I feel like I have taken off so many days from my mental health because I have not been able to mentally mentally or physically bring myself to school. Education is not in a good place right now. It's It's really bad. I have so many stories that I could talk about that I will be posting later, but it's time to go. It's time to go. Again, this was not an easy decision. Um, but I do feel that it is necessary for myself and my own mental health. And it it does break my heart that I am walking away for something that I went to school with and had so much passion for, but that passion is gone. I parent more than I do teach. Y'all, I just can't do it anymore. I can't. I guess for the first time, I'm just beat. I feel defeated.

I've been in this sixth-grade classroom since elementary um since January 7th. I was scheduled through tomorrow. I'm not showing up tomorrow. I can't. Um these kids are a challenge. The lesson plans, they suck. So that plays into the behaviors, but it's it has challenged me so much and no matter what I try to do, they just they it won't go through their heads. I don't know what to do. They need someone else to come in here because the teacher is supposed to be gone through the end of the year. Um, they need to figure something out. Um, I over the last like two and a half weeks I've had three or four different teachers come in here, talk to them, you know, crash out on them. The assistant principal, the counselor, the principal, like sending kids to the office, just everything that we can do in our power to try to rein them in, they just refuse. You know, they're in a weird time right now because the lesson plans, like I said, they're not very good. There's a lot of free time. I've had to try and find things for them to do, but all I ask from them is stay in your seats, do your work, keep the volume at an appropriate level, and we're good. We're good. They can't even do that. They're up running around the room not doing their work. They refuse to do their work. I have students where they they literally they will not work. No matter what I do, what I say, who I get, they will not work. All they want to do is get on the computer and play games, play Geometry Dash. And I I refuse to let them do that. Oh, you're done. Here, go do this packet. Like, go write your time tables. Like, cuz they try to speed through their work just so they can get on the computer and play games. No, not around here. But today has been my absolute breaking point. And the teachers that came in to try to assist me, get them under control, they were like, "You you shouldn't even show up tomorrow." And I'm not because it's ridiculous. I'm a damn good teacher. I know I am. I get praised by people that have walked into my classroom and have shadowed me and you know teachers I'm frequently requested. I have teachers texting me every single day. Please come in. Please come in. The kids love you. You know you know what you're doing. I know what I'm doing. It's something with this generation of kids that apathy. They don't want to do any work. None. Literally none. And they're always trying to get out of it. They're always trying to manipulate you and the situation. And it's just it blows my mind. We when I was in school, not not to, you know, back in my day, but I'm 27 years old, so not that not extremely far removed from school. When we were in school, we wouldn't dare act like this. But today was my breaking point. You know, I've spent the past 2 and 1/2 weeks with these kids. We have grown a bond. You know, do they annoy me? Absolutely. Absolutely. But I still love them. I still care about them. I try to walk in every day with it's a new day mindset. Some days it's been really hard to come back and not just cancel outright. But today is one of my students' last days there. He's moving schools. And so out of the goodness of my heart, I decided to go and get cupcakes for the kids and I wanted to turn on like a video at the end of the day, just have them have a break from the constant packets and paperwork. and you know, we have, like I said, the lesson plans are rough. We have the time to do this. And I just wanted to do something nice. I let them know this at the the beginning of the day. I said, "Please don't mess it up. My my last day is tomorrow. Let's let's have a good last few days. I've I've already had to become super strict. I feel like such a mean teacher. I feel so bad with what I've had to do, but they've brought me to this point. I just feel like I'm failing, but I know it's not me. Sorry. I'm a huge empath. It just gets me. So, I asked them, "Please, let's just have a good last couple days," and they can't even do that. I have I caught three kids cheating. I'm having headphones fly across the room. I had a glue explosion out of nowhere. Like kids are out of their seats running around distracting others just yelling like just insane stuff. Not working on their assignments. I had a kid try to lie to me to another teacher saying that I didn't give her the paperwork that the teacher wanted her to work on when they weren't here yesterday. Literally lying. Like just insane stuff all before 10:00. They're at lunch right now and when they come back they're they're not going to like me. We're not ending on a good note. And that breaks my heart. It absolutely breaks my heart. But they I'm I'm just done. I'm so mentally checked out and done. I I just I can't waste any more energy on this. So, I'm I got to go. And I wish the biggest luck to the next substitute that walks in here cuz they are going to need it.

I get DMs and emails from teachers all the time saying, "Do you have any words of wisdom? I've always wanted to be a teacher, but this job is not sustainable. Here's what my administration did. What should I do? I called home and this was the reaction I got from a parent. What should I do? I did X, Y, and Z in my class and none of the kids were paying attention. What should I do?" I don't know. I try to give the best advice I can. All of the stop gaps in place to amend this behavior and this cycle are gone and it's being put on the teachers. What are you going to do when more and more teachers are added to this ever growing teacher shortage crisis? During COVID, teachers were heroes. You all saw what it was like. Oh my god, how could you do that? I couldn't do that day after day. Do you want to homeschool? Do you want your kids to go to schools that don't have certified teachers? Or do we want to encourage the best and the brightest to get their teaching certification, to get that education, to teach your children to the best of their ability? What do you want? If you want something, administrators, parents, anybody who's involved in a school, you have to act on this or it will all be gone. Teachers are trying to tell you that you and your kids are not okay. We're not okay. We're not okay.

This is a real student's paper. I covered up the name cuz I don't want you know that's that is what they completed in 20 minutes. This is what they completed. I told them the answer to number nine. 1/4 of the students got it incorrect. We played. We gamified the curriculum. It's on my board because we played a game just to show you. Hold on. Gamified the curriculum. Okay, these were their mascots. Okay, group three won clearly. Okay, but these were their mascots for the groups. Okay, I gamified it. And when I tell you that my principal came in, okay, after we had done the game and they're doing the quiz and I have a CC class, so I had my gened students just going to town. She was like, "Oh my gosh, they're powering through this quiz. It looks like they really know it. Where's the rest of your class?" I'm like, "They're across the hall." Okay, they need to have test accommodations. So, they're in another uh classroom. So she goes to that class with the the students who were in here for the game and she comes back 60 seconds later saying, "Miss D, they are a hot mess. They keep asking me since the X repeats, is it a function?" And I don't know what they're asking. So I'mma stay over here with these kids. I need you to go across the hall with your CC teacher and answer those questions. So they can use a calculator. They can use their notes. They can ask questions. They can have class discussion over there. All of that is test accommodations that we are doing for them. And they did not know even though we just went over it five minutes before they went over to the quiz. They did not know. Let me tell you, I give them typed notes. Let me show you cuz no, y'all don't believe us when we be crashing out. You think that we're just making things up because we're just horrible daycare providers for y'all. Typed, typed out. They're they're typed and given. You think it's our fault? Somehow, some way it's still our fault. How How is it still our fault? The kids are not okay. And it's not the teacher's fault because we're not babysitters. We are educators and we're good at what we do. We're good at what we do. We love what we do and we love your kids. But we do not share custody of raising your children. You have to get on them at home. You have to ask them what they learn. And you got to help them stay focused on studying cuz they don't. They are testing our kids to death. They are stomping on their creativity. School districts are trying to run like companies with the numbers. And it's that's not it's not the science of education.

When I went to school, we we actually like, okay, this is the standard. This is the thing that a fourth grader needs to know. Sorry, God. This is the thing a fourth grader needs to know. We gathered the resources. We found it. We made lesson plans. We were like creative. We came up with fun and engaging things for our kids to do. We studied different um teaching today is not teaching. Um they want a script, they want a robot, they want their numbers. Um the word differentiation. So when I went to school, it's like that was the most important thing like you get your student what they need, right? If they're if the child is has behavior issues, you figure it out and you get them what they need. If they have reading issues, you adapt their lessons. You get them extra help. You meet their needs. So, our district now is going to tier one. So, we cannot differentiate. We cannot give the child what they need. I have I teach fourth grade. I have two kids at a kindergarten reading level. I have about four kids at a first-grade reading level. and they're telling me that I have to teach this fourth-grade curriculum that these kids can't even read. You know, like back in the day, it's like, you know, teachers like, "Okay, turn to page 47 and read this and answer the questions." They can't read the material. But I cannot I am not allowed to give them material that is at their level. So they sit there. Also, our wonderful curriculum we have. Maybe I'll go into that on a different post if this is I know my content is all over the place. There's no reading groups. There's no reading groups. So, we just do our whole group lesson and they do these things that they can't do. So, I give these assignments and I'm like, "Hey, use this text compared to this text and use this figurative language to" they don't they're not able to do it. So, what happens is when you're not when it's not at the right level, you get behaviors. You get like them feeling horrible about themselves. Um, you get them feeling like they're not smart. you get them feeling like they're isolated and that they are alone because you're asking them to do this thing that they can't do. Um, we are I mean there's so like my mind is just I guess the point of this is I used to love teaching. I used to love teaching. I used to be excited to get here every day and not sitting in my car crying over work. I just I work at a really high need school and these kids are are are coming with a lot of stuff and so I'm I'm meeting their needs, but I'm not enough. I'm not doing this right. I'm not doing that right. I didn't get this test done. What if I handed you a like seven-page test on like like you know anatomy and physiology at like a a doctorate level. And I'm like, "Do your best. You can do it here. Just try and you literally don't know anything on it." That's what we do as a pretest. We have to give them this long ass pretest and they're sitting there feeling like crap and it wastes an hours of their life. My kids, you know, I have maybe like six kids that are on grade level that can do the work that I'm like, "Hey, let's do this. Do this homework." Six out of 24. I'm not supported. I'm I I asked for resources. My two kids that can't read, I've been told I can't use anything that's not district approved. So, I send emails. I I make meetings for them to come and tell me what to teach them because they won't let me decide because they don't trust me. Because we are not valued anymore as educators. I got an email telling me that I was 10 minutes late twice in the last three weeks. All of those nights before I was the last car here and I took work home and was grading it at 10:00 p.m. But I'm going to get in trouble for being 10 minutes late. I'm not valued. This job is sucking like my passion and I just cannot do it anymore. I just I don't know why I can't let go of it because because these yesterday I had a student come see me. He's 22 and he said, "You by far my I've thought about you. You inspired me. You help turned my attitude and my life around." So many of those kids like I know God is pushing me pushing me towards something different. I know that's what it is and I need to just accept it. And it's scary because this is all I've known and this has been through my bad relationships and hard struggles. Like this has been the only constant in my life. So it's really scary.

So I made a video about teachers quitting midyear and I have a lot of people in my comments giving me pushback who I don't think have ever been teachers. So I want to explain a few things. You are breaking your contract if you resign like after usually late spring, early summer. Like usually the previous school year is still going on. Um, and you are asked to renew your contract in like April or May. I don't know many people who can say with 100% certainty what their life will look like for the next year and a half. If you told me this time last year what my life would look like now, I would not believe you. I went through a breakup after 5 years that I completely didn't expect. My father's cancer became terminal and then he had a series of strokes which disabled him and I became a caregiver and I was having to spend all of my money and I went into debt trying to go visit him in the hospital. Like there were many days last year that I wondered if I could finish out the school year and that wasn't even the spring before. That was like in December. My point is I wouldn't have left the classroom because I wanted to. I had a family circumstance that changed and that is going to happen to teachers inevitably. And these systems where you get fined or you lose your license because you can't finish out a year or you even have to resign before it even starts don't retain teachers. They just punish us for being human beings. A lot of the times if you're resigning midyear, you're probably fed up with teaching anyways. You don't really need that license. Um but if you do want your license, you're probably resigning for a circumstance that's completely outside of your control. We're already broke. So finding us is just like, you know, an extra kick to the shins on the way out. What I wish people understood is we are people, too. We have families. We have lives. We have circumstances that change. And nobody wants to leave the classroom midyear. It's incredibly stressful. It's a horrible, hard decision to have to make. And so if someone is making that decision, they probably need a little bit of extra support. And we should have a school system that not only supports teachers so they don't feel like they have to make that decision but supports the students when it inevitably has to occur because it's going to occur somewhere for whatever reason. It just happens. Teachers are people. So all of this shame and guilt on teachers about being like it hurts the kids or whatever. No, it doesn't. We should have school systems that respect teachers as human beings and can support our classrooms when things change because inevitably something is going to change in some school somewhere in this country. Whether it's a teacher whose spouse, you know, gets moved for their job or it's a teacher whose loved one needs a full-time caregiver or it's a teacher who develops an illness themselves. There needs to be supports for our teachers and our students. And placing that blame on teachers that it doesn't exist is not helpful.

300,000 teachers quit last year. I got their anonymous confessions. What they revealed will shock you. Here's the teacher confessions. I spend 6 hours on paperwork and 2 hours actually teaching. I'm not allowed to fail students who haven't learned anything. The curriculum is designed by people who have never actually taught. I'd homeschool my own kids if I could afford to quit. We're babysitters with degrees, not educators. Parents know their kids better than I ever will. The system isn't broken, but speaking up means losing my job. Even the people inside the system know it's failing your children.

Okay. So, um, when I did put in my resignation, I gave notice. I sent it via email. So, I emailed my principal and assistant principal and then separately I emailed HR. And tell me why. Um, I never got a response only from HR, but I'm saying my principal, assistant principal, they never responded and they acted like it didn't even happen to the point where I had to double check that it actually went through. Um, but yeah, to this day they never spoke to me after I resigned. They kind of acted like I wasn't there unless they absolutely had to. So like during IPS and stuff, but it was pretty insane that they just completely ignored me after I quit because I guess they were mad about it or who knows what. Um, and they were so terrible even to my um teachers on my team because my lead teacher had to find out from another um grade what their plan was to replace me with a long-term sub. And she's like, they never even talked to me. And yeah, it was. But I will say this, honestly, the way admin acted when I resigned was not only so fitting to how they had been the whole time I was there, but it was also just like extra validation that I was making a good choice. So, I am not somebody that wants to be petty, but I was so tempted to just like just like approach them and say like, "Thank you for making this so easy for me. Thank you for making it so easy for me to know that I'm making a good decision. You've made this just so so easy."

So I just submitted my letter of resignation. I had a meeting with the head of my department on Monday. I just spoke to the principal today and I submitted my resignation letter and my last day here will be January 30th. So about 3 more weeks. I'm going to apply like I applied to another place. Um, just heard from another teacher that I should apply to companies. They're looking to hire teachers and admin. I'm going to start posting more. I don't know. My heart's pounding cuz I have to tell all the kids today cuz the rumors are going to go around before the 30th cuz I have to switch my classes with another teacher. Um, I'm really nervous about that. Um, body is a little bit more calm and like like a panic attack basically and just like sit still and I don't know 27 years old I don't think I should feel that way. I don't think anyone should ever feel that way about a job. Um, I just decided that if this is a place that doesn't fulfill my needs or makes me feel worth something, then it's just not for me. And the best part about life and about being an adult is that you get to choose and you get to decide your fate and you get to decide like your reason because I always like literally have a tattoo, but I always think like everything happens for a reason. I feel like there's a reason why I don't feel okay here and I I haven't felt okay here since basically the first day that I just didn't feel right. Um, in the other school I felt like I belonged there. I don't know. So 2026 is the year to think about your mental health, to think about your physical health, to think about yourself. Um, I don't want to be drained at the age of 27. I'd rather be broke and happy than rich and miserable.

I need to go off for a second. I just had like a really enlightening conversation with my first block about what they think about the cheating, about the AI use. And I want to go off for a second and tell you guys what they told me. And I wanted to ask them why. I asked them, you know, show a hands. First question, show of hands. How many of you have either used AI to cheat or know someone who used AI to cheat? Every hand goes up. It was like 90% of the room. But it's more than just AI use. It is not uncommon to have a student miss 15 or more days in every one of your classes that all of your C classes will have a kid who misses 15 or more days. It is not uncommon to have a kid who is constantly in detention constantly. For minor infractions where they do the infraction, they get the consequence and then they never associate consequence and action. And they do it again. And then they do it again. and then they do it and they end up just in ISI or in detention all the time. And I wanted to find out why because I'm always hearing from adults. I'm always hearing from my peers. I'm always hearing from the teacher talk community here on TikTok. I'm always hearing from policy analyst types and New York Times author types. And no one's listening to the kids. Why do they think it's happening? And so I wanted to listen to them and this is what they told me. Said in summary that school only cares about the product and not the process. And they're right. They're absolutely right. So I asked them what I could do differently to make my classroom care more about the process than the product. And some of the answers that they gave me are going to be the thing I build my entire curriculum around next year. First, substantially more discussion and debate. Substantially more. We already do a lot of that in my class, but I brought in this really cool activity that encouraged students to talk to people they disagreed with. I used it in my debate class first. I'm going to be whipping out that activity every single week in my history class next year. We're going to be doing that at least once a week to get them talking, to get them arguing, to get them thinking because that's the process, not the product. Next, I'm changing the way I do all of my assessments rather than just the regular multiple choice short answer whatever tests. You study for the test and you put the answers down. That's a product test. Can you press A, B, or C? I'm looking for a process test. So, all of my tests going forward are going to be open everything except for computers. We'll see why in the next piece, the last piece, but they're going to be open book, open notes, open whatever written materials you've got in front of you. And instead of answering A, B, C, or D to a bunch of questions, you're going to make me an argument. I'm going to put three prompts in front of them related to the things that we learned that week. So, let's say it's World War II. and they'll have three prompts and one will be about the battles and one will be about the states involved and one will be about the outcomes of whatever the thing was for that week and they'll pick two of those three prompts and they will make me an argument and cite their evidence. The test is not did you memorize facts. The test is can you reason out meaning from the evidence. That's a process test not a product test. And then finally, our state has finally finally banned the phones. We have state law just passed. Governor just signed it. Phones are banned. And the enforcement of that is still forthcoming. We're going to figure that out at the start of the next school year. We're going to have our plan in place. But the phones are that's no longer an issue. That gone. The Chromebooks, the tablets, those are just as bad. Those are just as distracting, just as open to cheating, just as much of a screen addiction feeding machine as their phones are. So unless the activity is absolutely necessary to require digital assistance, we're going old school. We're going pencil and paper, we're reading out of the textbook, I'm printing materials. Even if it would be more convenient for me to just like post the write up on a PDF file and put it on their their education platform, I'm going to be burning through copies next year because we're going old school. We're going to remove the distractions as much as possible. And I don't know if it's going to work. I don't know if it's going to win me any friends. I don't know if it's going to be a thing that the students engage with more or that they care about more. I have no idea if it's going to work. But what we're currently doing is not working. And all of my students to a man understand that it's not working. So, we've got to do something different. I've got to do something different.

Today's my last day of being a teacher. I'm so excited. I just came back from a 4-week FMLA leave and I put in my resignation about two weeks in. So, this is my last day teaching fourth grade. Probably my last day teaching ever. Um, I have an interview lined up on Wednesday for like an office coordinator/assistant job. Very excited for that. Um, so yeah, let me take you along with me on my day. Here's one last look at my classroom this morning. I've had a long-term sub and she's been doing a really awesome job keeping up with uh my room and doing cool activities. I have a few more minutes before the day starts, but I'm ready for it. We're watching Finding Dory and doing some fun activities, some review, and just saying goodbye. Some tears were definitely shed, but I'm done. My last day of fourth grade, last day of teaching probably ever. Very exciting. Absolutely bawled my eyes out on the way home. But you know what? It's for the best. I got so much [ __ ] in the back of my car, but I left everything that I didn't need. And you know, the kids and the substitute and whoever comes next after me will be able to use it. And that makes me feel much better because there's no point in keeping that stuff in my house if I'm never going to teach again. So, oh well. I'm really excited for this next chapter of my life. So, if you're looking to quit teaching, do it. I did it midyear and it felt great. So, yeah.

As always, it's really hard to watch what is going on in the classrooms and what is changing in the scope of teaching. Let me know your thoughts down below and any changes you are witnessing in maybe your local areas or your children's schools. Maybe the experiences you had and how you see things are changing now. Share down below. Thank you for watching and I'll catch you in the next video. Take care.