They didn’t become teachers for the money.

And it’s not money that’s driving teachers out of the profession.

The list of reasons why resignations, retirements, and resentment are staggeringly high in education currently is as long as it is complex. Failures in administrative support. A culture that seemingly encourages burnout. Dangerous understaffing. Overcrowded classrooms. An unhealthy work-life balance. 

But the consistent reminder among those who entered the profession less as career than calling is a changing dynamic between a classroom of hungry minds, the educators, and administration tasked to feed it, as well as a student and parent population changing faster than all of the above.

Teachers aren’t leaving the job because of the money.

They’re leaving because of the job.

Jenna Workman’s first day as a teacher felt like a dream come true.

She was 22, fresh out of college, and teaching language arts at Nathan Hale Magnet Middle School in the Omaha Public Schools. Her curriculum was broad–grammar, close reading skills, individual and small group speech–and her classes full, but she loved the work.

“I had been wanting to be a teacher for so long, and when I was finally there with the students in the seats, it felt like everything was coming together and I was really happy.”

Nine years later, Workman was burned out, both professionally and mentally. Leaving the only job she ever wanted was the most difficult decision of her life.

“Over time, I started to feel demoralized,” she said. “It increased as the years went on. I value education so much, so as I was constantly working so hard to give my best to my students, [but] it was always at the expense of my own life and my own wellness.”

After a brief hiatus, Workman is back in teaching, sort of. She’s an academic manager in an after-school program.

Chelsea Ewart lasted five years in the classroom. She was an elementary teacher in Nebraska and Missouri before resigning at the end of the 2020-2021 school year. Fleeting attempts to find a healthy work-life balance and a lack of administrative support became too much for her.

“As a teacher, you can work 12-hour days and there’s still something to do,” Ewart said. “For me, it was about learning to set boundaries. And it’s difficult to feel supported in setting boundaries when you know you’re a good teacher and have kids learning without working too many hours outside your contract. It just felt more and more as if I wasn’t doing that, I wasn’t putting enough into my job. It’s overwhelming.”

Workman and Ewart’s struggles–and their decision to leave teaching–are just two of the stories that has education at an existential crossroads. Their stories are certainly not isolated.

Teachers are leaving the profession at unprecedented numbers, and enrollment of undergrad teaching majors across all paths is shrinking. Sara Tiedeman, Associate Vice President of Online Development at Midland University and the school’s former head of the College of Education, said the number of students entering teacher education programs has dropped by one-third since 2010.

There were 10.6 million teachers in the U.S. in January 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today, that number has dipped below 10 million. Among the Omaha metro’s 12 public school districts, resignations and retirements are up 50 to 70 percent.

Teacher morale has also taken a hit. The National Education Association’s annual survey showed more than half of all teachers polled said they are considering leaving the profession earlier than planned. The same data suggested half of new teachers will leave the profession within five years.

The Nebraska State Education Association, which represents nearly 30,000 public school teachers, recently published its own survey showing more than 60 percent of the respondents cited higher stress and mental health concerns than the previous year.

The range of existential–and otherwise–threats to education suggest a complex paradigm-shifting narrative. An inciting incident. Like a pandemic. However, teachers, and much of the data, contradict that assumption. Of the half dozen current and former teachers interviewed for this story, most concede the pandemic didn’t help an already difficult job, nor their ability to do it. But most of these issues, they all said, were manifest long before March 2020.

“It feels like it was like this before COVID, but the stress of COVID did show us how much was wrong,” said Kristen Husen, who taught for nine years at the Alpha School, a Level III alternative school in Omaha, before accepting a position in the Bellevue Public Schools this year. 

The stress of online teaching and the educational gap brought on by the shutdowns, in addition to the chronic absenteeism of both staff and students, did factor, she admits, but it was just a tipping point. 

“When we came back (to the classroom), I think we just noticed how much more prevalent it was. We are a lot of kids’ parents.”

Working conditions that aren’t getting any better, a lack of emphasis on personal wellness, overflowing class sizes, student behavior, staff absences, and fractured relationships with administrators were all cited as issues they faced as teachers. Low pay was not a major factor.

Husen pulled no punches. It was the lack of administrative support that led directly to her resignation. She can only recall an administrator visiting her classroom “once or twice” the entirety of the last school year.

“It was always for an evaluation or just watching you teach,” she said. “I don’t need that. I just needed them to come in and see what I do every day, or if there was a student struggling, come in and observe and come up with ideas how to best serve that student.”

She said she often felt ignored when she presented her issues or made policy suggestions. Both Workman and Ewart shared similar frustrations. 

All three described the daily grind of teaching in the current climate in terms of survival mode. Long hours coupled with pressure to fill in for missing staff or unfilled positions added to workloads and fundamentally changed the job. Staving off burnout was a constant challenge.

Ewart didn’t feel heard outside her classroom. When a student’s needs exceeded what she could provide in her classroom, despite her knowing what would best serve that student, she was often cut out of a vital education loop. 

“The moment I sent a kid out of my classroom (for behavioral needs), I no longer had control over that behavior, or discipline or consequence. I had no control over any of that. The student was just out of my room.”

A breaking point for her was realizing not every administrator had the capacity to fully support students’ behavior needs in or out of the classroom.

“I’m with them eight hours a day,” Ewart went on. “I know them. I’m better off talking to them and working with them and figuring out a plan than sending them off and them coming back with a piece of candy or whatever.”

Photo by Bill Sitzmann

Ewart has since found her way back into education and what she called a “better fit.” She’s an instructor at the Uta Halee Academy, providing education and vocational training to 14- to 18-year-old girls impacted by abuse, neglect, trauma, substance abuse, mental illness, and violence.

“What I have now, that I don’t feel I had before, was trust,” she said. “You’re hired as a professional. Here’s the job description you are expected to do, and I personally prefer to go beyond those expectations, but they don’t care what time I leave at the end of the day.”

People don’t leave bad jobs; they leave bad managers.

That adage has always stuck with Dr. Andrea Haynes, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources and District Operations at the Westside Community School District.

“We need to stop normalizing the burnout,” Haynes said. “We need to start supporting teachers more.”

For Haynes, that support starts with healing the divide felt by teachers and their administrative teams and with the parents who send their children to their classroom every day. It continues with targeted efforts to improve self-care and the novel concept of allowing teachers to teach. 

When Westside began asking the questions of how the district could better support its teachers, the answers they most often heard, according to Haynes, revolved around wellness.

“During the pandemic we saw a lot of #SelfCare, but no one really provided any additional self-care, we just talked about it,” she said. “So, what does it look like to provide better wellness for staff?”

At Westside, it will look like is financial reimbursement plan covering the cost of wellness and self-care efforts. The district is also considering a “years of service” pay recognition scale for long-serving teachers.

“It goes to loyalty,” Haynes said. “They want to feel valued and connected to the district. When we talk about retention, it’s that. How can we create a culture where individuals feel seen, heard, valued and connected? In Westside, our superintendent, Dr. (Mike) Lucas calls that ‘Belonging.’ If all of our staff feel like they belong–seen, heard and valued–they’ll stay. That’s what we lead with. We need to enhance belonging.”

Retaining staff is one side of that coin. Recruiting new staff is the other.

Nearly every school district locally and nationally has stepped up its hiring and retention pipelines, many offering hiring bonuses or incentives. In June, OPS announced it would be offering new and current full-time staff a stipend of $4,500. 

But the funds for the stipends backed by Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relied (ESSER) and American Rescue Plan Act are short-term fixes. The money evaporates with the federal funds.

Westside isn’t waiting for the teacher pipeline to re-load itself. The district’s “Growing Our Own” initiative was launched in May as a collaboration with Millard Public Schools, Papillion Public Schools, the Nelson Mandela School, and higher education partner, Midland University. The pilot program offers paraprofessionals or education assistants a pathway to being teachers–on their home district’s dime. 

Growing Our Own’s first cohort of 16 participants began classes in May. Most took nine to 12 credit hours over the summer toward their teaching degrees. Since each participant comes to the program with varying levels of college experience, just how long each will take to complete their degree will vary.

“That will enable us to have individuals graduating within 24 months,” Haynes said. “That’s the goal. We’ll really need teachers in two years for sure. But do you know when we really need teachers? Tomorrow.”

The program is free of charge to the participants with the understanding when they graduate, they will apply first with their partner district.

Haynes said Westside is already looking at ways to develop programming for educational assistants that do not have any college credit to give them a similar path.

“We want to diversify the pipeline of teachers in Westside and in Omaha,” she said. “We don’t want the criteria that you have to have some college credit keep out diverse individuals from multiple diverse backgrounds to serve as a barrier for individuals to join the program.”

Haynes admits she has a special connection to the program and the participants. Her career in education charts a similar course. She was a 20-year-old college student majoring in child psychology and working as a para in the Omaha Public Schools when she pivoted to teaching.

“Can you imagine a better job preview than being a para? They know what the job is. They see it every day. They see the teachers. When you have someone who does that every day and wants to be a teacher and you know they know what it takes, you will see like we are, a high level of commitment and passion.”

Workman and Ewart both doubt they will ever return to teach in a traditional school setting. Both are still teaching, just more under their own terms. They do miss their students, if not the classroom job of teaching.

Husen is looking forward to the change in scenery after nearly a decade at her previous school. She’s hopeful. But it still eats at her that her previous school never made an attempt to retain her after years of mounting frustration.

“There was no ‘What can I do to get you to stay?’ or ‘How can I help?’” Husen said. “And I handed in my resignation in early March. They had plenty of time to save me if they really wanted me. I put in nine years as a teacher, and they just let me go.”

Workman likes what she’s heard about schools’ giving attention to mental health–for teachers and students. She hopes it isn’t too little too late.

“There’s definitely more that can be done there, because I think nothing was being done there. I don’t think that’s anyone’s fault. I think everybody from the bottom up are so strained and time is so limited it’s not possible for anybody to take a break and focus on their mental health.”

Teaching is a care-based profession, Workman said, one that too often justifies policy decisions by saying “just do it for the kids.”

“It makes the teachers who want to take a stand for their mental health look like bad people who don’t care about the kids, which couldn’t be further from the truth. There has to be a shift in how we treat that interaction with teachers.”

If the good news of the upheaval in education is that school districts are finally shifting gears and gaining footing in a more wholistic approach that recognizes there are no healthy students without healthy teachers, then the bad news has to be there are no overnight fixes. 

Haynes, the Westside assistant superintendent, is cautiously optimistic. But even she acknowledges the repair is a years-long process.

“As school districts and communities grapple with some of these challenges, there’s a lot of hope in that if we can get back to ensuring teachers are seen, heard, and valued; we will build momentum for individuals who want to be teachers,” she said. 

“We will lose less of our current teachers. We will elevate the profession of teaching in our community once again to where it needs to be and should be. And that, we hope, will keep teachers and attract new ones.” 

Visit midlandsu.edu to learn more about the Grow Your Own program.

This article originally appeared in the October 2022 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.