Um, how are you?
Most people answer that question with fine or good,
but obviously it's not always fine and it's usually not even that good.
This is a podcast that asks people to be honest about their pain,
to just be honest about how they really feel about the hard parts of life.
And guess what?
It's complicated.
It's a weird time to be a teacher.
First of all, you know, I have been teaching for the last seven years at a title one school
where damn near all of our students have trauma and, you know, socioeconomic factors
that are barriers to their learning and in so many ways barriers to their functioning
in these spaces. And all of that said, I love our students so much.
It is heartbreaking sometimes to see the deck stacked against them.
I taught second grade and third grade in both of the years that I taught second grade.
I had a student die on my roster.
My first student passed of an asthma attack.
I carried him up three flights of stairs to the nurse in front of my other students
and I was 22 years old.
The second child was killed in a drive by shooting.
She was killed with her dad. She was in the back of his truck.
I remember holding my breath as we all do all of this.
My educator, friends, in a city such as ours where the crime and the gun violence is so high.
It's dangerous right now for queer people, for transgender people.
It's dangerous right now for teachers to express their support
almost in that department.
And so I would be lying if I said that I wasn't kind of scared to do this.
I'm still going to because I know that it's the right thing to do.
You had to be on 100% in time and also felt like no work life bounced at all
because all of that, quote, free time that everybody who is not adjacent or in the field of
education claims that teachers have is actually spent worrying about teaching,
grading assignments, and then creating lessons to teach.
There's an underlying judgment and labeling of struggling teachers as underperforming
instead of just needing support. I call it the, I heard movement. I heard things about that
teacher. I heard things about this teacher and then drawing conclusions. There simply isn't the
trust that we are the professionals in the room and the support from the community to back it up.
The ones that make it for the long haul can compartmentalize, adapt, or simply be okay with not being okay.
It's 2023. Do you know where your kids' teachers are?
They might be crying in their car. They might be looking to leave the field entirely if they
haven't already because by and large teachers are not okay. Teaching has always been a challenging
job and that's why we often say that it's a calling to the people who do it because anything
that is deeply meaningful also has its own set of challenges. Today,
they're going to meet a teacher who finally decided it was all too much. It's upsetting and
it's kind of scary to me especially because I have young children in the public education system.
You know, what's going to become of our system? But first, let's rewind to 2004.
Yeah, by usher is on everyone's radio. A new online platform called The Facebook has just launched
and Kristen is walking into a high school in suburban Missouri for her first day of school as a
teacher. She's 22 years old with little life experience and even less teaching experience.
I end up with my first classroom without doing any student teaching. I think I had like a two-week
like crash course like, hey, you're about to start teaching. Here's everything you need to know
for before we use start.
If Kristen had studied education in college, she would have spent a semester student teaching
where she would shadow an experienced teacher, observe them, practice her skills.
But Kristen was a communications major. She got interested in teaching after graduation when
she needed a job and picked up work as a substitute. That led to work in a special education
classroom as a paraprofessional, which is in assistant to the teacher. That parapher job
showed Kristen that she wanted to be a special education teacher herself. So she signed up to take
night classes to get her teaching license. But a local high school hired her to teach while she
completed the courses to get that teaching license. So on this first day of school in 2004,
Kristen is walking into the unknown. She's 22, wearing a pair of kitten heels and ironed
blouse, a pencil skirt, and hair that is stick straight and probably crispy from her flat iron.
And she was so excited. My first classroom was reading. It was reading all day long,
and it was some special needs students, and then there were some rugged students who were just
kind of behind on reading, and it was high school. Pretty quickly, Kristen realizes that her
experience as a para is not enough. I walked in and I had a kid throwing a chair in my room
and calling me a bitch, and all I wanted him to do was read out loud or something. You know,
I think I just was shocked all the time. Like just, well, what's wrong with these kids? And these
kids are so mean to me, and you know, I did a lot of yelling, and I was teaching by yelling a lot,
because I didn't know how to get to control my classroom. I didn't know how to leave them.
I also don't know how you lead a group of kids who are throwing chairs, but Kristen is 22,
and she is drowning. She needs help. Months roll by like this, where every day feels like total chaos.
And after winter break, help does arrive.
The district I started in had instructional coaches, so it's like a teacher coach. I had two
women. One was a special education instructional coach, and one was just a reading instructional
coach. And these women would come in, and they would watch me teach a lesson, and they would give
me a bunch of notes on like, here's what went well. Here's what you need to improve. They get up,
and they teach a lesson in my room. And I would watch them, and how they would model how to get the
content out, or how to create a bond with a student. And I remember the best advice I got during
this time was, you cannot communicate with these students by yelling at them. Like they're not
listening. And I'm like, well, I don't know how to get their attention. She said, you have to calm
yourself down. And your voice, you need to be talking like you and I are talking right now.
And if you are too stressed out and you're screaming, you need to step away and figure out how
to calm down. And if you're modeling for them, that screaming is how you get your point across,
they're going to do the same. So make sure, like, let's just like calm it down a little bit.
You know, these women came and saved my life. They didn't help me. Like they saved me. I was going
to bail. Like I couldn't do it. They were just like, just hang with us for a little bit. Let's get
you through the first school year. And then you can kind of decide if you want to keep going or not.
So Kristen stuck with it. And she was able to make it to the last day of school.
By then, she felt more confident as a teacher, thanks to help from those coaches.
It started white knuckled screaming my way through it. And then thankfully, these women came and
they helped me to learn how to basically do my job well. And this is a position that was
phased out later by this district. And I've been in three districts. And this is the only district
I've been in where they had this position. Kristen's experience with these coaches was rare.
Not many first-year teachers get that kind of one-on-one instruction on how to be a good teacher.
Kristen got that support her first year. But as her career progressed, there would be more times
where she found herself once again drowning, hoping someone, anyone, would throw down a life
preserver. And it seems like a lot of people in education are drowning these days.
The same issues that teachers have always had are still a problem, lack of funding from state
legislatures, low pay. But we're also in a particularly tense time in education.
The pandemic put an enormous strain on teachers who had to try to teach and connect with their
students virtually. It wasn't just enough to be a teacher, you now also had to have all the
skills of a YouTuber. And we're also at a moment where schools are the epicenter of many political
battles. This year, Black History Month is unfolding alongside a coordinated effort across the
country to limit the teaching of race and racism. Critical race theory, or CRT for short, is not
taught in K-12 schools, but it's nonetheless become the latest flashpoint in the country's
culture wars, from school boards to state houses. Since the start of last year, more than
half of all states have introduced bills banning the teaching of CRT in public schools.
In September, the Flagler County School Board voted to remove four books from the shelves of
Jack's High School, all of them dealing with anti-racism and LGBTQ plus issues. It's not just here in Florida.
Across the country, school districts are removing books from their curriculums and libraries at a
record pace, saying they're harmful to children. And of course, teachers of this generation are
leading kids through multiplication drills and active shooter drills. They're teaching kids how
to react and thinking about how they would react if the unthinkable happens. And it happens a lot.
All of this is weighing on educators. A 2022 survey from the Rand Corporation found that 60 percent
of teachers reported feeling burned out. A third of teachers reported feeling depressed.
The tape we played at the top of the show was from teachers we talked to all over the country.
We did a call out over on Instagram asking teachers what it's like to teach right now.
Some of them, as you heard, shared why they left, but they all said the same thing about what makes
them stay or what made them sad to leave. The kids. When our teachers are suffering, they can't
focus on the kids. The students and the teachers deserve more. Teaching is a job that is absolutely
necessary and it is also a job that demands simply too much from teachers. For Kristen, like many
other educators who exist in this reality, eventually all of it would become too much.
Kristen was not a little girl who played school with her friends. She wasn't the kid in class who
looked at the teacher and imagined herself at the front of the room. Kristen was a little girl who
loved the human brain. I used to want parents that wanted to be a brain surgeon, but I found that
it's really intriguing to me to learn about disability and how it affects learning and how it
affects the processing of information and behavior as well. Growing up, Kristen's next door neighbor
was a kid with intellectual disabilities. I used to babysit him off and on and he had some
severe behaviors and he was nonverbal and his just way of going through life was really, really
intriguing to me what he would eat, what he would not eat, how he interacted with his little sister,
how he interacted with his little sister's friends. He could sit and watch trains for like a half
of a day and not get up once. Just watching him and being around him was really, really fun for
me and I did get paid to babysit him even though I would have done it for free. Eventually in high
school, started getting involved with coaching, special Olympics. Again, it's just fun. It's just fun.
Just being close to these kids and seeing how they process life and overcoming their challenges
was also inspiring to me. So when Kristen graduated high school, she thought maybe teaching special
ed would be a good fit. My parents are very high-achieving professionals. It kind of came from
nothing and my mom built up a really great dental practice in our area. My dad was a financial
advisor and basically they had pretty high expectations for my sisters and myself and they,
you know, I was like, well, you're just, you won't make any money. Like it's not a good profession
to go into. So that's why Kristen gets a communication degree. But after graduation, she gravitates
to schools and eventually accepts her childhood passion of working with students with special needs.
She has that very challenging first year in the classroom. But again, those instructional coaches
were essential to keeping her in the profession. And then my second year of teaching was like one of
my favorite years that I ever had because I had the experience to, you know, figure out like,
oh, proximity is a way to get attention. So when I see a kid is starting to dose off, I'm just
going to go stand by them and teach from that location for a little bit until they kind of sit
up straight, you know, just little tricks like that. And I was back into my same content. But by that
point, you know, the script, I had, I started to memorize it a little bit. So, you know, I kind of
knew what was going to come next with my content that I was teaching every day. And then I could
start to also kind of relax a little bit and pull in a little bit of other things that I wanted to
into the classroom. So I didn't have to just like teach from this one script, from this one curriculum,
you know, as you get better at your job, you relax a little bit more and you kind of start to look
around and you're like, oh, I could pull this in because this is what's going on in the news.
And this, they're talking about it and this can apply to whatever, you know, reading comprehension
lesson we have for the day. It really, I think that's when it clicked like, oh, this is a job that I
can do and I can do it well and I can have fun at it. One of the things that really clicks that
second year is Kristen's perception of her students. As a special ed teacher, Kristen spends
a lot of time focusing on how to help that student overcome their challenges in the classroom.
But in that second year, Kristen starts to see that her students are bringing a lot to the classroom
that has nothing to do with their disability and everything to do with the world they live in
outside of the classroom. You kind of earmark kids when you first start that school year, like, oh,
this one's going to be a problem or I'm going to have to spend some extra time with this one or
this one's coming in with a lot of baggage and it's going to affect what's going on or this one's
just chatty. So, you know, as you go on, then you get better at meeting those kids where they are
and getting to really appreciate their quirks, you know, and like, the one who called me a bitch
and threw a chair because I wanted him to read, like, I had the biggest heart for him by the end
of that school year and I ended up having him again the next year. I got to know him better and
he'd start to talk a little bit about his home life and I had a lot of questions because it
didn't seem stable, but you could tell he was coached very well on what to share and what not to
share and we had a lot of concerns as a building and then you build up a lot of, like, empathy for
the kid, you know, and I still think about him today, like, I wonder how he's doing. It's about
20 years ago now. So, some people stay away from special education because they think all the kids
are complex and awful and big behavior challenges and it's just not the case, you know, they're just
really just kids trying to get through school and it's a little bit difficult for them in certain
areas for certain reasons, but, you know, when you finally get your legs under you and you
sit down and you have the conversations with the kids, then you start to connect with them and
you're like, oh, this is, you know, you're actually why I'm getting up every day to come to work.
Three years into teaching, Kristen needs a change. She feels like she's got her sea legs under her
and now she wants to work in a new area of special ed. So, I ended up leaving that district that
was very supportive and coached me up and that kind of was their reputation in the city,
was like, they coach up young teachers and then those young teachers go off for other districts.
I wanted to teach a different classroom and special education. I wanted to teach life skills.
Life skills is a class that teaches students skills that will hopefully allow them to live
independently in their community. Life skills classes can include practical things like cooking,
maintaining good hygiene or how to use public transportation.
Life skills teachers can also work with students on social skills like maintaining friendships
and being a part of your community. So, Kristen starts applying and is offered a new job
in a neighboring district to run a life skills classroom. But in this new district, new teachers
like Kristen are treated very differently.
If this episode made you cry, there's a chance that you also might be dehydrated,
not just because of the crying, but just because I think of us all as pretty dehydrated people.
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When Kristen arrives at her new school, she is surprised at how different the environment is.
I saw teachers in my new districts get penalized and get put on what's called a
PIPS professional improvement plans for really kind of like what I deemed to be honest mistakes in
the classroom as a new teacher. So I kind of am looking around talking to my department mates
and these new teachers, there was one in particular who I thought was a great new teacher.
Now granted, did I spend all day like observing her in her room? No. But like I overheard her
questions in department meetings and she seemed to really have a passion for the physician and for
the school and you know I would kind of dip in sometimes and see her and she seemed like a great
teacher to me but she was really embarrassed because her first year she got put on a PIP and I saw
struggle in places that I hadn't really seen it before and it's new people again trying to start
out, they're trying to do a good job and you know teachers are so much like students like we need
affirmation, we need to be met where we are and we want to you know feel like we're being
valuable in some way and if admin is not able to treat us and give us what we are expected to give
our students the disconnect is so huge like it's just it's bad all around. I want to spend a few
moments understanding Kristen's job because a special education teacher is doing something very
different than a classroom teacher. Yes, Kristen's teaching her students some of the same material that
all students learn but she also has to tailor that learning to each student's individual needs
and every child receiving special education services in the United States is required to have
a legal document called an IEP. So an IEP is an individualized education plan so for a student
to receive special services in a school district and it might be the special services might be
something just like speech it could be occupational therapy and it could be more of what I saw
on my classroom so I taught life skills which was usually a lower functioning special education
student so like I'd see intellectual disabled and intellectually disabled and so because of that
diagnosis then I'd be able to provide programming so like as the IEP would sit down and that would
include parents it include if that student had a regular education teacher it would include principal
counselor school psychologist who probably diagnosed that student and we kind of talk about well
what is the program in need to look like what classes does this student need what goals what academic
goals or you know even functional goals do you need you know does a student just need help like
navigating the building by him or herself you know that could be a goal in an IEP. You could
just pull out like reading comprehension goals and so it's a huge document you have accommodations
modifications for the classes you have to talk about state testing in this document you have to
talk about a transition plan like what are we prepping the student when they leave high school to be
able to do it's a lot of just documenting you know just very comprehensively what is the school
doing for the student to serve them with their disability. Part of Kristen's job was not only
providing those accommodations herself but also making sure that if a student went to a non-special
ed classroom that the teachers knew about those accommodations and making sure all of the accommodations
are met is very important because an IEP is a legal document and teachers have to treat it like a
contract between the school and the student. I will say usually in a special ed classroom you
are kind of naturally providing individual accommodations modifications a lot of times though when
that student goes to a regular education class that's where you really got to work with that
reg-ed teacher and we like hey so and so is coming to you and they have like 30 accommodations
that you need to meet and then you usually see that reg-ed teachers face like blood now
and so then I'd have to kind of try to coach like okay so here's what it looks like in a lot of
times I would send Paris support with that student so that they'd have an adult but sometimes they
don't have that so a lot of times you know I'm trying to coach the student like hey if there's a test
we can read the test to you that's an accommodation you have so you need to tell me on test day
and we need to make plans so you can come out to me so we can read the test in a separate location
you know and it can be something like that it can be something like this student just needs proximity
they need a teacher next to them prompting sometimes it's positive reinforcement you know as a
student needs to know they're on the right track a lot of it is like they're kind of pre-filled like
you can kind of choose from a bank but then you can also completely make up your own too you can
write in your own if the IEP team gets together and they're like okay this is weird but like this
student really needs to be sitting on a bean bag chair in the front of the room holding a clipboard
and that for some reason that student can lock in at that point and they can learn so you would need
to type that into this document which is legal so a lot of times it's something like I might notice
that accommodation is not being met because I maybe I have a para in that class who's noticing the
teachers not doing it so then I'd have a bunch of conversations back and forth sometimes I would
have to alert parents but if the teachers just flat out refusing that teacher then could be put
on a pip because they're refusing to fall into place with this special education plan the parents
could have legal action too which there are you know most districts have their own lawyers and
they have to be very well versed and are we are are we not providing what we say we will in this
document and if you are not that parent would absolutely have the right to a lawsuit pretty quickly
this feels so overwhelming to me just as a listener this part is not necessarily teaching
it's project management and it's also contract compliance the stakes are very high when you're
working with students in special ed because the educators need to ensure that the kids are getting
the services they need Kristen is 25 at this point still fairly new to her career she's the liaison
between the parents of these kids and she has to communicate this kids IEP to other teachers
and Paris if you are overwhelmed hearing this imagine how it felt living it on a busy week be there
50 hours or more a week maybe 60 at the most and a lot of that was my paperwork I could not do it
during the school day so to keep up with the special education paperwork I had to do that after
school and when you're learning how to do it as you do it it is very time consuming now at the time
of course I'm early 20s I don't have a family and you know there's a lot of young teachers around too
so in some ways it was kind of fun like it's like hang out talk kind of swap like crazy stories
from the day get some work done and then sometimes you need to end up like we'd go out drinking too
like we drink a lot we go the young teachers in the building you know it was kind of like well
where are we drinking this Friday or you know what are we doing you know it's Wednesday and I had a
hard day let's go like grab something to drink so it was kind of became like socially important for
me as well I knew I was working a lot and I knew like sometimes I come home at 3 o'clock in the
afternoon or 4 o'clock and I'd fall asleep on the couch watching TV before dinner and I wouldn't
wake up till 8 and be like wow I'm really tired but again like it was just me that I had to take care of
any of us who have been in our 20s and tried to prove ourselves in a career know exactly what
Kristen means by taking care of herself she means eating takeout forgetting to exercise and
letting the stress just rip through her body waking up in a pool of sweat from stress dreams
and that worked until it didn't because seven years into her career Kristen meets her now
husband and they get married and they started talking about having kids unfortunately with special
education and life skills you can get pretty severe behaviors and it can become very dangerous
so the first time I left I was noticing the student in the room next door was a physically
assaulting the teacher a lot and there didn't really seem to be a great behavior plan in place to
stop that or correct that so I was thinking of getting pregnant and the student was supposed to come
up to me the next year and I had just had a really really hard time getting a very physically
aggressive student moved to the correct placement in my district now they actually had a behavior
program where this student that I had was a better fit but it took me the whole school year to get
her moved over there so that really burned me down to the ground and like I was just like I don't
want my pregnancy to be this amount of stress where I'm worried about my physical being but these
kids were big some of them had a hundred pounds on me easy so the amount of stress you have when
you're trying to first of all just teach trying to get content out but you're also trying to protect
yourself and your students who have disabilities who have processing delays so a lot of time
it's really stressful to try to get kids to safety when a student is escalating and being
physical you know and so just that amount of stress that you would have on the daily
coming in so I left to go start my own tutoring company and then I found out real quick I did not
want to be a business owner so you know I took a couple years off I actually went work for my dad
for a little bit because I thought maybe I could do what he does he's a financial advisor and
absolutely could not do what he does not at all so Kristen learns financial advising and running a
business were not for her but this time away from the classroom was very important because this
is when Kristen got pregnant and gave birth to her two kids and once those kids got a little older
Kristen started thinking about her students again and what it would be like to get back to the
classroom
When Christen returns to teaching after having her kids, she knows that she has a
lot of things have to be different. With two small children she can't be working
60 hours a week and stressing herself out so she tries to find a job that will
fit this new phase of her life. Christen gets a job as a life skills teacher in
the same school district where her kids go so they'll all be on the same
schedule and she sets boundaries. I just decided I have to protect my own
personal time so I became a contract time teacher and it became if I don't get
it done during my contract time it's not going to happen. And you know my last
year I for the first time ever I would get emails from the district like hey
you're behind on this and you're behind on that I'd say I understand I've asked
you guys to support me by giving me a paperwork day where I get to have a
substitute teacher you know granted that's more planning for me because I'd have
to put in some plans. But then I could go sit in a small office somewhere and I
could just crank out that paperwork without being distracted and they wouldn't
provide it for me so I was like you're gonna have late paperwork. Now would I
have done that as an early teacher? Absolutely not. But she's doing it and we are
proud of her for setting her boundaries and speaking up for what she needs. Now
does that mean the school understood the boundaries? Not always. Did it mean the
school always respected those boundaries? Definitely not but Christen had let go
of the guilt. She had more work to do than she had hours in the day and she
wasn't willing to sacrifice time with her kids or her husband or even just
herself for the sake of paperwork deadlines. But even with a new mindset
Christen realized being a special education teacher was still so challenging. In
May of 2022 after Christen had been back in the classroom for a little while
things start to unravel. So I lost a co-teacher and I lost about six
Paris and they were leaving because they kind of saw what was coming because my
program was blowing up. We were getting about 14 new students all boys and we
needed to hire about 10 or 12 Paris and I needed two new co-teachers and I was
going to be one of two returning people in the program. And the reason I
stayed is because I had someone in my department. I was telling them I'm like I
think I got to go to like I just don't think I'm up for this and he's like
listen you could really dig in and you could build up this program exactly the
way you want it. Did you ever think of that? And I'm like oh I didn't. I like to be
bossy. I like to be in control of things maybe. So I like yeah you know what I'm
going to come back. I'm going to be the hero of the year and try to get all these
new people settled in and I'm going to lead professional developments for this
Paris and we're going to have a great little family down here and all these
new kids is going to be it'll be tough but well I'm going to be the person I'm
going to be the lady in charge down here. Even though Kristen is excited to be
in charge of the life skills program she's not naive about what that means.
14 new students means 14 IEPs she needs to learn and she has no idea what each
students disability looks like and how best to manage it and she has to figure
all of this out with a new staff. I came back this last school year and I came
back knowing it was going to be probably my most difficult school year ever but
I was up for it because I really really cared about this population of
students and I really wanted the building to be great. I wanted to stay here
very badly. I didn't want to change again. I was really tired of changing
classrooms. So we show up. Our classrooms have been remodeled but we have no
furniture and so I have a new co-teacher and then I have next to me a
substitute co-teacher who's filling in because that new co-teacher who had been
hired was out on maternity leave. So I've got those two new people. The
parent situation it fluctuated. Sometimes we'd have 12 on staff. Sometimes we'd
have 10 like this you know just up and down the whole time. So I had all these
new people, new kids coming in and no furniture. We had to like beg to get
some old furniture back into our space because the new furniture we ordered
wasn't in and the new thing that they had put in the classroom that was two
doors down for me. So it's still part of my program. It used to be called a safe
room and that's kind of what I used to call it and that's what I'm going to
call it. But it's a room. It's got padded walls. You put a student in who's
maybe super aggressive tacking other people, maybe destroying a classroom and
the idea is you put them in this room and you close the door and there's a
button on the outside that locks the door from the outside and so you have to
hold down that lock in order for the door to stay locked. And when we showed up on
the first day of school and by this point we'd been in meetings for about a
week. So we were watching this room and it was not fully built out yet. We kept
asking, when is this going to be done? Like first day of school, my assistant
principal, he had to move a bandsaw out of that room before the first day of
school started because there was still construction equipment in it. And again
like I've got a brand new teacher in that classroom. She's a first year teacher.
I'm actually assigned as her mentor and she's just looking at me like what
is going on here? And I'm like I don't know. I'm you know I'm trying to
apologize even though it's not my fault. Like we'll get it figured out. So we've
got now we have a room but it has no door on it. So sure enough first day of
school starts and there's severe behaviors right off the bat. And in that
classroom there's maybe four or five kids tops. You have to have really low
numbers if there's you know kind of a severe behavior room kind of deal. You
don't want a full classroom. And we had no door. And so we're having to like
blockade kids in this door using like bean bags. And my admin did come down
and he would help with the bean bag barricade. And it was so unsafe. And so
insane because the kid would be pushing out trying to get out through the bean
bags. And these aren't like three-year-olds. Right. Let's emphasize high school
children. Which I mean some of them are basically full-grown adult size. Are
one guy who used utilized it the most. I would say six to probably 180 maybe
190. And really fast. So you were in trouble if he got out the door because
he you know I could catch up to him. You'd have to get in a car to track him
down like he was just so fast. And life skills by the way it tends to be
women. And it tends to be the parents tend to be older people. That's just who
gets pulled to these jobs. So we have that going on. And we're still begging like
can we get a fucking door on here guys like on top of that. We also had a
student who is medically fragile. And would have seizures all day on the floor.
He was blind. He was deaf. He could not move himself out of the way. Now watching
someone have a seizure is very traumatic. They are completely helpless and if
you're watching it you are too. Pretty much.
Kristen is in charge of keeping this child safe while also keeping the kid who
is lashing out safe. But also keeping her other students safe from that
child all the while she's trying to teach the new parents how to handle these
situations. It's physically and mentally exhausting. That student who was
seizing had a really great 101 parent. She would map and write down how long
each seizure was and she really took really good impressive notes because he
had these really really difficult medical needs. And she'd look up at me with
these big brown eyes and be like the seizures are this long or it looks like
he hadn't been breathing for this long. You know, should we call him ambulance?
And I'd be like I don't know my degrees in special education. I should not
have to answer these questions like let's get the nurse down here. And like we
were all just we were just stressed. The stress was you could probably smell
the stress in that program. And then I'd pop down to my classroom and go try
to teach like how to you know cook a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. You
know, like it was just it was nuts. And it was nuts because Kristen was starting
to wonder if either of these students even belonged in her classroom. Many big
school districts like the one she was in have special programs for kids with
severe medical needs or who have a lot of aggressive behaviors. And Kristen asked
for help from her school's administration. They were so hands off and so
just we would email an email and ask for admin help with you know some
pretty severe parat issues we were having. And like no one would respond. And
it's just you know we were putting in an email like hey this is dangerous. This
person is not doing their job. The student is you know very very aggressive. And
they're doing nothing to prevent it. Like you know we'd say things like this
this can be prevented. But we needed admin to come talk. And like they're so
hands off. It was just we probably asked 1520 times before someone would come
down and have a simple conversation. Kristen said you could probably smell the
stress between her and her colleagues. That is such a visceral way to describe
that feeling. And it's unlike any job I've ever had. Something we say here on
our team when things get overwhelming is that we are just making podcasts.
Because nobody's life is in danger if the story structure of an episode is
eh or you know no one's physical body is in harm if we forget to mix the
audio to you you know negative 16 loves. But that's exactly what Kristen has
to worry about. She's responsible for the health and wellness of these
children with disabilities. And things are starting to spin out of control in
her mind. Two summers ago I worked really really hard with a therapist and a
psychiatrist to wean myself off of antidepressants. I had been on them for kind
of a really crazy family thing that happened and triggered depression which I'd
never had dealt with before. So I'd been on it for a couple years. And I really
wanted off. So I was really proud of the work I'd done in the summer leading up
to the school year like okay I'm back off my brain chemistry feels really
good. I would say by mid September I was calling the psychiatrist and my
therapist like I got to get back on I can't the stress level the anger level
being put in this position you know and also like trying to transition 14 new
kids in the building. I would just come home and just have to lay down like I
couldn't really do much for my health. Now another crazy batch hit thing I put
myself through. I'd had surgery over the summer on my Achilles tendon. So I was
in a boot. I was healing from this surgery and it was not going well I ended up
getting blood clots as a result of the surgery. And I couldn't walk I was
in pain a lot. Even if I got 10 hours of sleep I wake up exhausted. I was
short tempered. I was at home. I couldn't really do much like kids are doing
sports. My husband's running them around. He's cooking dinner. I'm just kind of
laying catatonic at home kind of dreading what's coming the next day you know
and then again like having to get right back on the antidepressants which was
really upsetting for me but I at that point knew like if I'm going to get out of
bed and keep showing up to the job like I have to medicate I have to get my
chemistry leveled out. The district eventually moved the medically fragile
student to a medically fragile program so he did leave our building and we did
have our most severe student go to a behavior program where he belonged. Now
the issue was it took a lot a lot of documentation and us really really
pushing for these things to happen. It wasn't like a supervisor came in and
was like oh this is all bad let me help you guys. It was more like we tell them
what we think is wrong and what we think needs to be done and then there would
be a big huge dialogue about why that's probably not correct from their
perspective even though you know they're not down there every day. So you get
really really really worn down and really pissed off even when the kids get
moved to the appropriate place you are at that point are so upset that this
was happening to you daily and the districts seem fine with it and there's
no apologies for anything don't expect an apology like we're sorry we loaded
you guys like this this was crazy no one's ever going to apologize sorry we
started you with a bandsaw in the safe room that was crazy nope that one person
owned up to why that happened like they just keep it moving so even though the
leadership the issues are glaring they're never gonna own up to doing us dirty
and having us start our year like that. What the school did do was bring in a
counselor for the special education teachers to talk to. Kristen encouraged the
staff that worked under her to go to take them up on it to talk to these
professionals. They'd come up all red face sobbing like you know and then they'd
have to go back to work you know like we can't they kids just didn't piece out
for the day and that oh it's a mental health day like they we still had to do our
job. So I make sure I go down last and again I at this point I I already have
my psychiatrist I've got my therapist so I feel good about but I'm just kind
curious like you know hey how did this go today and she this woman is looking at
me like wide eyed and I go how was it she's like um well what you guys are
going through and she's using words like you know trauma like group trauma and
she's you know could it file lawsuits if you guys want this is unsafe you're not
getting support. By February 2023 there aren't enough anti-depressants to make
this job tenable for Kristen. I emailed my admin like hey I'm going to
resign where's the letter to sign off here it is no one asked me why no one asked
me if you know I can reconsider for any reason like there's no exit interview I
assume. No no the most I got I turned in my keys to my head principal on the
last day of school and all she did was ask what are you gonna do next but she
wasn't even really that interested she was like typing on her computer and
I should have said like I'm gonna go to Disney World and be Mickey Mouse she
was not paying a digit. I've made friends with one admin who was not over me and
he said that their admin team would talk about what was going on in the
program and there was just a lot of like hand-ringing and like we just don't
know how to help them a well so they kind of I think just knew it was gonna be
a really hard year and they were fine with it and they're fine with losing me in
the mix because maybe they assumed it was just too hard of a gig maybe I don't
know they could also be happy I'm leaving maybe I'm a pain in the ass I don't
know no one never told me I was but again that would require someone to sit
down and have like a conversation and that didn't happen in 2004 Kristen showed
up for her first day of teaching totally unprepared for what the day or this
career would bring but she was hopeful and she was excited nearly 20 years
later it's Kristen's last day of school she walks into school that day exhausted
disappointed and ready to say goodbye to her career as an educator I started
the day in the hallway with another pair who was leaving as well and she was
asking if I was emotional and I'm like you know what I've not been emotional at
all I just know this is the right move for me I got to get out of here I don't
think I'm gonna cry at all today and then you know jump cut to like five minutes
later I have a student handing me a card in this student he
paced it on a fake mustache all day all year like sticky tape on it and it
actually looked really good on him he'd peel it off and while he ate he'd
set it on the tables at the cafeteria and he'd eat his lunch and then he'd
stick it back on so he walks up and he has me a card and he's pretty bonnet
here he missed here miss later okay thanks and so then I open it and it's just
it's like really cute kind of generic card but he hand wrote thank you for
helping me this year miss his plater and that was it I was I was waterworks from
that moment on and I didn't stop the sweet people in my program who again we
were down in the trenches we really bonded these sweet people put together a
goodbye video with the kids saying hilarious sweet things about me and you
know we had a bunch of food and the video was like what did you like about
this plater and you know some of the answers were off the wall like well she
loves butterflies and it's like I don't love butterflies why are you saying I
love butterflies is because that student had a butterfly on that day but you
know that some of them would say like I was funny or we had we had a good time
cooking we I ran a car detailing shop with the kids so like some of them would
talk about cleaning cars out and you know playing music and like there were a
lot of sweet memories like that and you know they all say goodbye on the video
and I got like this giant gift basket and you know and we had a huge breakfast
and I just I saw through the whole thing and I mean it's it was surreal it was
it was it was it was a day I will I will not forget it was really a great day
by now you can probably hear how much Kristen loved her students even with the
kids who had severe needs helping them didn't stress her out that's part of the
job the thing that drove her out of the classroom was the lack of resources to
help those kids Kristen's story is unique because it is hers but for anyone
in education this story of a teacher joining the profession because they love
working with kids and slowly being beaten down by the demands of the job is also
a very familiar story teachers everywhere are burned out underpaid and don't
feel supported and there's not one thing any of us can do to fix it unless you
are a legislator then you can really swing your way around but if you are not
an elected official do you know what you can do you can give your time to
helping out ask your kids teacher what they need money supplies maybe they need
you to speak up on their behalf at a school board meeting they definitely need
you to vote in school board elections pay attention to your local elections if you
aren't a parent look up the school in your neighborhood and donate to their
pta volunteer once a month at a school with low parent involvement because
honestly being able to volunteer at your kid's school is a privilege it takes
time time is money I hate saying it but it's true we can all support public
education and try to help educators carry this burden
the teachers may not be all right but they shouldn't feel like they're alone
I hope it gets better and I hope that the generation coming up under us
is able to make sense of of the mess that we're leaving behind for them
so I appreciate all of my teacher friends and the trenches thank you for
giving me a space to talk thank you so much to Kristen for sharing your story
with us in this episode and thank you to every other teacher who called in
who wrote in who shared their stories with us
this week over on ttaf a premium we have the story of another teacher
Aaron case Aaron was the Texas teacher of the year in 2018
and after winning the award he quit it was a constant reminder
when I was tasked with something big that he's got it or oh he can't ask this
up or whatever because I've achieved this thing
and so the pressure was there to outdo what I did
or to take on more or to have I called it adults and suits every time it happened
but there would be groups of five or six people that would just show up
in my room during a lesson
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