New School Year, Few Familiar Faces…

Of the many career paths we can choose, teaching is one with some of the highest level of job stress and burnout. As a graduate student in the Boston University Education program and a practicing teacher aspiring to move towards school leadership, it is incredibly important that I understand the reasons teachers are leaving the profession due to burnout.

As we are incredibly focused on educating the future leaders of tomorrow, it is important that there are veteran teachers to help guide new teachers in the profession. In order for this to happen, schools need to understand why teachers in urban schools have such a high rate of burnout and turnover—specifically focusing on the preparation, or lack thereof, teachers have when entering their first year of teaching.

The field of education is continuously changing within the types of preparation teacher must go through, and studies show that there may be a direct correlation between teacher burnout and the type of preparation they have completed; there are a variety of ways teachers enter the profession: traditional teacher certification programs (undergraduate/graduate education with practicum), teacher preparation programs (Teach for America, Teach Next Year, etc.), and lateral entry (entrance from another profession).

• Traditional Teacher Prep:

• Teachers who have completed a traditional preparation program were the most strongly prepared in terms of curriculum and lesson planning, classroom management, and lesson execution.(1)

• Alternative Teacher Certification/Lateral Entry

• Programs like Teach for America and those who entered the profession from another professional career saw an increased level of satisfaction and heightened levels of stress due to the lack of preparedness due to their need to rely on prior and often limited knowledge of being in the classroom. (1)

One way that schools can remedy the high burnout and turnover rate in schools is to ensure that there are supports put in place for those teachers who do not have as much training or preparation in the field of education. Those supports could include: additional professional development, an extra week of practice teaching, or participation in a methods course to supplement feedback received from teacher coaches, etc. Research shows that the more time teachers have practicing the skill of teaching and preparing for students to enter their rooms have a higher likelihood of staying in the classroom for more than their first year.(2)

(1) Linek, W.M., Sampson, M., Haas, L., Sadler, D., Moore, L., Nylan, M.C. (2012). The impact of teacher preparation: a student of alternative certification and traditionally prepared teachers in their first year of teaching. Issues in Teacher Education, 21(2), 67-82.

(2) Ronfeldt, Matthew. (2014). Does pre-service preparation matter? Examining an old question in new ways. Teachers College Record, 116(10).1-46.