By Sarah Fine -- Why I Left Teaching Behind - washingtonpost.com - 1 views
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In their book "Millennials Rising: the Next Great Generation," sociologists Neil Howe and William Strauss characterize the members of my generation as "engaged," "upbeat" and "achievement-oriented." This is why we become teachers. We seek to challenge ourselves, and we excel at pursuing our goals. Howe and Strauss go so far as to call us a "hero generation." Our engagement also explains why we are leaving the classroom. We are not used to feeling consistently defeated and systemically undervalued.
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Having a base of teachers who teach for more than a token few years is critical to school reform. It helps principals and school leaders develop trusting relationships with teachers. It helps teachers collaborate with one another. Most of all, it helps students. A teacher with experience is not always a good teacher, but a good teacher is always better after a few years of experience. As my former principal not-so-subtly put it: "The kids don't need one-year wonders. There is no such thing as a one-year wonder."
Four-year wonders are better than nothing, but still not enough.
Sarah Fine was a teacher, department chair and instructional coach at a Cesar Chavez Public Charter School for Public Policy in Washington from 2005 to 2009.
