WHERE DID THE LOVE GO?
When Loving the Students Is No Longer Enough
By Dr. Lakina Moseley | Detroit, Michigan | September 15, 2026
An Open Letter From an Educator Who Still Loves Teaching
I understand now why teachers leave. For years, I have heard people talk about teacher burnout, educators leaving the profession, and teachers reaching a point where they simply cannot do it anymore. I understood it intellectually, but I do not think I truly understood it personally until now. Because I am getting there.
And the hardest part to admit is that I still love teaching.
I love my students. I love walking into a classroom and seeing young people whom I have the privilege of teaching, encouraging, challenging, mentoring, and sometimes simply listening to. I love watching a student finally understand something that once seemed impossible. I love seeing confidence develop. I love seeing a student who was afraid of the water learn to swim. I love watching young people discover abilities in themselves that they did not know existed.
Those moments are still beautiful to me. In fact, at this point, my students are the primary reason I continue to get up and come to work.
But increasingly, I find myself asking a question I never thought I would seriously consider: When does loving the students stop being enough?
And perhaps an equally important question is this: If so many educators are asking some version of this question, when do we stop treating teacher burnout as an individual problem and begin examining the policies, systems, leadership practices, and working conditions contributing to it?
Because this cannot only be a conversation about why teachers are leaving. We need to talk about what might make them stay.
When School Stopped Feeling Like Home
I have spent years in education, and I remember when school felt different. There was a time when the main office actually felt like the heart of the school. Teachers could walk in, ask a question, speak with an administrator, laugh with the office staff for thirty seconds, and continue with their day. It was welcoming.
Our previous office staff even made the physical environment feel different. The office changed with the seasons and celebrations. Black History Month looked like Black History Month. Christmas felt like Christmas. Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, and other occasions were acknowledged.
Those decorations may sound insignificant to someone looking from the outside, but they represented something much bigger. They represented culture. They represented community. They represented belonging. They represented the feeling that this building belonged to all of us.
There was a time when this school felt like home and the people inside it felt like family. Because of that, staying an extra hour did not always feel like a burden. Helping with something that technically was not part of your job did not feel quite as frustrating. You did it because you felt connected to something.
Today, that feeling is disappearing.
At my school, teachers have repeatedly received communication instructing us not to enter the main office. I want to say that plainly because this is where another uncomfortable conversation begins. Why should I have to obscure that fact? If that is the policy or expectation communicated to employees, why should an employee be afraid to publicly say that the policy exists?
There is an important distinction between attacking an individual and accurately describing an institutional practice. Those two things should not be confused. If an institution believes a policy is appropriate, it should be able to explain and defend that policy. If it cannot, perhaps the policy deserves reconsideration.
Accountability Cannot Only Travel Downward
Teachers are evaluated. Teachers are observed. Teachers are given deadlines. Teachers receive directives. Teachers receive emails identifying what has not been submitted. Teachers are expected to explain themselves when requirements are not met. Teachers are held accountable for student achievement, attendance, behavior, documentation, communication, lesson planning, data, accommodations, and countless other responsibilities.
And accountability is appropriate.
But who holds the system accountable when communication is poor? Who holds leadership accountable when instructions contradict one another? Who addresses unnecessary duplication? Who evaluates whether a policy is actually helping teachers teach? Who responds when an educator asks a direct question and never receives a direct answer? Who measures the impact of leadership practices on employee morale? Who evaluates whether the people responsible for supporting teachers are actually providing that support? And who protects educators when they raise those questions?
Accountability that only travels downward is not accountability. It is hierarchy.
A healthy educational organization should have meaningful accountability traveling in every direction. Teachers should be accountable to leadership. Leadership should be accountable to the people they lead. Schools should be accountable to families. Families should be partners in the educational process. Districts should be accountable to communities. And ultimately, every person within that system should be accountable to the children we are here to serve.
Accountability should not suddenly become offensive when it starts traveling upward.
When Does Discretion Become Silence?
There is another uncomfortable issue we need to discuss. Educators frequently sanitize what we say because we are afraid of what might happen if we speak plainly. We remove names. We remove schools. We remove departments. We soften language. We say "leadership" instead of identifying a specific level of leadership. We say "there have been communication problems" instead of explaining exactly what happened. We say "morale is low" without explaining why morale became low.
Some discretion is absolutely necessary. Student privacy must be protected. Confidential personnel matters should remain confidential. People should not make reckless accusations they cannot substantiate.
But there is another side to this. When does discretion become silence? And when does silence begin protecting dysfunction rather than protecting people?
There is a difference between protecting confidentiality and protecting dysfunction.
If an employee accurately describing a documented workplace practice creates embarrassment for an institution, the first question should not automatically be: "Why did the employee say it?" Sometimes the more important question is: "Why are we doing something we are uncomfortable having publicly described?"
Transparency should not automatically be treated as disloyalty simply because what it reveals is uncomfortable.
If educators believe that identifying legitimate problems could result in damaged evaluations, undesirable assignments, financial consequences, professional isolation, retaliation, or other repercussions, then we have created an environment where the people closest to the problems may become the people most afraid to discuss them.
That should concern everyone.
Because problems hidden for the sake of appearances do not disappear. They grow. And eventually students experience the consequences.
We cannot continuously ask teachers to identify problems affecting student achievement while simultaneously creating cultures where employees are afraid to identify problems affecting teachers.
The Tower and the Trenches
There is a growing disconnect between leadership and the people actually doing the work inside classrooms. The tower does not always understand what is happening in the trenches.
Teachers are being asked to do more documentation, more uploading, more emailing, more meetings, more data analysis, more planning, more compliance activities, and more administrative tasks, while still being expected to provide excellent instruction every single day.
At some point, we have to ask a very basic question: Does all of this actually make us better teachers?
Recently, teachers at my school were instructed to upload lesson plans, emergency plans, syllabi, and other instructional materials into designated digital locations. We complied. Then another directive arrived instructing teachers to email weekly lesson plans directly to an administrator every Sunday night.
I asked for clarification. If we had already been instructed to upload these materials to designated locations, were we now expected to submit the same information again through email? That is a reasonable operational question.
I received a response indicating that my previously submitted lesson plans would be handled for that week and that, moving forward, I could email weekly plans. But my underlying questions about the conflicting processes were never actually answered.
Then, less than twenty four hours later, I received another email stating that my lesson plans from the previous day had not been received.
Think about how unnecessarily frustrating that interaction becomes.
The issue is not merely a lesson plan. The issue is communication. The issue is consistency. The issue is asking employees to follow procedures while failing to clearly define which procedure they are supposed to follow. The issue is creating additional work and then placing the burden of navigating contradictory expectations onto the employee.
And when weekly submissions are due Sunday night, the practical effect is that educators may be expected to complete or monitor work during time that would otherwise fall outside the traditional workweek.
This may seem insignificant when viewed as one isolated incident. But teaching is filled with hundreds of "small" tasks. One more email. One more spreadsheet. One more upload. One more form. One more meeting. One more PLC. One more deadline. One more duplicate submission. One more piece of documentation proving that we did something we already did.
Eventually, one more thing becomes ten more things. Then twenty.
Some teachers have district purchased curricula that already provide structured, daily instructional guidance, yet they are still expected to recreate portions of that information for weekly submission.
At some point, documentation stops supporting instruction and begins competing with it.
Accountability is not the problem. Redundancy without a clear instructional purpose is the problem.
When Compliance Becomes the Mission
Something else has happened in education. We have become increasingly consumed with compliance.
Did you submit it? Did you upload it? Did you document it? Did you enter the data? Did you attend the meeting? Did you complete the form? Did you follow the template?
Those things can have legitimate purposes. But somewhere in education, we need someone powerful enough to ask: Did any of this help the child sitting in front of the teacher?
Because if the answer is no, perhaps we should reconsider why we are requiring it.
Teachers should absolutely be accountable. We should have lesson plans. We should know what we are teaching. We should assess students. We should examine data. We should communicate with families. We should collaborate with colleagues.
But compliance should support education. Education should not exist to support compliance.
The same concern applies when test performance and compliance metrics begin dominating conversations about education. When that happens, we risk narrowing our definition of what successful teaching and learning actually look like.
A child's education is bigger than a test score. And a teacher's effectiveness is bigger than a spreadsheet.
When leadership itself is under increased scrutiny, that pressure should not simply roll downhill until classroom teachers feel that they too must operate under a microscope. Leadership should absorb pressure, provide clarity, remove unnecessary obstacles, and create conditions that allow teachers to teach. It should not multiply anxiety.
Bell to Bell Instruction, But Constant Access to the Teacher
There is another contradiction that deserves attention.
Teachers are told, appropriately, that students deserve bell to bell instruction. I agree. Instructional time matters. When students are in our classrooms, they deserve teachers who are present, prepared, engaged, and focused on them.
But educators are also bombarded with emails throughout the school day. Some contain announcements. Some contain directives. Some require action. Some request information. Some announce meetings, deadlines, schedule changes, compliance requirements, or additional responsibilities. Sometimes several arrive during the same instructional day.
And then there are the telephone calls.
There have been times when administrators have called teachers on their personal cell phones during the instructional day and expected those calls to be answered. When a teacher does not answer because that teacher is actively teaching students, the teacher may later be questioned about why the call was not answered.
That creates an impossible contradiction.
If I am providing bell to bell instruction, exactly as I have been directed to do, why would I be expected to interrupt that instruction to answer my personal cell phone? Which expectation takes priority? Do I stop teaching students to answer an administrative telephone call? Do I interrupt instruction to monitor email? Or do I remain engaged with my students and risk being questioned later about why I did not immediately respond?
Educators should not be placed in situations where complying with one expectation creates the appearance that they are failing to comply with another.
You cannot demand uninterrupted instruction while simultaneously demanding uninterrupted access to the teacher. Both cannot happen at the same time.
And if administration sends important information during instructional time, teachers are placed in a no win situation. Read the email and potentially interrupt instruction. Or honor bell to bell instruction and potentially miss information administration expects you to know.
That is not a teacher failure. That is an organizational contradiction.
And when leadership itself is under increased scrutiny, that pressure should not simply roll downhill until classroom teachers feel that they too must operate under a microscope. Leadership should absorb pressure, provide clarity, remove unnecessary obstacles, and create conditions that allow teachers to teach. It should not multiply anxiety.
When Does the Teacher Actually Get to Do the Rest of the Job?
If teachers are expected to provide bell to bell instruction, another question naturally follows: When exactly are we supposed to accomplish everything else?
Many educators work through their preparation periods. Many work through lunch. A period supposedly designated for planning becomes time for answering emails, completing documentation, contacting families, attending meetings, assisting students, making copies, addressing unexpected problems, preparing materials, entering data, responding to administrative requests, or completing tasks that could not be completed while teaching.
Lunch can become another opportunity to catch up rather than an actual break.
And because teachers care about students, students themselves frequently need us during those periods too. A student needs to talk. A student needs help with an assignment. A student needs advice. A parent needs a telephone call. A colleague needs assistance. An unexpected situation develops.
So teachers make room. Again. And again. And again.
Then whatever could not be accomplished during the school day follows teachers home. That is how a workday quietly expands without anyone formally announcing that the workday has changed.
If we genuinely value bell to bell instruction, then we must also protect the time educators need to accomplish everything that makes bell to bell instruction possible.
We cannot fill every available minute with instruction, communication, meetings, documentation, intervention, data collection, family contact, compliance responsibilities, emails, telephone calls, and additional assignments, then treat the teacher's personal time as the overflow container.
Teacher planning time is not spare time. Teacher lunch is not administrative overflow. A teacher's personal cell phone should not become an extension of the administrative office. And a teacher's evening should not automatically become the place where everything the system could not fit into the workday gets deposited.
If bell to bell instruction is truly the expectation, then educational policy and administrative practice should be structured to make bell to bell instruction possible.
Leadership Is More Than Authority
I remember working under leadership where teachers felt heard. A previous administrator understood many of the challenges teachers were experiencing. She listened. She looked for resources. She encouraged educators to develop professionally and expand their skill sets.
Listening did not mean every teacher got everything they wanted. It meant we felt that somebody understood we were professionals. There is an enormous difference.
Today, I increasingly feel that teachers raise legitimate concerns only to receive responses that minimize the realities we are describing.
Sometimes educators hear some version of: "When I was teaching..." But education has changed. Students have changed. Technology has changed. Families have changed. Expectations have changed. Accountability systems have changed. Mental health concerns have changed. The responsibilities placed on educators have changed.
What worked in a classroom decades ago cannot automatically be used to dismiss what a teacher is experiencing today. Listen to the person standing in the classroom now.
Leadership should not merely mean having authority over people. Leadership means being responsible to the people you lead. And sometimes leadership means being willing to hear that something under your supervision is not working.
Teachers Are Carrying More Than Curriculum
I have taught classes where enrollment pushes beyond what the physical classroom comfortably accommodates. Teachers are expected to differentiate instruction, manage behavior, address individual learning needs, communicate with families, collect data, implement accommodations, maintain documentation, and still create meaningful relationships with students.
Then society asks why teachers are tired.
We are tired because teaching is only one part of what teachers are now expected to do.
We are educators. Mentors. Counselors. Advocates. Motivators. Conflict mediators. Data collectors. Technology troubleshooters. Coaches. Safety monitors. Mandated reporters. And sometimes we are simply the adult who notices that a child has not eaten.
The realities some students bring through school doors are staggering. Some young people are navigating homelessness. Food insecurity. Sexual abuse. Physical abuse. Teen pregnancy. Addiction within their families. Violence. Family instability. Mental health challenges. Chronic absenteeism. And other forms of trauma that no child should have to navigate.
Teachers encounter children carrying adult sized problems while simultaneously being expected to teach standards, improve test scores, manage behavior, document interventions, close academic gaps, and prepare students for graduation.
Those children deserve extraordinary support. But teachers cannot become the entire support system.
We need counselors. Social workers. Mental health professionals. Family support. Community partnerships. Strong administrators. Functional intervention systems. And policies that acknowledge that sometimes the barrier to algebra is not algebra. Sometimes the child sitting in algebra is wondering where she is sleeping tonight.
Education Requires a Partnership
Teachers cannot control everything affecting student outcomes.
We cannot force a student to complete an assignment after leaving our classroom. We cannot force a parent to attend parent teacher conferences. We cannot force families to answer telephone calls or emails. We cannot correct years of academic deficiencies during one class period. We cannot solve poverty. We cannot solve housing instability. We cannot solve food insecurity. We cannot solve every mental health crisis. We cannot undo trauma. We cannot replace an absent support system.
And yet somehow the public conversation often arrives back at the teacher: "What are the teachers doing?"
We are doing more than most people will ever see.
There are phenomenal parents and guardians who answer calls, attend conferences, monitor assignments, advocate for their children, and work beside educators. We need them.
We also need stronger ways of reaching families who, for any number of reasons, are not participating consistently in their child's education.
Education requires a partnership between students, families, teachers, administrators, districts, and communities. When one part of that structure fails, classroom teachers frequently become the people expected to compensate for it. That is unsustainable.
Where Are the Adults Who Support the Adults?
Teachers are constantly told to support students. And we should. But who supports the teachers doing the supporting?
When we have a concern, where do we go? When we identify a safety problem, who responds? When communication repeatedly breaks down, who fixes it? When workload becomes unreasonable, who evaluates it? When an educator is overwhelmed, who notices?
When teachers no longer trust the people they are supposed to approach for help, that is not simply an interpersonal problem. That is an organizational problem.
I have personally reached a point where I have been reluctant to disclose that I am dealing with personal health concerns to my administration.
I want to be precise about what I am saying. I am not alleging that someone has retaliated against me because of my health. I am saying that I do not currently feel enough trust in my workplace to feel comfortable being vulnerable about what I am experiencing. I worry about potential professional or financial consequences if I disclose what I am experiencing.
So I have largely suffered in silence.
That should not be normal.
An employee should not need intimate friendships with administrators to expect humanity. Empathy should not be a perk. Compassion should not depend upon favoritism. Professionalism should not require people to pretend they are machines.
There was once warmth in my building. There was laughter. There was connection. There was community. There was love.
Today, for me, much of that feels absent. Sometimes it feels as though we are working inside the shell of what teaching used to be.
Safety Is Not Insubordination
I teach swimming. A swimming pool is not simply another classroom. It is an instructional environment where improper maintenance can have serious safety consequences.
I have raised concerns about pool chemistry, water clarity, equipment, chemical feeders, heating, maintenance procedures, and whether the facility was safe for students to use. I have encountered situations where chemical readings raised safety concerns, equipment was not functioning properly, and explanations regarding maintenance created additional questions.
As an educator with professional training in aquatics, lifeguarding, CPR, first aid, and water safety, I cannot ignore something I believe could jeopardize a student's safety.
Sometimes advocating for children means becoming the person willing to say: No. This is not safe.
And sometimes being that person makes you inconvenient.
I have never been interested in being convenient when children's safety or opportunities are involved.
Organizations need policies that protect employees who raise good faith safety concerns. Safety reporting should be encouraged, documented, investigated, and resolved. It should never depend upon whether raising the concern makes someone uncomfortable.
Advocacy Should Not Make Educators the Enemy
My advocacy did not begin this year. I have consistently advocated for students, including greater equity and opportunity for girls in athletics. I have watched what can happen when young women are given resources, coaching, visibility, and an opportunity to compete. I have seen young women accomplish extraordinary things when someone simply opens the door.
My advocacy has also extended beyond athletics. During the pandemic, I raised concerns about mental health because educators and students were experiencing something unprecedented. We cannot demand extraordinary levels of resilience from people indefinitely while refusing to acknowledge what the pressure is doing to them.
That lesson should not have disappeared when buildings reopened.
Teacher mental health still matters. Student mental health still matters. Workplace culture still matters. Morale still matters.
People perform differently when they feel respected, trusted, supported, and valued. And they perform differently when they feel monitored, dismissed, overwhelmed, afraid, and exhausted.
The Work Nobody Sees
People see summer vacations. They see school ending in the afternoon. They see weekends. They see holidays.
They do not see grading at night. They do not see Sunday lesson planning. They do not see answering student emails. They do not see buying classroom supplies. They do not see worrying about a student after going home. They do not see coaching. They do not see professional development. They do not see mandatory meetings. They do not see documentation. They do not see emotional labor. They do not see educators spending their own money on supplies, materials, food, and things students quietly need.
They do not see preparation periods consumed by responsibilities that have nothing to do with preparation. They do not see lunches that become working lunches because there simply is not enough time. They do not see the teacher ignoring a ringing personal phone because thirty students deserve her attention, only to later be questioned about why she did not answer.
And they do not see the teacher sitting in her car for a few minutes before driving home because she needs a moment to transition from everything she carried during the day.
Perhaps most importantly, they do not see how much teachers care.
That is why burnout hurts so badly.
People sometimes assume that a burned out teacher stopped caring. I think sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes teachers burn out precisely because they cared for too long, carried too much, fought too many battles, and received too little support while doing it.
Trust Us or Don't
I know what I bring to education. I am an educator. I am a professor. I am a coach. I am an aquatics professional. I have advanced education and specialized certifications. I have spent years developing my knowledge and expanding what I can offer young people. And I am still learning.
I do not believe degrees or credentials mean I know everything. But I do believe experience and professional expertise should mean something.
Teachers should not have to repeatedly prove that they are professionals while simultaneously being trusted with young people's education, safety, development, and futures.
Trust me with a child's safety, but not enough to walk into an office. Trust me to teach, but require me to repeatedly submit the same evidence that I am teaching. Trust me to recognize when a student is struggling, but question me when I identify problems within the system. Trust me to provide bell to bell instruction, but expect me to monitor emails and answer my personal phone while I am providing it. Trust me to produce results, but do not necessarily give me the resources, environment, or autonomy necessary to produce them.
Something about that is fundamentally backwards.
So Why Do I Keep Showing Up?
I show up because there is a student waiting for me. I show up because someone needs encouragement. I show up because somebody is going to get into the water for the first time and discover that they can swim. I show up because somebody is going to learn how to respond in an emergency. I show up because somebody needs an adult who believes in them. I show up because education still matters to me.
But I am beginning to understand something that I wish educational leadership at every level would understand: You cannot build an educational system that survives indefinitely on the compassion of teachers.
You cannot continuously add responsibilities because you know teachers care enough about children to somehow figure it out. You cannot use our passion as an unlimited resource.
Eventually, the account becomes overdrawn.
And when excellent teachers leave, we should stop immediately asking: "Why didn't they care enough to stay?" Maybe the better question is: Why didn't the system care enough to make them want to stay?
What Would Meaningful Change Actually Look Like?
This cannot simply be another letter identifying problems. If we agree that parts of education are failing the people inside the system, then we need to talk about what happens next.
Change does not require another slogan. It requires policy. It requires measurement. It requires transparency. It requires courage. And it requires accountability at every level.
Here are places we could begin.
Two way accountability: Districts should consider confidential, structured, recurring staff feedback as one component of evaluating school leadership and organizational climate. Teachers are evaluated by administrators. There should also be meaningful mechanisms for assessing how effectively administrators communicate, support employees, resolve concerns, and lead.
Administrative workload audits: Every recurring teacher requirement should periodically be reviewed for instructional value, duplication, and time cost. If educators are completing the same task in multiple places simply because "that is what we have always done," someone should have the authority to eliminate it.
Clear communication standards: Directives should clearly identify what is required, where it should be submitted, who is responsible, and when it is due. When procedures change, employees should not have to decipher which previous directive still applies.
Protected reporting systems: Educators need meaningful ways to raise safety, workplace, ethical, and operational concerns without fearing retaliation. Good faith reporting should be protected and investigated.
Protected planning and meal periods: If preparation time and lunch periods exist in the workday, they should not routinely become administrative overflow. Meetings, paperwork, emails, telephone calls, and additional duties should be structured in ways that recognize educators need protected time to prepare, eat, regroup, and complete essential responsibilities.
Reasonable communication boundaries: Schools should establish clear expectations regarding when educators are expected to monitor email and when use of personal cell phones is appropriate. An employee's privately owned telephone should not automatically become an around the clock extension of the workplace.
Reasonable boundaries around work: Districts should examine whether recurring deadlines and communication practices unnecessarily require routine evening and weekend labor. Teaching will always require preparation outside classroom hours, but that reality should not become justification for unlimited access to educators' personal time.
Stronger student support infrastructure: Schools serving children experiencing significant social, emotional, behavioral, economic, and family challenges need sufficient counselors, social workers, mental health professionals, intervention specialists, and family support systems.
Meaningful teacher voice in policy: Educators who will actually implement instructional and operational policies should have meaningful representation before major changes are imposed. Consultation after a decision has already been made is not the same as participation in making the decision.
We should also examine school climate and employee morale as seriously as we examine student test data. We should strengthen systems addressing chronic absenteeism and family engagement. We should maintain facilities in ways that protect students and employees.
And perhaps most importantly, leaders at every level should periodically ask teachers one incredibly simple question: What is preventing you from teaching effectively, and what can we remove?
Then listen to the answer.
Not defensively. Not performatively. Not simply to pacify people.
Listen because the answer may reveal exactly where the system is failing.
But Change Also Requires Us to Speak
Policy changes at the top are important. But change cannot depend entirely upon someone at the top suddenly recognizing what is wrong.
Teachers have voices. Parents have voices. Students have voices. Communities have voices. Unions have voices. School boards have voices. Journalists have voices. Researchers have voices. Voters have voices.
We have to use them responsibly.
Document problems. Ask questions. Request clarification. Attend meetings. Speak during public comment. Contact representatives. Participate in unions. Demand data. Propose solutions. Support colleagues. Protect students. Challenge policies that do not make sense.
And when something is wrong, say that it is wrong.
Not recklessly. Not maliciously. Not dishonestly.
But clearly.
Because perhaps part of breaking this cycle is refusing to participate in the silence that allows dysfunction to become normal.
Is This Still the Good Fight?
People tell educators: "Don't give up." "Keep fighting." "The kids need you." "Fight the good fight."
I understand what they mean.
But lately I have found myself asking: Is this really a good fight if the same people are expected to keep fighting it indefinitely?
How many years should educators sacrifice their peace, health, time, money, and emotional wellbeing waiting for systems to change?
At what point does perseverance become exploitation?
At what point does telling a teacher, "The kids need you," become another way of using that teacher's love for children to convince her to tolerate conditions she should not have to tolerate?
Those are difficult questions. But we need to ask them.
Because "do it for the kids" cannot be the answer to every systemic failure.
The adults serving those children matter too.
I Do Not Want to Leave My Students
That distinction matters.
When I imagine leaving, I do not imagine escaping children. I imagine escaping unnecessary bureaucracy, inconsistent communication, redundant responsibilities, deteriorating workplace culture, inadequate support, safety concerns, micromanagement, and the feeling that the people closest to students often have the smallest voice in decisions affecting them.
There are still good things happening in schools. There are still phenomenal educators. There are still administrators who lead with compassion. There are still support staff members who quietly hold buildings together. There are still parents who answer every call, attend conferences, and work beside us. And there are incredible students who make you laugh on the exact day you thought you had nothing left.
Those things deserve to be acknowledged.
That is precisely why this hurts.
I remember what it feels like to love coming to school. I remember what it feels like for a school to feel like home. I remember what it feels like to believe that everyone, from the top down, is working toward the same goal. The kids.
Somewhere along the way, education became so consumed with proving that the work is being done that we sometimes interfere with people's ability to actually do the work.
Maybe that is where some of the love went.
It disappeared underneath another email. Another directive. Another spreadsheet. Another meeting. Another duplicate submission. Another unanswered question. Another safety concern. Another behavioral crisis. Another telephone call during instruction. Another lunch spent working. Another preparation period consumed by something other than preparation. Another Sunday deadline. Another unnecessary hoop. Another teacher afraid to speak. Another employee suffering quietly. Another moment when an educator tried to explain what was happening in the trenches and someone in the tower decided they already knew.
So yes, I understand now why teachers leave. And I understand why some of the best ones leave.
It is not always because they stopped loving children. Sometimes they leave because loving children required them to continually sacrifice pieces of themselves.
I am not writing this because I hate my profession. I am writing it because I still love it. I am writing it because I still believe schools can be places where children thrive and adults feel valued. I am writing it because I remember what this work can feel like when educators are trusted, leadership listens, families participate, resources are available, safety is prioritized, accountability exists at every level, and everyone understands that our ultimate responsibility is not to an email, spreadsheet, metric, test score, compliance report, public image, or someone's title.
It is to children.
But serving children well also means building institutions where the adults responsible for serving them can thrive.
Maybe I am frustrated because I still care. Maybe I am tired because I have spent years fighting for students. Maybe I am questioning whether it is time to go because I finally understand that passion alone cannot sustain a person forever.
I do not know whether I am ready to leave. But for the first time, I understand the teachers who are.
And that realization scares me.
Because when a teacher can still walk into her classroom, look at her students, genuinely love what she does with them, and simultaneously wonder how much longer she can survive everything surrounding that classroom, we should not simply ask what is wrong with the teacher.
We should be asking what happened to the system around her.
And then we should ask the question that matters even more: What are we willing to do about it?
To my fellow educators: If any part of this sounds familiar, speak. Tell your story. Document your experiences. Support one another. Demand solutions. Not to destroy public education. Not to attack people for sport. Not to embarrass schools. But because protecting an institution should never require protecting its dysfunction.
We cannot fix what we are unwilling to identify. We cannot change what we are afraid to discuss. And we cannot continue asking teachers to quietly carry systems that desperately need repair.
Perhaps education does not need another renovation. Perhaps parts of the system need to be rebuilt from the foundation.
Because our children deserve better. Our families deserve better. Our communities deserve better. And yes: Our teachers deserve better too.
Maybe this is still the good fight. But if it is, then it is time for everyone else to start fighting alongside the people in the trenches.
And maybe, before another dedicated educator decides that loving the students is no longer enough, somebody should finally listen.