“A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others,” said one Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Unfortunately, the candle is burning out and many teachers as of late quit their teaching jobs at schools around the U.S., adding to the already prominent teacher shortage.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more and more job openings are opening up, and with numbers not going down, it means jobs aren’t being filled. Openings have been reaching numbers over 10,000. Now this might lead one to think: “Oh, it’s probably because of Covid.” Well, if you did think that, you were wrong. Going back to the statistics, looking at the chart the number of job openings went down in March 2020 (when the pandemic started) and started climbing in late 2020 and early 2021 with hire rates pathetically declining at a steady rate.

To understand the perspective of teachers, interviews were conducted with teachers around the school (Note: none of the teachers mentioned the desire to leave, these were just the questions asked of them).

The Clarion: “What is the hardest part about being a teacher?”

Mr. Douglas: “Wow, that’s a good question. I think the hardest part of being a teacher for me is when you care for your student’s academic well-being more than they care about their academic well-being. We want our students to do well in class of course, and for the student to come to class every day and do the things that aren’t beneficial for them to succeed in class, it’s difficult to deal with and to see. You can’t make every student enjoy your subject matter, but when they don’t want to do well, and you want them to do well, that’s probably the most difficult part.”

The Clarion: “Why do you think teachers are quitting their jobs so suddenly?”

Sar. Delgado: “Teachers are probably quitting because it’s not easy to be a teacher. We’re under a lot of stress, especially nowadays that students are always on their phones, so we have that competition where instead of the kids paying attention to us,  they just want to be on their phones. When we ask them to put their phones away, they start giving us attitude and problems. It just makes us tired of dealing with rude students, and being here Monday through Friday, it’s not just teaching either it’s also just dealing with some student’s behavior and some districts don’t pay a lot either.”

The Clarion: “What is the worst part about being a teacher?”

Ms. Markley: ” I would say, I think the To-Do list is never finished and so being comfortable with having things on your To-Do list when leaving work and being okay with that and saying “Oh, okay. I’ll get to it tomorrow”, because your To-do list will never be completely finished. Some teachers are perfectionists and having an undone To-Do list makes the job kinda difficult.

The Clarion: “Do you think stress is what contributes to teachers quitting?”

Ms. Markley: “I think that some teachers might be leaving the profession because statically, teachers will leave in the first 3 years of teaching. Since I’m in my first year that puts me in a very unique position because I’m learning a lot about this profession, I chose teaching because I am really passionate so I think people might leave because they don’t think they have a good work-life balance. It can put a lot of strain on your personal life if you don’t learn to balance the profession, and sometimes in different schools, you might have different things that you’re dealing with. You might have issues with students, colleagues, or administration. Luckily with Montclair and the Chaffey district, there’s a lot of support for new teachers and it makes it hard to fail in this district as a new teacher. So for me, I see a lot of longevity in my profession in the Chaffey district.”

So, what does this mean for the future of schools and our education? Well, hopefully, things will look brighter as new bills are passed to try and solve this ever-growing problem, will it work out? Will our education be stifled by the teacher crisis? That’s for future generations to find and suffer the consequences for.