Why teachers leave: 2 educators share their experiences

Mitch Smette is leaving his teaching position at West Fargo High School after 10 years to become a Realtor. (Jeff Beach/North Dakota Monitor)

West Fargo High School English teacher and coach Mitchell Smette is dropping Twain and Shakespeare at the end of this school year for a career in real estate.

“A big part of the reason I coach is to make enough money,” said Smette, whose wife works in the same field. “Living on two teachers’ salaries is a challenge, and so picking up those coaching jobs is a way to supplement our income. I have no idea how people that make what two teachers do (can) afford to have children.”

The latest report on educator pay from the National Education Association lists the average North Dakota teacher salary at $56,792 in 2022-23, ranking No. 37 in the country. North Dakota teachers saw on average a 0.8% raise between 2021-22 and 2022-23, putting the state last in terms of a pay increase that year.

While pay is a big factor, it is not the only reason cited by two teachers for leaving the profession. Struggles with student behavior and the influence of parents and legislators were compounding factors. 

Task force

The North Dakota Teacher Retention and Recruitment Task Force holds its next meeting at 9 a.m. June 4 in the Pioneer Room of the Capitol. The group will provide recommendations to the governor by Sept. 30.

In response to the state’s teacher shortage, Gov. Doug Burgum appointed a special task force to look for solutions on recruiting and retention of teachers.  

Smette hails from a family of teachers – his wife, sister, and brother-in-law are all educators – but he makes ends meet by also coaching basketball, golf and debate.

“You can’t ignore the reality that teachers don’t make what they deserve,” said Smette. “I have a master’s degree, 10 years of experience, and I need to coach throughout the school year in order to make enough money to be paying our mortgage and staying on top of bills. That’s just not in line with what professionals with master’s degrees should be making right now.”

Although Smette has worked in education for a decade, he is not eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program because he consolidated his federal loans with the Bank of North Dakota for a more manageable interest rate. Despite this hardship, he believes that people interested in going into teaching – and members of the community – need to be aware of the financial reality for teachers.

“I’ve been paying on my student loans for 10 years consistently,” Smette said. “I didn’t take a break over COVID or anything, and they have hardly moved at all. I still owe what I borrowed.”

While low pay is a universal grievance among former teachers, it isn’t Smette’s only motivator.

“Even bigger for me is the cultural and political atmosphere around teachers – the blaming of educators for all kinds of social issues that people have decided they are passionate about is really dangerous,” Smette said.

Smette expressed concerns about the expectation that teachers put themselves in harm’s way, only to be belittled by the media – national, and at times local – as well as parents and communities whose support for teachers has dried up over the past decade.

“I’m lucky enough to have worked in a district where I feel like I am supported by my administration in the building, and I have not had parents that I have had to deal with to that extreme, but it’s certainly there in the national zeitgeist, in the national discourse, and is working its way down to smaller and smaller levels,” Smette said.

His concern about parents no longer “buying into” education reflects a growing sentiment against educators among the students – one that isn’t helped by parents who are more concerned with complaining than with constructive criticism.

“Since COVID, student apathy is at a level that’s just really hard to deal with,” Smette said. “The number of students that just don’t care whether they pass or not, whether they graduate or not, is different now than it was when I started.”

Post-COVID changes to student behavior notwithstanding, Smette views conceptual problems facing teaching as just as important as the ones he faces in the classroom.

“One of the biggest reasons that I’m leaving the field is the North Dakota Legislature,” Smette said. “If we continue to legislate what teachers can do in their classrooms… and people who are not experts in education are making those decisions, and they’re ignoring educators in making those decisions, then I don’t know how you’re ever going to find good teachers – or keep them.”

Not every educator is leaving primarily on principle, though – some needed to leave to ensure their own well-being. Former Flasher K-12 principal Alexis Whitehorn more directly attributed COVID-19 to her decision to leave education for a career as a librarian.

“It really took a toll on my mental health, and so I decided to go back to teaching. That’s when I went to Mandan, and I was at the middle school for about a year and two or three months before I put in my resignation,” Whitehorn said. “I kind of had a realization that I was putting so much of myself into my job that I didn’t have anything left when I got home, for my own family.”

That said, the task of teaching English to a student body wasn’t her primary source of stress. When asked if students’ disrespect for teachers was “a sign of the times” or something that only worsened after the COVID-19 pandemic, Whitehorn opined that it was both. She echoed a common sentiment among modern teachers who were hired to teach, but expected to babysit.

“There were days where I couldn’t teach because I was constantly handling bad behavior, constantly redirecting,” Whitehorn said. 

She also cited the requirement to document any disciplinary actions taken against misbehaving students, no matter how small, as something which compounded that issue.

Whitehorn also shared Smette’s discomfort with recent national and state-level attitudes toward teachers – in her case, from parents.

“There are those parents who are overly involved, especially at the high school level, where part of the teaching aspect is to help students be responsible young adults,” Whitehorn said. “I wish that parents would just parent, and let the teachers be the teachers. The teachers are the experts. They know what is developmentally appropriate. They’ve gone through the training, they’ve studied child development, they’ve studied psychology… parents want to be in charge of the curriculum, when really that’s the teacher’s specialty.”

When asked about her standards for curriculum appropriateness, Whitehorn gave an example of using a questionnaire  to learn more about her students – and the pushback she received as a result.

“When you have over 100 students, it’s hard to get to know them all, and so one of the questions that I had on there was ‘what are your pronouns?’” Whitehorn said. “And so when I was pulled into the principal’s office, and asked about it, and I fully admitted to the question, they told me that I couldn’t ask that question anymore.”

While Smette and Whitehorn both expressed some relief at leaving the pressures of the field, they also related their internal struggles with leaving.

“Oh, I bawled. I absolutely cried, because I knew for my health and my sanity that I couldn’t do it anymore,” Whitehorn said. “Those students who are coming up, they’re not going to have me as a person who is rooting for them and pushing them to do their best.”

“It’s really hard,” said Smette. “We need good teachers, and knowing that I have been a good teacher, and would continue to be so, makes it hard to leave.”

Burgum convened a 15-member task force to focus on teacher recruitment and retention, with a goal of delivering recommendations by Sept. 30 on potential legislation for the 2025 session.

While the governor’s task force does include former teachers, only those who have continued to pursue careers in education are directly represented.

Both Smette and Whitehorn believe the task force should leave an opening for former teachers to express their concerns. Whitehorn cited a former teacher’s recency of leaving the profession as an important factor – people who left in the 2020s can provide more modern insight to this conversation than those who left the profession 10 years ago.

“If it was a former teacher who hasn’t taught after COVID, they might not have the true insight [into] what’s causing teachers to leave,” Whitehorn said.

Smette pointed out that current educators might feel a need to hold back how they truly feel about the problems with the school system, by way of protecting their professional relationships.

“People who are leaving the field – especially leaving the field in good standing – should be welcomed at that table,” Smette said of the task force’s membership. “If they want to find out why people are leaving, and what factors could have kept them, then you need to be asking the people that are leaving. If you are staying, there are just certain things you can’t say. It would be hard to be fully transparent or honest.”

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