Teachers on the Verge of Leaving: Using Pláticas to Understand Why They Stay

• In Event: Pipe Dreams: Humanizing the Teaching Profession and Pipeline Through Liberatory Imagining

Abstract

Overview. Much research has been devoted to understanding why teachers leave the profession, but less attention has been paid to understanding why teachers choose to stay. This question is urgent given low enrollment in teacher education programs (Will, 2022) and resignations following the COVID-19 pandemic (Steiner & Woo, 2021). The goal of this paper is to document factors that kept a group of novice (>5 years) and experienced (20+ years) teachers in the classroom, despite seriously considering leaving, and to draw insights about alarming rates of teacher attrition. We posed three research questions: 1) How do novice and experienced teachers speak about and understand their professional experiences and their decisions to stay in teaching?; 2) What role did key stakeholders play in their decision-making regarding staying in the field?; 3) What support do they see as critical to helping them stay in the classroom?

Theoretical Perspectives. Our study is grounded in critical theory, a framework that “provides the descriptive and normative bases for social inquiry aimed at decreasing domination and increasing freedom in all their forms” (Bohman, 2021). Critical theory addresses issues of social justice and interrogates societal forces that help explain oppressive contexts and their impact on individuals and groups, so it is uniquely suited to our examination of teachers' decisions to stay in their profession.

Methods. Pláticas are semi-structured conversations, often embedded within the cultural practices of Latino/a/x communities, where knowledge is shared and co-constructed through dialogue (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016; Ybarra, 2018). Pláticas recognize how our experiences are situated within sociopolitical histories (Chabram-Dernersesian & de la Torre, 2008). We participated in four pláticas with novice teachers and four with experienced teachers, all teachers were first generation and 6 identified as teachers of color. Each plática (60-90 minutes) was recorded, transcribed, and coded and we employed thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998).

Findings. We identified four main themes across our pláticas. First, teachers expressed a strong commitment to their school communities. One teacher stated, “This is where I grew up, where I went to school, I can’t give up on my community.” Our second theme was lack of support. Teachers spoke about the impact of the pandemic, the role of social media, and how society fluctuates from “seeing teachers as heroes to seeing them as punching bags.” The third theme was frustration at a lack of voice. Teachers expressed being exhausted and being held to unrealistic expectations while not having a role in decisions that impact their daily lives. The final theme was a strong desire to prepare the next generation of teachers. One teacher stated, “I want the experiences of our new teachers to be better than the ones I had as a Latina.”

Significance. Too often, the voices of teachers are left out of the conversation about teachers and teaching. While it is important to understand why teachers are leaving the profession, it is equally critical to understand why teachers decide to stay. This work has implications for teacher educators, school and district administrators, and policymakers.

Authors

• Margarita Jimenez-Silva, University of California - Davis

• Eleonora Villegas-Reimers, Boston University

• Janine Bempechat, Boston University