CHICAGO — More than one in three teachers in Illinois are considering leaving the profession, according to a survey of members of the state’s largest teachers union.
The Illinois Education Association, or IEA, survey of 1,300 school staff found 13 percent are re-evaluating their career paths, 12 percent do not want to be teachers anymore and 10 percent are considering early retirement amid the coronavirus pandemic.
It also found 8 percent of teachers said the experience of this year had made them more determined to be an educator, while 16 percent said it had no effect on their career plans.
Two out of three respondents reported feeling “more burned out than usual this year,” and 27 percent said they have “seriously considered giving up teaching as a profession because it is just too hard with distance learning.”
IEA President Kathi Griffin said the results of the survey should concern anyone who cares about the education of Illinois children.
“We are already in the middle of a teacher shortage,” Griffin said Wednesday at a news conference. “Teacher retirements are at their highest rate in five years, and others are considering switching careers. We need to figure out how to keep our talented professionals in education, and we think the best way to do that is by asking local health departments to intervene when school boards and/or administrations are making decisions that are not keeping their students and staff safe.”
Griffin said many school districts are not following guidelines from state public health or education officials, or even their own safe reopening plans. The IEA, she said, was keeping records of violations and asking local health departments to step in when conditions are unsafe.
“I wish I could say that I’m surprised so many are considering leaving the profession that I love so very much, but I’m not,” she said. “Our teachers are struggling. Our support staff are struggling. Some are working in school districts without a safe plan in place. Others are working in districts where there is a safe plan but the district is not enforcing or following it. And even in those districts where everything is being done safely and appropriately they are saddled with extreme amounts of stress and extra work.”
One of the teachers considering early retirement is Pam Kramer, of Northbrook, who is teaching a fully remote class of fourth graders in North Shore District 112 in Highland Park.
“I don’t want to retire early, but I also don’t want to die — or have my health permanently impaired, possibly because I got COVID,” she said at the news conference.
Kramer is in her 60s and said she suffers from a heart condition that puts her at increased risk of complications from COVID-19.
“In spite of the fact that I teach completely virtually, the district insisted that all teachers teach from the school building. This caused me an incredible amount of stress,” Kramer said.
“As time went on, the stress began to build. The oversight of COVID rules regarding distancing and mask lessoned in my district because people become more relaxed in their surroundings, and that’s human nature. But every time I had to leave the classroom, the stress built,” Kramer said.
According to the survey, 10 percent of respondents said the increased stress had affected their plans to be an educator, while 8 percent cited health concerns as the top factor.
“My stress grew as COVID numbers in Lake County grew, and one night I ended up in the ER,” Kramer said. “The last thing the ER doctor said to me before he left and before I left was that I needed to stay away from stress and I realized at that moment that I couldn’t return to the classroom if it meant I had to be inside the school building.”
According to District 112 Superintendent Mike Lubelfeld, no teacher has received an exemption to his district’s requirement that they teach on campus. He said he was unaware how many may have requested to teach off campus. But he noted some staff have said they welcome the opportunity to come into the building and take advantage of a quiet, private space there, as well as social connections with colleagues.
“In our preparation for the restart of of schooling, we assembled a 50+ person stakeholder team, we determined that an ‘all hands on deck’ mentality would best support our students and one another,” Lubelfeld told Patch in a email. “In addition, we reduced density on each campus by 50%, we modified pick up and drop off, and we needed all hands for supervision and safety. “
It is not only teachers with decades of experience, like Kramer, who are considering leaving the field.
Mariah Klein, a teacher at Marquardt School District 15 in Glendale Heights in her 20s, said she loved her career before the pandemic. Now she and her husband have gone through their finances to see if they can afford to manage without her income. Morale is very low at her school, she said.
“It’s really hard to watch my colleagues struggle day to day, and it isn’t necessarily unique to teaching, but very few other professions require such an impossible workload, constantly changing schedules, high-pressure expectations, and most upsettingly the daily anxiety about preventing spread of the virus between my colleagues and my students,” Klein said. “Even worse, possibly not realizing that I’ve been exposed, and if I’m unknowingly spreading the virus to my students and their families. Knowing that I’m teaching in-person classes in a community with such high metrics — over 20 percent positivity rate — has me dealing with daily, often unmanageable, anxiety and guilt.”
Klein said she wanted to teach in-person more than anything, but has found it difficult to keep smiling and pretending she is not exhausted and worried.
“I feel like even now I can barely keep it together, and at every turn, I feel like I’m letting my students down,” she said. “I cannot imagine leaving them, especially during such an unpredictable time. They are wonderful kids with wonderful families going through unprecedented trauma.”
One in four respondents to the survey reported their schools is open for in-person instruction every day, 31 percent reported their school is fully remote and 43 percent said their school is open at least one day a week.
Conducted the week of Oct. 19, the survey also found 69 percent of educators thought it was “not very” or “not at all likely” that their school would be able to safely re-open for full in-person learning for all students next semester.
Kramer said she was in the process of using up her remaining sick days when District 112 shifted to remote learning last month amid rising rates of COVID-19 in the community. During the “adaptive pause,” teachers are allowed to work from home, according to her superintendent, but they will be required to return to school buildings when the district pivots back to hybrid learning.
“It’s very ironic, and pretty horrible that I dread the time that numbers get better because that means that my district’s going to require that I go back to the classroom to continue teaching my students, and I can’t do that,” Kramer said. “As much as I love teaching them and as much as I believe they love learning with me, I can’t risk my life.”
If the school resumes in-person teaching, Kramer said she will have to require early and her students would have to suffer by having to have a substitute teacher for the rest of the school year.
“I want very much to finish teaching this school year with my students, I really do, they are amazing human beings, each and every one of them. But I also want to live, and be healthy for my husband, and my children, and my adorable grandson,” she said, her voice quavering. “It’s very hard, and it’s very emotional because I feel torn, but when I remember the stress from being in the building every day, stress that worsened my heart condition, I know I can’t go back.”
