Why do teachers quit public schools?
One of the secrets of journalism is that other people do your work for you. All the raw material that gets crunched up into an article comes from somewhere else—it’s the good characters, dynamite quotes, and unreal stories that make the final piece good. Oh sure, putting sentences together with style is an art, and identifying and drawing out the key details of a subject is not easy, but the writer doesn’t create anything out of nothing. He just lays out the readymade pieces.
That’s how I feel about my latest story in GOOD magazine, about why public school teachers are quitting in such high numbers. The short answer is that their jobs are a pain in the ass and subject to heartbreaking, soul-crushing conditions. But there’s no way any collection of adjectives on my part can illustrate the situation as well as the words of the seven teachers in the article. Examples: One Oakland, CA biology teacher wonders how she’d even keep a pet while holding down her job. And, after budget cuts squeeze out a Ukiah, CA teacher of the year, he doesn’t bother to push back because his paycheck barely supports his family anyways.
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