Episode Summary

In this episode, I widen the conversation about teacher retention because I believe this crisis reaches far beyond teachers and schools. When a great educator leaves, the effects ripple outward to students, families, colleagues, communities, businesses, and eventually society itself. Education helps prepare the people who enter every other profession, which means all of us have a stake in the strength of our schools.

I explore what instability can mean for students and families, especially when schools experience repeated turnover, larger classes, substitutes, disappearing programs, or the loss of experienced educators. I also discuss the professional judgment veteran teachers develop over thousands of interactions with students and why schools need both the energy of new educators and the accumulated wisdom of experienced ones.

I also connect strong schools to strong communities and a strong future workforce. The doctors, nurses, mechanics, electricians, entrepreneurs, farmers, business owners, and community leaders of tomorrow are sitting in classrooms today. Education can expand possibilities for young people, help them discover their gifts, and give them hope that they have something meaningful to contribute.

Ultimately, I believe teacher retention belongs to all of us. Teachers have responsibilities to grow and serve students well, but society also has a responsibility to create conditions where great educators can do their work effectively. Keeping great teachers isn't doing teachers a favor. It is an investment in students, families, communities, our workforce, and our collective future.

Show Notes

• Why teacher retention affects everyone
• Education’s role in every profession
• How instability affects students and families
• Why veteran teacher experience matters
• Schools, communities, and the future workforce
• Education as a source of possibility and hope
• Our shared responsibility for teacher retention

Key Takeaways

• Teacher retention is bigger than an education issue.
• Students often experience the first effects of teacher turnover.
• Veteran educators carry professional judgment and institutional knowledge.
• Strong schools help create strong communities and workforces.
• Education expands possibilities and gives young people hope.
• Keeping great teachers is an investment in society’s future.

This is Mr. Funky Teacher with BeAFunkyTeacher.com. I'm coming to you with another Be a Funky Teacher podcast.

Welcome back, everyone.

Today's episode is called Why This Isn't Just a Teacher Problem.

Over the last several episodes, we've been talking about something that I believe deserves far more attention than it's receiving.

Why are good teachers leaving?

We've talked about burnout. We've talked about moral injury.

Yesterday, we talked about the teacher shortage and why the shortage itself may actually be a symptom of much deeper problems that we have.

But today, I want to widen the conversation because there's something I think we need to understand.

The teacher retention crisis isn't just a teacher problem.

It's a student problem.

It's a family problem.

It's a community problem.

It's a workforce problem and an economic problem.

Ultimately, it's a society problem.

Because when conversations about teacher retention come up, the response almost becomes, "Well, if teachers don't like it, they can leave."

And then something interesting happens.

Teachers leave, and we blame them for leaving.

Think about that.

Teachers can sometimes feel blamed for struggling with working conditions.

And then they're told, "You knew what you were getting into."

They're told, "Teaching has always been hard."

They're also told, "If you don't like it, find something else."

And when great teachers actually do find something else, we ask, "Where did all the teachers go?"

And I don't say that in an angry way.

I say it because I think we need to understand what's at stake here.

When a great teacher leaves a classroom, that decision doesn't only affect that teacher.

Twenty students may feel it.

Twenty-five students may feel it.

Thirty students may feel it.

Families feel it.

Colleagues, they feel it.

The school feels it.

And then, over time, communities feel it.

Because I've always believed something about education.

Education is the profession that helps create every other profession.

Somebody taught the doctor.

Somebody taught the mechanic.

Somebody taught that nurse.

Somebody taught that engineer.

Somebody taught the electrician.

Somebody taught the entrepreneur.

Somebody taught the teacher.

And before many of those people ever knew what they wanted to become, there was probably an educator somewhere who helped them discover what they were capable of becoming.

That's why today's conversation matters.

Because schools don't simply educate children. They help build communities.

And teachers don't simply prepare students for the next grade level. They help prepare human beings to participate in the world.

Before we get into it, let's ground ourselves in gratitude.

Here are three things that I'm thankful for.

The first thing that I'm thankful for is people who use their gifts to serve others.

One of the things that I love about working with young people is watching them begin to discover what they are good at.

Not everyone is going to become a teacher, and they shouldn't.

We need nurses.

We need mechanics, carpenters, doctors, electricians, artists, business owners.

We need parents, community volunteers.

We need people using their gifts in thousands of different ways.

I'm thankful for people who find something they can contribute and then use it to make life a little better for somebody else.

I am.

The second thing that I'm thankful for is communities that rally around their schools.

I've seen what happens when families, businesses, community members, and educators understand that they are on the same team.

Schools become stronger.

Students, they feel supported.

And teachers, they're feeling valued.

And then you have communities that become places where young people can imagine a future for themselves.

I'm thankful for communities that understand that schools aren't buildings that are sitting somewhere inside the community.

Schools, they are part of the heart of the community.

They are.

They are part of the heart of the community.

And the third thing I'm thankful for is the potential inside every young person.

One of the reasons I still love teaching after all these years is that you never completely know who is sitting in front of you.

That student who's struggling today may someday do something extraordinary.

The quiet student in the back of the room may someday lead an organization.

The student who hasn't figured out what they're good at yet may discover a gift that changes their entire life.

That's so exciting to me.

And I'm thankful that as an educator, we get a front-row seat as young people begin discovering who they can become.

So the topic, once again, is Why This Isn't Just a Teacher Problem.

I think sometimes teacher retention gets discussed as though it's an internal education issue.

Teachers are unhappy.

Schools need teachers.

Education needs to figure it out.

But that's too small, because what happens inside schools eventually shows up outside schools.

It does.

If students don't develop strong literacy skills, society feels it.

If you have students who don't learn how to think critically, society feels that.

If students aren't prepared to solve problems, employers feel that.

If you have young people who leave schools believing they have nothing meaningful to contribute, communities feel that.

If schools continually lose the experienced educators who know how to help young people, eventually everyone feels that.

That's why I don't think this conversation belongs only in teachers' lounges or in administrative meetings.

It belongs in homes, businesses, colleges, school boards, state houses, and communities.

Because the question isn't simply:

How do we help teachers?

The bigger question is:

What kind of society do we want to build?

And education is one of the bridges that gets us there.

So let's get into some big ideas here around this topic.

Education helps create every other profession.

I've said this for years.

Education is the profession that creates every other profession.

Think about it.

Before someone becomes your doctor, they were somebody's student.

Before someone becomes the person who repaired your vehicle, they were somebody's student.

Before someone became an engineer, a nurse, a plumber, a scientist, a business owner, a farmer, an entrepreneur, or a teacher, somebody helped them learn.

Somebody encouraged them and challenged them.

Somebody may have recognized a gift in them before they recognized it in themselves.

That's why I struggle when education is treated like something separate from the rest of society.

It's not separate.

It's foundational.

Businesses need educated employees.

Hospitals need educated healthcare professionals.

Communities need informed citizens.

Families need people who can solve problems.

Our entire society depends upon people being able to learn, think, communicate, collaborate, and contribute.

And teachers help develop those abilities.

That doesn't mean teachers deserve all the credit for someone's success.

Of course not.

Families matter.

Communities matter.

Individual effort matters tremendously.

But education is one of the bridges that helps young people move from where they are today toward who they may become tomorrow.

And when that bridge begins losing the people who make it strong, everybody should care.

Students pay the first price for instability.

When a school struggles to retain teachers, students are usually the first people who experience the consequences.

Maybe their teacher leaves halfway through the year.

Maybe they have a series of substitutes.

Maybe class sizes increase because positions can't be filled.

Maybe programs disappear.

There could be situations where experienced teachers are replaced by someone who's trying incredibly hard but hasn't yet had the opportunity to develop the same expertise.

And I want to be careful with that.

New teachers can be phenomenal.

Some of the most exciting educators I've ever met are early in their careers.

This isn't about veteran teachers being better than new teachers.

It's about stability.

Students need adults they can trust.

Relationships take time.

Great classroom culture takes time.

Teachers learn students' personalities, their strengths, their struggles, their families, their dreams, their triggers, their sense of humor.

All of those things become part of teaching.

When there's constant turnover, students repeatedly have to start those relationships over.

And particularly for students who may already experience instability somewhere else in their lives, school stability can matter tremendously.

That's why teacher retention isn't only about keeping adults employed.

It's about protecting relationships that help children thrive.

Experience matters.

There's something you develop after years in the classroom that is incredibly difficult to measure:

Professional judgment.

A veteran teacher can sometimes look across the classroom and recognize something before anyone says a word.

Something isn't right.

That student needs a break.

That lesson isn't working.

This class needs to move.

That child needs encouragement instead of correction today.

You don't learn all of those things from a textbook.

You develop it through thousands and thousands of interactions with students.

That's why losing experienced educators matters.

When a veteran teacher leaves, we don't just lose someone who knows how to teach multiplication or reading comprehension.

We lose accumulated wisdom.

We lose mentorship.

We also lose someone who can help the new teacher next door.

And then, when we have enough experienced educators leave at the same time, the entire system becomes younger—not in age, but in experience.

Again, that's not a criticism of new teachers.

New teachers need veteran teachers.

And veteran teachers need the energy and new perspective that younger educators bring.

Strong schools need both.

And that's another reason retaining great teachers matters far beyond the individual teacher.

Families need confidence in their schools.

Parents send something incredibly valuable into our schools every morning:

Their children.

Think about the amount of trust involved in that.

Families are trusting educators with their children for six or seven or eight hours every day.

They want to know their children are safe.

They want to know they're learning.

And they want to know that somebody knows them.

And when schools experience constant turnover, that confidence can begin to erode.

Families start wondering:

Who's teaching my child?

Will that teacher still be here next semester?

Why does this classroom have another substitute?

Why can't the school fill this position?

Those are fair questions.

And that's why families should care about teacher retention too.

Not because every teacher should stay forever.

People change careers.

People retire.

People move.

That's life.

But when turnover becomes chronic, that's different.

Stable schools help build trust.

Trust strengthens relationships between families and educators.

And strong relationships between families and schools ultimately help children.

Communities need people who believe they can contribute.

One of the messages I try to give young people is that they can change the world.

And when I say change the world, I don't necessarily mean they're going to become famous and rich.

Changing the world can happen in your neighborhood.

It can happen in your family.

It can happen in your community.

Maybe you become the person repairing someone's vehicle so they can safely get their children to school.

Maybe you become the nurse comforting someone during the scariest night of their life.

Maybe you open a business that employs people in your hometown.

Maybe you coach Little League.

Maybe you become an electrician.

Maybe you raise children who grow into compassionate adults.

Maybe you simply become the person others can count on.

Those things matter.

Education should help young people discover that they have something valuable to contribute.

Because people need purpose.

They need hope.

They need to believe:

I can do something meaningful with my life.

When education is strong, it can help open those doors.

When young people begin believing in their own possibilities, communities become stronger.

That's why schools don't simply educate students.

They help build the people who eventually build everything.

A strong workforce begins long before someone applies for a job.

Sometimes we talk about schools and the workforce as though they're completely different and separate worlds.

They're not.

The workforce of tomorrow is sitting in classrooms today.

When businesses say they need employees who can communicate, solve problems, work with other people, think critically, adapt when something changes, show up consistently, and continue learning, those skills don't suddenly appear when someone turns 18.

We begin developing them much earlier.

That's why business leaders should care deeply about strong schools and strong teachers.

If you're running a business 10 or 15 years from now, some of the people you're eventually going to hire are sitting in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms today.

What kind of education are they receiving?

Are they being taught simply to complete assignments or complete assessments?

Or are they learning how to think?

Are they learning how to ask questions?

Are they learning how to work through frustration?

Are they learning that failure isn't the end of the story?

Are they learning how to collaborate with people who may think differently than they do?

Those things matter in classrooms, but eventually they matter in workplaces too.

And that's why I don't think businesses can look at the teacher retention crisis and say:

"That's an education problem."

No.

It's eventually going to become your problem too.

Not because schools exist simply to produce workers.

They don't.

Education is much bigger than workforce development.

But helping young people develop the knowledge, skills, confidence, and character they need to contribute to society is absolutely part of what education does.

Businesses need great employees.

Communities need great citizens.

And both begin with young people having opportunities to learn from great educators.

Education gives people possibility.

This may be one of the biggest reasons I believe so deeply in education.

Education can give people hope.

It can help a young person begin imagining a future they haven't even been able to imagine before.

A student may grow up surrounded by circumstances they didn't choose.

Maybe there are financial challenges.

Maybe they have family challenges or live in a community where opportunities aren't always easy to see.

Maybe nobody in their family has ever attended college.

Maybe college isn't their path at all.

Maybe their future involves a trade, military service, entrepreneurship, agriculture, healthcare, public service, or something we haven't even imagined yet.

The path doesn't have to look the same for everybody.

That's important.

Success isn't one destination.

What education can do is expand possibilities.

A great teacher can look at a child and say:

"Have you ever thought about this?"

"You have a gift for that."

"You're really good at solving problems."

Maybe saying:

"Hey, you have leadership inside you."

Or:

"You can do something with this."

Those conversations can change the trajectories for many students.

That's why I believe losing great teachers has consequences that are difficult to measure.

How do you measure the opportunity a child discovered because a teacher believed in them?

How do you measure the career that somebody pursued because a teacher sparked their curiosity?

How do you measure the confidence somebody developed because one adult refused to give up on them?

You can't always put those things into a spreadsheet.

But they're real.

Education creates possibilities.

And possibility creates hope.

An educated society is a stronger society.

I want to be careful with the word educated.

When I say an educated society, I'm not saying everybody needs a four-year college degree.

Absolutely not.

There are countless ways to become educated.

Technical education matters.

Trades matter.

Apprenticeships matter.

Military training matters.

College matters.

Learning through life matters.

What I'm talking about is a society filled with people who know how to think, who can evaluate information and solve problems, who can communicate, people who can disagree without immediately seeing one another as enemies, and people who can learn something new when the world changes.

That's incredibly important.

Because when people feel hopeless, when they don't see opportunities, when they don't believe they have something valuable to contribute, communities can begin to struggle.

Frustration grows.

Division grows.

People begin looking for someone to blame.

Education doesn't magically solve every social problem.

Of course it doesn't.

But I believe education is one of our strongest tools for creating opportunity.

And opportunity creates hope.

That's another reason this teacher retention conversation matters.

If we want an educated society, we need people willing and able to educate it.

Teachers are both a bridge and part of the glue.

I've been thinking about two images as I prepared for today's episode.

A bridge and glue.

That's right.

I think teachers are both.

Teachers help build bridges.

They help young people move from what they know today toward what they might understand tomorrow.

From:

"I can't do this."

To:

"Maybe I can."

From:

"I don't know what I want to do with my life."

To:

"I think I found something I'm passionate about."

From childhood to adulthood.

From curiosity toward knowledge.

From possibility toward opportunity.

Teachers help build those bridges.

But teachers are also part of the glue that holds communities together.

Think about everything that happens around schools.

Sporting events.

Concerts.

Plays.

Graduation.

Parent nights.

Community celebrations.

Relationships between generations.

Schools become gathering places.

And educators become people who know families across generations.

That's especially powerful in smaller communities, but I think it happens everywhere.

Teachers know children.

They know siblings.

They know parents.

Sometimes they eventually teach the children of former students.

There's something incredibly human about that.

Technology will continue changing the world.

Artificial intelligence will continue changing our world.

Computers will become more powerful.

Automation will become more common.

I've spent an entire podcast series talking about those changes.

But we're not building a world exclusively for machines.

We're building communities for human beings.

Technology should serve people.

Schools should serve people.

And education should help people learn how to live, work, create, contribute, and care for one another.

That's why the human teacher still matters.

Teachers help connect people to possibility, and they help connect communities to one another.

They are part of the bridge.

And they are part of the glue.

We all have a stake in keeping great teachers.

Where does this responsibility land?

I don't think it lands in one place.

It's easy to say administrators need to fix this.

Or politicians need to fix this.

Or parents need to fix this.

Or even:

"Teachers need to toughen up."

None of those responses is sufficient.

This belongs to all of us.

Teachers have responsibilities.

We need to continue growing.

We need to hold ourselves to high professional standards.

We need to serve students well.

We need to communicate with families.

We need to remain learners ourselves.

But society has responsibilities too.

If we say teaching matters, our decisions should demonstrate that teaching matters.

That means compensation matters.

Working conditions matter.

Professional respect matters.

Teacher voice matters.

Time matters.

The resources that are available to us matter.

Leadership matters.

Student behavior support matters.

Preparation matters.

And perhaps most importantly, listening matters.

We can't repeatedly tell teachers what they need without occasionally stopping and asking them:

"What do you need to do your job well?"

Then actually listening to the answer.

Because here's what I keep coming back to.

We don't have an endless supply of great teachers.

They are not disposable.

And when a great educator decides that they can no longer continue, we shouldn't simply shrug our shoulders and say:

"Someone else will take their place."

We should ask:

Why?

Not to guilt that teacher into staying.

Not to blame somebody else.

But to learn.

Because maybe their experience can help us create better conditions for the next teacher, and the next one, and the next one.

This isn't about protecting teachers from accountability.

Great teachers should welcome meaningful accountability.

It's about creating a profession where accountability and humanity can exist together.

Where high expectations and strong support can exist together.

Where teachers can be challenged to grow while also being treated as professionals.

That's how we build schools where people want to stay.

And that's why teacher retention belongs to all of us.

As I do a reflective close and wrap up today's episode, I want to bring us back to where we started.

Why should somebody who isn't a teacher care about teacher retention?

Because someday you may need a doctor, and somebody had to teach that doctor.

You may need a mechanic.

Somebody helped teach that mechanic.

You may own a business and need employees who can think, communicate, solve problems, and work with others.

Teachers helped develop those skills.

You may have children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, neighbors, young people you care about.

They need great teachers.

And even if none of those things applies to you, you still live in a community.

You still live in a society whose future depends upon the young people that we are educating today.

That's why this isn't just a teacher problem.

And I think we need to stop talking about teacher retention as though teachers are asking society to do them a favor.

Strengthening the teaching profession is an investment in all of us.

It's an investment in students, families, businesses, communities, our workforce, and our future.

Because education can give people something incredibly powerful.

Hope.

The belief that:

I can learn.

I can grow.

I have something to contribute.

I make a difference.

I can change the world.

That's one of the messages that I've tried to give students throughout my career—that they can change the world.

Maybe that means changing something across the country.

Maybe it means changing something in your state.

Maybe it means changing something in your community.

Maybe it means changing one person's life.

All of those count.

But young people need adults who help them discover that possibility.

And great teachers do that every single day.

So here's my challenge for you today.

If you're an educator, think about one student whose future you helped expand.

Maybe you introduced them to something.

Maybe you encouraged them.

Maybe you simply believed in them when they weren't quite ready to believe in themselves.

Remember that student, because that's part of why your work matters.

And if you're listening today and you're not an educator, think about a teacher who helped build a bridge somewhere in your own life.

Someone who helped you move from where you were toward who you eventually became.

Then ask yourself:

What would our communities look like without people like them?

That's what's at stake.

And that's why keeping great teachers isn't just an education issue.

It's everyone's issue.

Tomorrow, we're going to finish our first week of this series by asking what may be the most important question yet:

What happens when great teachers walk away?

Because behind every teacher who leaves, there's a classroom.

There are students.

There are colleagues.

There are families.

And there's knowledge, experience, and human connection walking out the door with them.

That's where we're headed next.

Well, if you found value in this episode, head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcast and hit me up with a five-star review and let me know what you think.

It helps more teachers to find this space.

And as you go into your day, I want you to remember to inspire greatness in young people.

And don't forget to be a funky teacher.

Bye now.