MENTAL HEALTH
“Do everything you can to strengthen your mental health because it's an extraordinarily demanding profession (….) Things won't go well if you aren't able to show up and feel positive and present—so yeah, taking care of mental health. And unfortunately, I think part of the problem is that it takes a while to become an efficient teacher. So you're dealing with everything, taking so much longer for you to do things at the same time as you're trying to establish those care routines, and it seems impossible to do both.”
“Plus, you have the pressure of being untenured, which is horrible. So there's more pressure to stay at school till 6 every day (…) and to be the very best so they don't fire you.”
JOB SECURITY
“They can't hire teachers—So I would say, relax and be happy and present and nice and don't have any conflicts with students, even if your plans aren't great.”
“Older teachers will make you afraid, but that is made up by them (…) They started their careers when there were 200 people vying for their position. And now we actually had to delete a position because we couldn't hire a special Ed teacher for it.”