I taught for less than a school year cuz my school admin just allowed me to be treated like shit. Because I’m so young they wanted to treat me like my students they had on the school to prison pipeline but I’m an adult so when I stood up against the mess it was kind of taken as wtf are you doing get in line so I did, I resigned. I was advisor of clubs and committes for student culture events so when I left those clubs got messed up. I still attempt to be there for my students but it’s tough since I’m no longer working there and back in school myself and have little money and time to spare for them but they are used to having their friendly teacher who would buy them snacks and help them if they needed $20 here and there and supporting all of their events and sports teams. So I feel guilty like by seeking freedom for me I did a more heinous crime of abandoning people who actually needed me. Working in DCPS destroyed my mental health and I’m not even 30 yet I’m not even close to being 30. I was a young recent graduate thinking I’m from the area and maybe if I work with a certain type of kid I could make a difference. For my kids I did but my admin made it impossible to do my job. The harassment I dealt with from coworkers old than me by at least a decade was insane. I was also not given resources needed to do my job and the school knew this and for months still refused to give them to me. Plus I was often told we don’t care if you were a close contact and need to get tested you better be in this building with these kids. They even guilted you for wanting to be Covid free. Oftentimes the families didn’t trust the vaccine so students would not be wearing mask and would be saying COVID’s not real as DCPS is trying to intimidate you into never taking off so you can avoid getting Covid. The school I worked at waited til after the last day before winter break was over to tell us that over 50 students were Covid contacts so people wouldn’t take off. So y’all saying there’s no way a whole class becomes a risk… Lies. My first week teaching more than half of one of my classes was out because one kid who had multiple classes with them all had Covid. Imagine it’s the week of Labor Day and you are tryna start teaching but only 3 kids are in class and the rest of them aren’t gonna do the work from home because they are sick and don’t have a teacher to help them.

The teacher turnover is that teachers no longer want to be disrespected for scraps when we can change fields and protect our mental health. That’s truly it. I loved my good coworkers and students and I get sadly almost daily knowing I can’t go back and try to make a difference in that community because it wasn’t safe for me in anyways.

I read this title as "Ecuador exodus: Inside DC's teacher turnover crisis" about a million times and could not figure out what one had to do with the other. I finally read it the correct way; it makes way more sense now.

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