The Upside to Teacher Resignation Letters Going Viral
A few years ago, Alyssa Hadley Dunn noticed that some of her former students were sharing over social media resignation letters written and posted online by public school teachers. Dunn, assistant professor of teacher education at Michigan State University, was a bit rattled that these heartbreaking letters were having an impression on educators who were just beginning their careers in the classroom.
“They would also send them to me in an email,” Dunn recalls. “They were saying, ‘This is me. This is how I feel! This person is putting into words what I have been experiencing since I got in the classroom.'”
As more of the resignation letters went viral, (You can read them here, here, and here) Dunn came to view them as a new “genre” of teacher public discourse that deserved further study. She wanted to know more. Who were these educators? Why did they feel compelled to explain their decision to leave the classroom in such a public manner? What do the letters reveal about the state of the U.S. public education system and the teaching profession?
Dunn, along with a team of colleagues and graduate students, examined 23 teacher resignation letters and interviewed eight of the former educators. The result is a trio of studies. The first, “With Regret: The Genre of Teachers’ Public Resignation Letters,” (co-written with MSU asst. professor of education Jennifer VanDerHeide and doctoral student Matthew Deroo) focuses on the specific content and shared attributes of the letters. A second, “Activism Through Attrition?: An Exploration of Viral Resignation Letters and the Teachers who Wrote Them” (co-written by doctoral students Scott Farver, Amy Guenther, and Lindsay J. Wexler) takes a look at their utility as a social and political voice for educators. The third upcoming paper will examine how the letters provide an effective counter-narrative to prevailing misconceptions about The Upside to Teacher Resignation Letters Going Viral: