Former teacher shares powerful resignation letter: ‘I won’t be in an abusive relationship with public education’
Elementary school teacher Sariah McCall was in her classroom every morning at 6:45 a.m., taught bell-to-bell classes, attended meetings during her planning period and worked assigned lunch and recess duties with little time to eat or go to the restroom. When the bell rang for the 2:15 p.m. student dismissal, she worked an assigned bus or hall duty, followed by lesson and classroom prep. Sometimes, she left school by 5 p.m. At home, McCall would work on more grading and paper work until 11 p.m. or midnight, then finally sleep — and repeat.
But the workload was not sustainable for McCall. Now, she’s sharing the powerful resignation letter she wrote explaining why she left teaching for good.
“The only things keeping me from resigning until now were the love I have for my students, the love I have for the act of teaching, and the heavy guilt I feel for my children being negatively impacted by this in any way: emotionally or academically,” McCall wrote to the Charleston County School District in November.
“However, I cannot set myself on fire to keep someone else warm,” McCall wrote as a slight to an “inspirational” teacher quote that likens teachers to candles that must “consume itself to light the way for others.”
“I felt like I was running on a hamster while going nowhere. I was just working all the time and there was still more to do. The to-do-list was never-ending,” McCall tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “I just couldn't do it anymore.”
And McCall isn’t the only one — South Carolina has been dealing with a mass exodus of public teachers leaving their positions. According to the South Carolina Annual Educator Supply & Demand Report, over 7,300 public school teachers left their positions left during or at the end of the 2017 to 2018 school year. Nearly 73 percent of those educators are no longer teaching in any South Carolina public school.
“There’s mass teacher burnout in this state. We’re so overworked,” says 8th-grade math teacher Sanni Perry, a board member for an education advocacy group CONTINUE READING: Former teacher's powerful resignation letter goes viral
