Hamden Teachers are Quietly Quitting

The following is a first-hand account, written by a school teacher inside Hamden Public schools. The pen name “The Albatross” is used for identity protection.

On August 31, the second day of the new school year, Hamden High School’s office manager sent an email to faculty, seeking staff members to cover classes for those who were absent. Every school day since then the emails have come. Sometimes they just come. Sometimes they come marked “high importance” or “urgency.” Sometimes the office staff scrambles for coverage throughout the day. Sometimes the principal gets on the intercom and pleads with faculty to cover. Sometimes kids are just thrown into the library because no one will cover. Sometimes the principal herself covers a class.

Hamden High School teachers have quit. They just are not showing up for work. They are taking their sick days. And no substitute from any agency will go into that building.

One could argue that it is wrong for teachers to take advantage of sick time, and that would be a fair point; however, instead of calling us bad, it may be more accurate to say that we are tired, tired of the abuse.

Hamden teachers are at the end of their tether. Given the absolute contempt, even hostility, with which they are treated, by students, by parents, by administration, it is actually surprising that the building has remained open.

For the classroom teacher, every day is a confrontation, with some parent, some student, some administrator. Teacher evaluations are weapons, used by administrators to pummel teachers into submission. Remember the rats in George Orwell’s 1984? Nothing terrified the protagonist Winston Smith more than rats. For a teacher, a meeting is a terrifying experience, one where you are constantly second-guessed, berated, zapped across the room. You never do anything right.

Then there has been the deluge of administrative chores dumped onto teachers, in addition to their teaching load. Credit Recovery needs to be run for students who already have too many absences? Have the teachers do it. Students need discipline? Have the teachers deal with it.

And every day we are stuck with class after class of rude, obstreperous students who have a dilatory approach to their assignments and are completely incompetent when it comes to meeting any sort of academic standard. To call them students is to give many of them a dignity that they do not deserve.

Our minds are saturated with daily indignities and private humiliations. The rudeness: they won’t look up from their phones even though you are addressing them directly. The defiance: don’t bother telling them to put their video games away; it is not going to happen. The violence: we lost two teachers in the last three years due to fights. Last year, an assistant principal was kicked to the ground. (Of course, there are awfully nice teenagers in the building. They are completely overwhelmed.)

Teachers are expected to have uncanny powers when it comes to changing the lives of their students. We are expected to lavish extraordinary sympathy on students who really have no claim to our compassion.

It is all the fashion to talk about supporting students.

It is the teachers who need support.

We get none.

And so we have quit.

Signed,

The Albatross