Why one teacher left the profession for the corporate world

Here's the comment of the day from our in-depth about teachers' morale being at its lowest point in two decades.

Marnie wrote, "I taught high school foreign language for 5 years before I left for the corporate world. I never would have anticipated that as an employee I am treated far better by a huge corporation than as a teacher in a local high school. My current employer invests in developing its employees and I have regular development sessions with my leader. As a teacher I was thrown to the wolves. As a young un-tenured teacher I was only observed about 3 times in a year and only received actionable feedback once. Staff development sessions were a joke as most teachers didn't want to attend and would rather have stayed in their classroom to complete paperwork.

"As a teacher every tax payer and every parent felt they were my boss and felt they knew how to do my job better than I did. Parental involvement usually took the form of parents calling at the end of the semester begging for their child to be able to do extra credit to pass the course after not completing any homework all semester. It breaks my heart that education is such a thankless profession and I have immense appreciation for those that have stuck it out without becoming burnt out and demoralized."

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