Wow. This article is quite enlightening! I just completed my sixth year, however, I transitioned from pre K (3-5 y/o’s) to 2nd grade going into my 4th year. I’m of the thought, the apprenticeship clock restarted when I moved into 2nd. I’m going to try and pass this read onto my admin. Thanks for the well composed article!
It's the admin who make the job so hard in my experience, not the students. I don't understand why they equate great leadership with scrutiny and micromanaging the second career and brand new teachers. They should trust us more.
And this is for people who are ALREADY teachers. Just think of how relatively little experience people get in teacher prep programs. I feel like I had good teachers and classroom mentors when I was in college, preparing to be a teacher. And even with that practice, there aren't nearly enough hours of instructional time to turn a 22-year-old into a "good" teacher. I think you're right--there's a teacher retention problem, but there's also a teacher introduction problem. Great article.
thanks for reading. As I've met more and more wide-eyed baby teachers, I'm more and more convinced the first thing they need to hear when they start teaching is, "forget everything that you were taught - except the legal stuff. Don't forget the legal stuff...as your fellow teachers and help these kids be the best versions of themselves."
Year 36 here. You are spot on with your assessment of the teaching profession. When I first started in my district in the 1990s, there was no mentor program. There is now.
And thank you for sticking through year 36 and beyond. When I started, our schools had a lot of 25+ teachers, and now, as someone told me in the last weeks of school, I'm looked at as a "senior teacher." I'm only 16 years in. Me? I just figured out what I was doing.
Your thoughtful and deep perspective with strategic solutions is appreciated. I love how practical and applicable the architecture changes are and could be... If only administrators and Department leaders would look at this as a whole. I had to retire early last year after 30 years of teaching for family medical reasons, and everything you said about education is true. This is solvable.
A lot of professions understand that judgment, pattern recognition, and steadiness develop through accumulated experience over long periods of time. Schools often say they want expert teachers while simultaneously creating conditions that make it difficult for teachers to stay long enough to become them.
I agree, and pay scales as we have here in NC - it's an election year, so the GOP-controlled state legislature is rushing through raises which they say are the best in the south...but 1-5 year teachers will get double-digit raises, while the mentor class, 15 and above won't even get enough to cover cost of living increases.
That tension shows up in a lot of places right now. Schools absolutely need to recruit new teachers, but they also need structures that make experienced teachers feel valued enough to stay long term because so much practical knowledge and stability develops over those years.
We're going through a budget crisis and layoffs, and people jumping ship are becoming the norm. We're losing so much institutional knowledge as a result. I have this idea that we need to make a school wiki, but, like everything in public education, there's a HUGE hurdle in convincing leadership to do something when the idea wasn't theirs, and then the usual..." so you'd be willing to do this, then, right?"
Yes, and I'd push this one step further: the clock doesn't just reset when a teacher leaves, it also resets every time a teacher's assignment changes.
I think time in the classroom matters, for sure, but so does time with the same curriculum and the same age group. A teacher in year eight who has been shuffled across three different grade levels and four different courses hasn't accumulated eight years of compounding expertise in anything, aside perhaps from knowledge of the overall school system. They've accumulated eight years of starting over.
What I see in schools is a kind of instructional triage masquerading as deployment. Strong teachers get shuffled into "difficult" classes to get things under control, which is understandable in a crisis, but it fragments the very expertise that made them strong. Meanwhile, struggling teachers get quietly parked in "easy" classes to insulate everyone from their poor classroom management, which doesn't help the teacher grow and doesn't actually serve those kids either.
Both moves treat teaching assignments as interchangeable. They're not. Deep knowledge of a curriculum, the sequences that work, the places students reliably get lost, the mentor texts that unlock something in a particular age group, is built over years of repetition with that specific content.
All of this is so true. Increasingly, legislatures lean into the 5 year and out trend rather than doing anything substantial that you have suggested. Those of us that roughed it out and are 20 years or more (or even the 10+ people) sometimes feel like suckers for staying.
Matt Brady is naming the real problem with unusual clarity: we say we want excellent teachers, but we keep building systems that interrupt the very years required to form them. His central point is that teaching is a cognitively and emotionally complex craft, that mastery does not happen in years three to five, and that instability, churn, and performative structures keep schools trapped in perpetual apprenticeship.
What this article makes unmistakably clear is that the issue is not simply teacher effort, attitude, or resilience. The issue is architecture. When early-career educators are overloaded, underprepared for the emotional weight of the profession, shuffled, micromanaged, and cut before they can fully develop, the system is not producing mastery. It is disrupting it. That is precisely where the QOM™ and QOA™ Educational Pilot Program becomes essential: it is designed to strengthen the internal architecture of the educator so the external demands do not keep hijacking their clarity, regulation, perception, and effectiveness. In plain English: if we want to save our children, we must first stabilize the adults responsible for leading them. Blessings, Peace and Love!
I taught for 22 years and around year 10 is when I really started to burn out. You can't burn a candle at both ends and expect it to stand. I appreciate what you've written here, Matt, and always marvel at how different each educator's experience is based on their administration and their community.
This is all so true. It also takes ten years to become efficient, which is so important for that work-life balance quest we're all chasing. During my first few years as a teacher, I would spend 60 hours a week working. Now, 20 years in, I'm much closer to a normal 40. I really feel for new teachers who are also new parents. I don't know how I could have managed all that with any sanity.
In those ten years you also see corruption. You see teachers and administrators who don't have the best interest of kids at heart. You see theft. You see fraud. You see who is just marking time. And that's when you have to make a choice about which kind of teacher you're going to be. Are you going to be one of the four-year wonders who were born administrators despite never showing exceptional performance in the classroom? Or are you going to be the kind that opens your door and your cupboard to the student who wants to eat lunch in your classroom because you're the safe one, even if you have to break the rules to do it? That ten years is critical to self-examination and hopefully self-discovery.
I'm grateful that I worked in three different states/districts during my first 10 years as a teacher so I could see the huge differences in admin and state-level craziness.
Wow. This article is quite enlightening! I just completed my sixth year, however, I transitioned from pre K (3-5 y/o’s) to 2nd grade going into my 4th year. I’m of the thought, the apprenticeship clock restarted when I moved into 2nd. I’m going to try and pass this read onto my admin. Thanks for the well composed article!
thanks so much for reading! No shade at all meant to the under-10 crowd, but just wait. It gets so much better and easier.
No shade taken! 😊😊😊
Reading your piece gave me hope for the continued growth and peace for the ability acquired as I move into the coming year.
It's the admin who make the job so hard in my experience, not the students. I don't understand why they equate great leadership with scrutiny and micromanaging the second career and brand new teachers. They should trust us more.
Teachers don’t leave schools because of the kids; we leave because of the other adults. Been there myself.
And this is for people who are ALREADY teachers. Just think of how relatively little experience people get in teacher prep programs. I feel like I had good teachers and classroom mentors when I was in college, preparing to be a teacher. And even with that practice, there aren't nearly enough hours of instructional time to turn a 22-year-old into a "good" teacher. I think you're right--there's a teacher retention problem, but there's also a teacher introduction problem. Great article.
thanks for reading. As I've met more and more wide-eyed baby teachers, I'm more and more convinced the first thing they need to hear when they start teaching is, "forget everything that you were taught - except the legal stuff. Don't forget the legal stuff...as your fellow teachers and help these kids be the best versions of themselves."
The rest are details.
Year 36 here. You are spot on with your assessment of the teaching profession. When I first started in my district in the 1990s, there was no mentor program. There is now.
Experience is key.
And thank you for sticking through year 36 and beyond. When I started, our schools had a lot of 25+ teachers, and now, as someone told me in the last weeks of school, I'm looked at as a "senior teacher." I'm only 16 years in. Me? I just figured out what I was doing.
I would like to move into a mentor position in my district if one becomes available. Otherwise I am retiring in three or four years.
Enjoy your last week, I still have until June 23.
Your thoughtful and deep perspective with strategic solutions is appreciated. I love how practical and applicable the architecture changes are and could be... If only administrators and Department leaders would look at this as a whole. I had to retire early last year after 30 years of teaching for family medical reasons, and everything you said about education is true. This is solvable.
I hate how solvable all of these problems are, or can be. Thanks for reading!
A lot of professions understand that judgment, pattern recognition, and steadiness develop through accumulated experience over long periods of time. Schools often say they want expert teachers while simultaneously creating conditions that make it difficult for teachers to stay long enough to become them.
I agree, and pay scales as we have here in NC - it's an election year, so the GOP-controlled state legislature is rushing through raises which they say are the best in the south...but 1-5 year teachers will get double-digit raises, while the mentor class, 15 and above won't even get enough to cover cost of living increases.
That tension shows up in a lot of places right now. Schools absolutely need to recruit new teachers, but they also need structures that make experienced teachers feel valued enough to stay long term because so much practical knowledge and stability develops over those years.
We're going through a budget crisis and layoffs, and people jumping ship are becoming the norm. We're losing so much institutional knowledge as a result. I have this idea that we need to make a school wiki, but, like everything in public education, there's a HUGE hurdle in convincing leadership to do something when the idea wasn't theirs, and then the usual..." so you'd be willing to do this, then, right?"
Ugh.
Yes, and I'd push this one step further: the clock doesn't just reset when a teacher leaves, it also resets every time a teacher's assignment changes.
I think time in the classroom matters, for sure, but so does time with the same curriculum and the same age group. A teacher in year eight who has been shuffled across three different grade levels and four different courses hasn't accumulated eight years of compounding expertise in anything, aside perhaps from knowledge of the overall school system. They've accumulated eight years of starting over.
What I see in schools is a kind of instructional triage masquerading as deployment. Strong teachers get shuffled into "difficult" classes to get things under control, which is understandable in a crisis, but it fragments the very expertise that made them strong. Meanwhile, struggling teachers get quietly parked in "easy" classes to insulate everyone from their poor classroom management, which doesn't help the teacher grow and doesn't actually serve those kids either.
Both moves treat teaching assignments as interchangeable. They're not. Deep knowledge of a curriculum, the sequences that work, the places students reliably get lost, the mentor texts that unlock something in a particular age group, is built over years of repetition with that specific content.
All of this is so true. Increasingly, legislatures lean into the 5 year and out trend rather than doing anything substantial that you have suggested. Those of us that roughed it out and are 20 years or more (or even the 10+ people) sometimes feel like suckers for staying.
Matt Brady is naming the real problem with unusual clarity: we say we want excellent teachers, but we keep building systems that interrupt the very years required to form them. His central point is that teaching is a cognitively and emotionally complex craft, that mastery does not happen in years three to five, and that instability, churn, and performative structures keep schools trapped in perpetual apprenticeship.
What this article makes unmistakably clear is that the issue is not simply teacher effort, attitude, or resilience. The issue is architecture. When early-career educators are overloaded, underprepared for the emotional weight of the profession, shuffled, micromanaged, and cut before they can fully develop, the system is not producing mastery. It is disrupting it. That is precisely where the QOM™ and QOA™ Educational Pilot Program becomes essential: it is designed to strengthen the internal architecture of the educator so the external demands do not keep hijacking their clarity, regulation, perception, and effectiveness. In plain English: if we want to save our children, we must first stabilize the adults responsible for leading them. Blessings, Peace and Love!
I taught for 22 years and around year 10 is when I really started to burn out. You can't burn a candle at both ends and expect it to stand. I appreciate what you've written here, Matt, and always marvel at how different each educator's experience is based on their administration and their community.
You know the answer to your question....greed, incompetence, dillettantism, and political interference.
At my 10-year mark I also felt a sense of mastery (I could lead others) and a sense of confidence in walking into my middle school classroom each day.
This is an excellent article!! Consider pitching it to Ed Week or Ed Leadership. You might want to cite the literature on the remarkable Finnish education system. Here's a link: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/09/10-reasons-why-finlands-education-system-is-the-best-in-the-world/#:~:text=The%20program%20that%20Finland%20put,children%20for%20the%20real%20world.
This is all so true. It also takes ten years to become efficient, which is so important for that work-life balance quest we're all chasing. During my first few years as a teacher, I would spend 60 hours a week working. Now, 20 years in, I'm much closer to a normal 40. I really feel for new teachers who are also new parents. I don't know how I could have managed all that with any sanity.
In those ten years you also see corruption. You see teachers and administrators who don't have the best interest of kids at heart. You see theft. You see fraud. You see who is just marking time. And that's when you have to make a choice about which kind of teacher you're going to be. Are you going to be one of the four-year wonders who were born administrators despite never showing exceptional performance in the classroom? Or are you going to be the kind that opens your door and your cupboard to the student who wants to eat lunch in your classroom because you're the safe one, even if you have to break the rules to do it? That ten years is critical to self-examination and hopefully self-discovery.
I'm grateful that I worked in three different states/districts during my first 10 years as a teacher so I could see the huge differences in admin and state-level craziness.
What year did the job start to feel steady for you?