As a Gen X teacher, just about, born in 1980, this really resonates. I’ve actively made career decisions to remain in the classroom. The traditional pathway often seems to be assistant head of year, head of year, deputy head, headteacher, but I’ve never seen the classroom as something I wanted to move away from.
I worked in advertising before changing career into teaching, and what I love most is still being connected to a class, building something with them day by day. I’ve also argued for different leadership paths and have been lucky to work as a Learning Innovation Coach alongside my class teacher role. I’m now our Approaches to Learning lead, which lets me keep my own form and classroom identity while having a wider influence across the school.
For me, experience doesn’t mean you need to leave the room. It means you start doing lots of things routinely well, which gives you the space to direct your energy elsewhere at the same time.
I’m an older baby boomer. My three best teachers in my public high school in Appalachia were women who were in their 60s. Two taught math classes and the third taught advanced English. If not for them I would not have been nearly as well prepared for the elite east coast college I attended.
I'm worse: I'm a(late) Baby Boomer, still in the classroom (31 years).
Recall what Adm. Kirk told Capt. Picard in "Star Trek: Generations": "Never let them take you from the bridge of your starship."
The classroom is my bridge, where I have more control and impact on students than anywhere else.
You won't change the pipeline of teachers until you change how you obtain them. You recruit the best, you pay/support the best, as all great enterprises do.
Exploiting the expertise of those as myself requires astute leadership, which sadly is lacking in far too many schools/districts/state Ed. Departments.
I have that meme printed out (because I, too, am old) and taped to the back of my prep table so I can see it every time I sit at my desk. But the one I have shows Picard from season 3 of his series sitting in the Captain’s chair of the remade Enterprise-D, a satisfied smile on his face.
And I agree about astute leadership being rare, sadly. I just hate that since COVID (and probably before) there’s this pressure to just leave and do…dunno, something. Con$ult, teach online, coach, speak… I just wish there was as much effort to help good teachers (or those who will be good) stay and make a true difference.
The conversation about generational differences in teaching is one worth having — and this is a thoughtful, grounded way to have it. Teachers at every stage of their career bring something essential. What tends to matter more than generation is whether teachers feel supported enough to keep growing, because that determination is not age-related. It’s culture-related. Thank you for this perspective.
Maintaining growth in the job - the skill and craft, as well as the continuing content knowledge, is a real trick as well, and it feels like the peak of an education-specific Maslow's. Thanks for reading and the kind words!
Hi Matt!! I'm excited to have provoked your thinking into this piece! Of course, I agree with all of your takes. And yes, many of us want to stay in the classroom--and some do want to be principals. Which is great-but I wonder why more roles couldn't exist to tackle the challenges we face and to align us with our greatest skill sets. And I wonder if our system was set up differently--wouldn't we attract more younger teachers? Wouldn't it be a more attractive profession?
Thanks for writing-glad I got you thinking.
ps: East of Eden is amazing! Enjoy the slower price of summer!
Hey Jennifer! Been obsessing about this a lot - of, "if not new leadership roles, then what?" since I posted this. I think it's mostly structural and goes back to the origins of public education and the corrosive, tenacious view of schools as factories that produce widgets. That and the inertia of decades upon decades of "We've always done it this way." Getting my thoughts together now. Hopefully have something up in the next day or so.
Oh - and I'm taking East of Eden slowly - it's so good, I don't want to move through it too fast.
I saw a lot of this in higher education too. You kind of got locked into positions, and because so few people left or retired, you got stuck. I was incredibly ambitious in my 30s and early 40s, and after seeing how little movement there was and how almost painfully impossible it was to move up, I reconciled that in my current job it was probably never going to happen. Then as I got closer to 50, I didn't want the headache because the leadership was so dysfunctional.
The trade-off of being in leadership can be pretty brutal. I personally opted to leave my organization altogether, but many stay in their positions for various reasons.
I’ve finished 31 years in education; two stints in Sec Ed from 1995-2011, and again from 2018-2022, and I am in my 10th year in higher ed (2011-2018, 2022 to present). I mostly agree with your arguments here. I was approached about moving into admin a number of times while in was in the classroom and always said no for many of the reasons you state. At the 10 year mark in my HS career I wanted a new challenge and a few years later started my Ph.D in Social Studies Education. Throughout the 4 years of my program I continued to teach full time (I have no idea how I did it, but it didn’t seem to horrible at the time, and I needed the full time job to fund the degree). It was the best 4 years of my life and what I learned in class transferred to my teaching. I left teaching after graduation to take an academic position as a teacher educator. Teaching pre-service and new-to-profession teachers was the next step for me. I wanted to share what I had learned from my own experience and my academic research to better prepare these rising teachers for entrance into the classroom.
I think that is also why some teachers leave to become instructional coaches; it is a pathway to a higher salary, it allows them to share their professional expertise and they maintain some connection with the classroom. Of course the disadvantage of this is that the longer you are out of the classroom on a daily basis the more quickly you lose touch with the reality of classroom teaching. Over the 6 years I spent as a teacher-educator classrooms changed dramatically. Despite being in schools a lot with my student teachers I was totally unprepared for the change in student/parent attitudes and behaviors when I returned t o the classroom for 4 years.
I would suggest that there needs to be something in between embedded in a classroom and moving out to instructional coaching or admin. Instead of removing instructional coaches out, they continue teaching classes (just fewer of them and with planning time sacrosanct) and they take on coaching during the rest of the time. This is similar to the academic practice of giving professors release time when they take on administrative or research duties. This would provide access to teaching mentors for new teachers without the mentoring teacher having to either mentor while teaching a full load of classes or becoming out of touch with current classroom dynamics.
Of course this would take funding. As you pointed out state legislatures are extremely parsimonious with the dollars they give to public schools. The thought of paying teacher mentors more for working ”less” (I.e. not teaching a full load) is enough to make them apoplectic. Never mind that they are doing two jobs. And, it still doesn’t address the teacher shortage issue in terms of who will be teaching the classes that are dropped from the mentor teacher’s schedule.
My path out of the classroom moved me into the classroom at a different level. My former student teachers are all still in the game and are beginning to hit the 10 year mark in their careers. My path worked for me, but it isn’t practical for most people. Unfortunately higher Ed is now getting treated in much the same way as public education—with a big push for work-force ready degrees over humanities, loss of academic freedom to teach/research, and micromanaging professors’ work. As an elder Gen-X, I’ll be retiring in 3 more semesters, I’m not quite ready for it, but then maybe leaving while I still enjoy what I do is better than waiting until I’m burned out.
Changes need to be made, there are good ideas out there, but none are perfect. If something doesn’t change soon, I fear that the teacher shortage is going to become catastrophic.
If we accept that many of the most expert teachers should remain in the classroom, what do you think are the best mechanisms for sharing that expertise more widely without pulling those teachers into formal leadership roles? Many thanks for this interesting response to a rather thought grappling article
That's a great question. My gut is that the best expertise-sharing often happens horizontally rather than vertically. Most of the veteran teachers I know already mentor, share resources, answer questions, host observations, present at conferences, and help younger teachers grow. As I mentioned, they're leading, just not through formal titles or organizational charts. I'd rather see schools create more time, trust, and support for those activities than assume expertise must be moved into a new administrative structure before it can be shared.
I think that freedom, trust, and time are the most important - I'm already scheduled to give a PD on using AI in classrooms sometime next fall, and I know it will be jammed into an already packed day, and I may have to submit my materials early for review. The best PD I've ever had was slow-paced, with lots of room for discussion, and no pressure from a bell or the end of the day (or the start) breathing down my neck.
I feel like I'm talking about a situation where there are lollipop trees and caramel-coated roads, though...
This seems like a very sensible way to avoid the 'expertise conveyor belt' that often funnels experienced teachers into managerial roles away from the classroom, leaving the least experienced teachers working most directly with students.
I was struck by your point that expertise-sharing often happens horizontally rather than vertically. The challenge, as you suggest, is that schools rarely provide the time, trust, or professional autonomy needed for that kind of collaboration to flourish.
Maybe the real issue isn't a lack of leadership pathways but a lack of conditions that allow experienced teachers to share their expertise while remaining in the classroom. Perhaps there should be more time allocated for CPD and teacher-teacher developmental discussion.
>>Maybe the real issue isn't a lack of leadership pathways but a lack of conditions that allow experienced teachers to share their expertise while remaining in the classroom.<<
Dingdingding! I think that's it too. Schools are obsessed with hierarchies, and not with how knowledge spreads. Given the two options - create new leadership positions, or restructure schools so they have effective networks that spread and preserve knowledge, they're going to go for creating new leadership positions every time. THOSE, they understand.
I think that's exactly what I was trying to get at. Creating leadership roles is often much easier than creating the conditions for expertise to spread organically, as you say. The irony is that the latter may have a far greater impact on teaching quality but it requires schools to think less about hierarchy and more about culture, trust and time. That culture of trust, research enquiry and ongoing professional development was very much a standout takeaway when I visited a school in Finland earlier this year.
I once taught in a school full of young teachers (lot of TFA-ers, which is a whole other issue). I was an oldie, at 29.
The principal loved it because we all jumped each time she snapped her fingers, but I didn't recognize the lack of expertise until I got to my current school.
Yeah - TFA-ers is a whole other issue...I keep looking at them like the other shoe that's going to drop, whether they are federalized teacher corps, or a cheap solution for districts (like mine) that can barely afford to keep the lights on.
Being surrounded by expertise is such an amazing feeling and can produce great teachers.
I have so much to say about this article but I’ll boil it down to Bravo and you are spot on. I’m a 30 year teacher who’s still in the classroom teaching 7th grade English and I’m there because truly, they need me. They need my expertise. My students are learning, thriving, and engaged in English. That’s not luck… that’s experienced teaching. I’ve written a few articles about this so far. I love this quote you wrote “For many of us Gen Xers, we remain in classrooms not because we lack ambition, but because we have already decided where we can make the greatest difference. We’ve seen the leadership world, even Jennifer’s hypothetical one11, and have said, “no.” … with all due respect to Jennifer, she’s wrong. Thanks for a honest and great read:)
As a Gen X teacher, just about, born in 1980, this really resonates. I’ve actively made career decisions to remain in the classroom. The traditional pathway often seems to be assistant head of year, head of year, deputy head, headteacher, but I’ve never seen the classroom as something I wanted to move away from.
I worked in advertising before changing career into teaching, and what I love most is still being connected to a class, building something with them day by day. I’ve also argued for different leadership paths and have been lucky to work as a Learning Innovation Coach alongside my class teacher role. I’m now our Approaches to Learning lead, which lets me keep my own form and classroom identity while having a wider influence across the school.
For me, experience doesn’t mean you need to leave the room. It means you start doing lots of things routinely well, which gives you the space to direct your energy elsewhere at the same time.
couldn't have said it better!
I’m an older baby boomer. My three best teachers in my public high school in Appalachia were women who were in their 60s. Two taught math classes and the third taught advanced English. If not for them I would not have been nearly as well prepared for the elite east coast college I attended.
And I bet they made it look easy, didn't put up with any guff, and were no-nonsense about what they taught and how they taught it. :)
I'm worse: I'm a(late) Baby Boomer, still in the classroom (31 years).
Recall what Adm. Kirk told Capt. Picard in "Star Trek: Generations": "Never let them take you from the bridge of your starship."
The classroom is my bridge, where I have more control and impact on students than anywhere else.
You won't change the pipeline of teachers until you change how you obtain them. You recruit the best, you pay/support the best, as all great enterprises do.
Exploiting the expertise of those as myself requires astute leadership, which sadly is lacking in far too many schools/districts/state Ed. Departments.
I have that meme printed out (because I, too, am old) and taped to the back of my prep table so I can see it every time I sit at my desk. But the one I have shows Picard from season 3 of his series sitting in the Captain’s chair of the remade Enterprise-D, a satisfied smile on his face.
And I agree about astute leadership being rare, sadly. I just hate that since COVID (and probably before) there’s this pressure to just leave and do…dunno, something. Con$ult, teach online, coach, speak… I just wish there was as much effort to help good teachers (or those who will be good) stay and make a true difference.
The conversation about generational differences in teaching is one worth having — and this is a thoughtful, grounded way to have it. Teachers at every stage of their career bring something essential. What tends to matter more than generation is whether teachers feel supported enough to keep growing, because that determination is not age-related. It’s culture-related. Thank you for this perspective.
Maintaining growth in the job - the skill and craft, as well as the continuing content knowledge, is a real trick as well, and it feels like the peak of an education-specific Maslow's. Thanks for reading and the kind words!
Hi Matt!! I'm excited to have provoked your thinking into this piece! Of course, I agree with all of your takes. And yes, many of us want to stay in the classroom--and some do want to be principals. Which is great-but I wonder why more roles couldn't exist to tackle the challenges we face and to align us with our greatest skill sets. And I wonder if our system was set up differently--wouldn't we attract more younger teachers? Wouldn't it be a more attractive profession?
Thanks for writing-glad I got you thinking.
ps: East of Eden is amazing! Enjoy the slower price of summer!
Hey Jennifer! Been obsessing about this a lot - of, "if not new leadership roles, then what?" since I posted this. I think it's mostly structural and goes back to the origins of public education and the corrosive, tenacious view of schools as factories that produce widgets. That and the inertia of decades upon decades of "We've always done it this way." Getting my thoughts together now. Hopefully have something up in the next day or so.
Oh - and I'm taking East of Eden slowly - it's so good, I don't want to move through it too fast.
I agree-the factory set-up/mentality is layered. Looking forward to the read.
I like being a teacher, why leave something I enjoy and have spent decades getting good at?
Actually, most Gen Xers are offspring of the Silent Gen, not Boomers. Boomers for the most part are parents of Millennials.
thanks for the correction - I was going off of my own bias, I guess, being an elder Gen X, myself
I get it. It’s pretty common. No one really remembers the Silent Gen either so it makes sense lol
ha! ba-dum-tss!
I saw a lot of this in higher education too. You kind of got locked into positions, and because so few people left or retired, you got stuck. I was incredibly ambitious in my 30s and early 40s, and after seeing how little movement there was and how almost painfully impossible it was to move up, I reconciled that in my current job it was probably never going to happen. Then as I got closer to 50, I didn't want the headache because the leadership was so dysfunctional.
The trade-off of being in leadership can be pretty brutal. I personally opted to leave my organization altogether, but many stay in their positions for various reasons.
I’ve finished 31 years in education; two stints in Sec Ed from 1995-2011, and again from 2018-2022, and I am in my 10th year in higher ed (2011-2018, 2022 to present). I mostly agree with your arguments here. I was approached about moving into admin a number of times while in was in the classroom and always said no for many of the reasons you state. At the 10 year mark in my HS career I wanted a new challenge and a few years later started my Ph.D in Social Studies Education. Throughout the 4 years of my program I continued to teach full time (I have no idea how I did it, but it didn’t seem to horrible at the time, and I needed the full time job to fund the degree). It was the best 4 years of my life and what I learned in class transferred to my teaching. I left teaching after graduation to take an academic position as a teacher educator. Teaching pre-service and new-to-profession teachers was the next step for me. I wanted to share what I had learned from my own experience and my academic research to better prepare these rising teachers for entrance into the classroom.
I think that is also why some teachers leave to become instructional coaches; it is a pathway to a higher salary, it allows them to share their professional expertise and they maintain some connection with the classroom. Of course the disadvantage of this is that the longer you are out of the classroom on a daily basis the more quickly you lose touch with the reality of classroom teaching. Over the 6 years I spent as a teacher-educator classrooms changed dramatically. Despite being in schools a lot with my student teachers I was totally unprepared for the change in student/parent attitudes and behaviors when I returned t o the classroom for 4 years.
I would suggest that there needs to be something in between embedded in a classroom and moving out to instructional coaching or admin. Instead of removing instructional coaches out, they continue teaching classes (just fewer of them and with planning time sacrosanct) and they take on coaching during the rest of the time. This is similar to the academic practice of giving professors release time when they take on administrative or research duties. This would provide access to teaching mentors for new teachers without the mentoring teacher having to either mentor while teaching a full load of classes or becoming out of touch with current classroom dynamics.
Of course this would take funding. As you pointed out state legislatures are extremely parsimonious with the dollars they give to public schools. The thought of paying teacher mentors more for working ”less” (I.e. not teaching a full load) is enough to make them apoplectic. Never mind that they are doing two jobs. And, it still doesn’t address the teacher shortage issue in terms of who will be teaching the classes that are dropped from the mentor teacher’s schedule.
My path out of the classroom moved me into the classroom at a different level. My former student teachers are all still in the game and are beginning to hit the 10 year mark in their careers. My path worked for me, but it isn’t practical for most people. Unfortunately higher Ed is now getting treated in much the same way as public education—with a big push for work-force ready degrees over humanities, loss of academic freedom to teach/research, and micromanaging professors’ work. As an elder Gen-X, I’ll be retiring in 3 more semesters, I’m not quite ready for it, but then maybe leaving while I still enjoy what I do is better than waiting until I’m burned out.
Changes need to be made, there are good ideas out there, but none are perfect. If something doesn’t change soon, I fear that the teacher shortage is going to become catastrophic.
I've got nothing to add to this - it was heartfelt and insightful, and I agree with it all. :)
If we accept that many of the most expert teachers should remain in the classroom, what do you think are the best mechanisms for sharing that expertise more widely without pulling those teachers into formal leadership roles? Many thanks for this interesting response to a rather thought grappling article
That's a great question. My gut is that the best expertise-sharing often happens horizontally rather than vertically. Most of the veteran teachers I know already mentor, share resources, answer questions, host observations, present at conferences, and help younger teachers grow. As I mentioned, they're leading, just not through formal titles or organizational charts. I'd rather see schools create more time, trust, and support for those activities than assume expertise must be moved into a new administrative structure before it can be shared.
I think that freedom, trust, and time are the most important - I'm already scheduled to give a PD on using AI in classrooms sometime next fall, and I know it will be jammed into an already packed day, and I may have to submit my materials early for review. The best PD I've ever had was slow-paced, with lots of room for discussion, and no pressure from a bell or the end of the day (or the start) breathing down my neck.
I feel like I'm talking about a situation where there are lollipop trees and caramel-coated roads, though...
This seems like a very sensible way to avoid the 'expertise conveyor belt' that often funnels experienced teachers into managerial roles away from the classroom, leaving the least experienced teachers working most directly with students.
I was struck by your point that expertise-sharing often happens horizontally rather than vertically. The challenge, as you suggest, is that schools rarely provide the time, trust, or professional autonomy needed for that kind of collaboration to flourish.
Maybe the real issue isn't a lack of leadership pathways but a lack of conditions that allow experienced teachers to share their expertise while remaining in the classroom. Perhaps there should be more time allocated for CPD and teacher-teacher developmental discussion.
>>Maybe the real issue isn't a lack of leadership pathways but a lack of conditions that allow experienced teachers to share their expertise while remaining in the classroom.<<
Dingdingding! I think that's it too. Schools are obsessed with hierarchies, and not with how knowledge spreads. Given the two options - create new leadership positions, or restructure schools so they have effective networks that spread and preserve knowledge, they're going to go for creating new leadership positions every time. THOSE, they understand.
I think that's exactly what I was trying to get at. Creating leadership roles is often much easier than creating the conditions for expertise to spread organically, as you say. The irony is that the latter may have a far greater impact on teaching quality but it requires schools to think less about hierarchy and more about culture, trust and time. That culture of trust, research enquiry and ongoing professional development was very much a standout takeaway when I visited a school in Finland earlier this year.
I once taught in a school full of young teachers (lot of TFA-ers, which is a whole other issue). I was an oldie, at 29.
The principal loved it because we all jumped each time she snapped her fingers, but I didn't recognize the lack of expertise until I got to my current school.
Boy, were we missing out.
Yeah - TFA-ers is a whole other issue...I keep looking at them like the other shoe that's going to drop, whether they are federalized teacher corps, or a cheap solution for districts (like mine) that can barely afford to keep the lights on.
Being surrounded by expertise is such an amazing feeling and can produce great teachers.
As a fellow GenXer, I enjoyed this article...I guess...whatever.
;)
See, that’s the abandonment after school talking and hanging out in the mall for hours on end talking there… :)
I have so much to say about this article but I’ll boil it down to Bravo and you are spot on. I’m a 30 year teacher who’s still in the classroom teaching 7th grade English and I’m there because truly, they need me. They need my expertise. My students are learning, thriving, and engaged in English. That’s not luck… that’s experienced teaching. I’ve written a few articles about this so far. I love this quote you wrote “For many of us Gen Xers, we remain in classrooms not because we lack ambition, but because we have already decided where we can make the greatest difference. We’ve seen the leadership world, even Jennifer’s hypothetical one11, and have said, “no.” … with all due respect to Jennifer, she’s wrong. Thanks for a honest and great read:)