(inspiring music) - We begin with a follow-up to our "Teachers in Crisis" special last May.

The school year is winding down, but not without continued concern for the number of qualified teachers in classrooms across the country and here at home.

One of the biggest problems is retention.

A Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction report indicates that one of every three new teachers in the state will leave the profession in just five years.

In our special last year, three NPS teachers shared video diaries of their teaching days to help us understand what they have to deal with in the classroom.

Producer Scottie Lee Meyers asked those same teachers to do this again and found out one of those teachers is indeed calling it quits.

(bright piano music) - My name is Angela Harris.

I am currently a first grade teacher at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Elementary School.

It's an African American immersion school here in Milwaukee and I have been there for seven years, but I have been doing education for over 20.

One thing I really appreciated about doing the video diary project was having the opportunity to reflect.

And I think going through this experience that I'm going through now and being able to really document this journey as I'm going through it has really kind of helped me in the healing process.

- My name is Lukas Wierer.

This is my 15th year teaching in the Milwaukee Public Schools and I'm currently placed at Obama School of Career and Technical Education and my, I mean, my technical position is a culturally responsive teacher leader.

I think that reflection piece that the diaries allowed, I think sometimes saying it out loud does matter.

So to me, the diaries are like an extension of that, is it allows us to say things out loud and maybe even play ourselves even a little bit more bare because no one is listening, like physically in person in that moment.

- Rae Chappelle or Mick Chappelle to my students.

I teach 5th grade, so pretty much like all the subjects, except for like your art, music, gym.

And, yeah, I've been teaching there for four years now at Allen-Field.

Sorry.

It is really imperative that I have that moment to reflect and I do that each week with my therapist.

It's important for me to know my reasons why I'm leaving because I'm feeling so many complex emotions about that decision.

- It is a Monday, April 24th, and today, I am going to the doctor for a follow-up.

On Wednesday, November 9th, 2022, I was violently attacked by a parent at the end of the school day.

So the situation just really escalated very quickly and I was grabbed from behind and so, you know, there was a big melee.

I ended up on the ground.

Obviously, I went directly to the Urgent Care.

I had a concussion, a shoulder sprain, and a neck sprain.

I've been on leave since November 9th.

I just had an MRI today because I'm possibly gonna have to end up having surgery on my neck.

They've made me exhaust my FMLA and my sick hours and I shouldn't have had to use either of those when I was hurt.

I was hurt at work, so this should be a strict workman's comp issue, but it is not and nobody can explain to me why it is not.

When you feel like you're not valued by your employer, it's very difficult to get up and go to work for them every single day.

I did not really share details, but I thought I was gonna lose my life that day.

And to know that I would've just been replaced, it just doesn't feel good.

And I feel like because I am so hurt and I am so disillusioned by my treatment of the district, I'm not going to be able to show up in the classroom in the full capacity that I have in the past.

- Since last year, when I initially did the the video diaries, I've had a little bit of a change.

So in the last month, I applied to a different school, and in the the '23-'24 school year, I'll actually be a social studies teacher, but over at Riverside University High School.

I think for the better part of the last two or three years, I've been a little, I guess I don't know what the word is, maybe like unsatisfied professionally just in terms of having a lot of self-doubt on whether I'm an effective teacher here at Obama.

And I think I spoke in my previous video diaries that one of the big issues I have with the Milwaukee Public Schools as an institution is just generally that it's very much kind of an institution that is in the business of preserving schools that serve the haves.

And a number of our schools, as a result, are serving for, lack of better terms, the have-not.

And when an institution is designed in that way, it puts a lot of pressure on the actors in certain spaces and it generally just, it creates even more inequitable outcomes.

So even people like myself who really strongly feel that we need to be in places and that we need to be supporting those that are the most marginalized and put in the most suppressive positions, even we get to a point where we kind of burn out.

- It's Monday, March 24th.

I'm actually not at school today as you can see.

I'm at home.

I called in today just 'cause I am struggling with my mental health.

Many teachers have been calling in.

If only you could see our whiteboard in the office where the secretary writes down everybody who's out for the day.

This year, we've had the longest lists for the most amount of days.

It's bad.

Teachers are tired.

(bright piano music) - Good afternoon.

Today is Tuesday, April 25th.

My last class of the day, my 4B, is a restorative practices class, which is kind of unique to the Milwaukee Public Schools.

It's a class I really do like.

It's content that has transformed my life in many ways.

We talk about ideas, like the connection between trust, relationships, and community, like really important topics.

They're like really difficult topics for young people to grasp.

So, especially the last two years, I've really struggled working with freshmen 'cause freshmen are at like a weird developmental stage.

So what I've seen is really low numbers in the class, too.

So I have a freshman class of about 34 students and I would say on a regular day, I see about 12 of my freshman, even though I know that I had seen others during the day.

They just opt-out in different ways, whether they go home early or just, you know, finding ways to not be in class in the building.

And I just don't, like, I just haven't been effective as a teacher and that's really, like, it's tough to say that out loud, although I feel like I'm maybe better than most at being honest about my abilities.

But it's just hard every day when students come in and you feel like you can't reach 'em.

So, check back in tomorrow.

- Hey.

It's Tuesday, April 25th, end of the school day.

So here's our issue in 5th grade.

We as 5th grade teachers are responsible for teaching human growth and development for health this year.

But today, we were told that we have to give up our either science or social studies block.

Yes, that's right.

My students only get either science or social studies for 30 minutes each day.

If I want to, you know, teach both science and social studies in the same day, I have to take extra time to find a way to integrate that into reading.

Where do I find that time, you ask?

In the 45 minutes that I have to plan three outta five days of the week.

45 minutes is not enough time to create a truly engaging lesson.

So I take that time out of my weekend where I'm not getting paid.

There's too much on teacher's plates and there is not enough time.

(sad piano music) - Today is Wednesday, April 26th, and I got a new student today.

And this isn't like, I mean, it's not normal, but like it's also not crazy to get a student this late in the semester.

I think probably the most common incidents of us getting students kind of mid-semester, especially, you know, beyond the midpoint of the semester and towards the end is because of disciplinary transfers.

And an open records request was done and I got access to some data from MPS, and basically, what we found is like disciplinary transfers have really been going up for the last five or six years.

I think the low was like 2017-18 when it was below 400 disciplinary transfers, and last year, in the '21-'22 school year, there were over 1,000 disciplinary transfers.

But over the entire period, kinda like with behavior disproportionality, the percentage of students who are Black who are being transferred schools is always disproportionate.

So looking at the data it's above 80% of disciplinary transfers in the district are Black students.

So this is something that kind of in the same vein as suspension expulsion data remains a real issue for MPS.

So yeah, it's just, it's one of those things where there just has to be a better way to go about this process.

That was my Wednesday.

Check back in tomorrow.

- Hey.

It's Wednesday, 26th.

In reading, I have some students, a couple students who are still working on letter sounds, and then on the other end of that spectrum, I have a few students who are ready for more challenges, middle school level text, high school level text.

And between those two extremes in 5th grade, I have about 14 others that fall somewhere along that spectrum.

And I'm expected to create lessons and activities that meet each student at their appropriate learning level.

And that's just academic needs.

Let's talk about social.

It's 5th grade.

I have a few bullies in my room, I got some low self-esteem.

Some of the same kids that are struggling a lot with reading and math, you know, they've internalized that and they feel ashamed and so they take that out on others, and, you know, we're getting somewhere, but that has been so taxing, just trying to get them to see that they are capable if they try every single day.

Motivating them to try, that emotional need, that takes a lot out of me, too.

Emotional needs, you know, I have some students in here who have lost parents within the last year or I have a student whose parent was deported not too long ago, and that's just the stuff that I know.

Earlier today, I had a student say loud enough for me to hear when he was talking to a friend that he wished he could kill himself, but there were too many people at home.

I had to report that immediately.

It broke my heart to hear him say that.

And it's my duty to, you know, make sure that our support staff know, but our support staff is spread thin, too.

You know, and to be very vulnerable with you, I think part of that, you know, exhaustion is part of the reason why my relationships that I've had as a teacher have not worked out.

It's not the entirety of the problem, but I don't have much else to give when I leave this building.

I've given it all to my young people.

Teachers are struggling.

Our mental health is important, too.

And thankfully, big shout out to Julie, my therapist, man, shout out to you because if it wasn't for her, I don't know how I'd get through this school year.

(bright piano music) - It is Thursday, April 27th.

I had another job interview today.

This interview today was for a 1st grade position at Westside Academy.

I believe that teaching is my purpose.

So whenever it comes time for me to talk about my craft and my pedagogy and what I do every day in the classroom, those are things that come extremely easy to me.

Now, does it stop the, like, reservations I have in terms of feeling like I'm not valued by my employer?

Absolutely not.

I don't know what the future holds for me when it comes to teaching again.

I mean, I can't even talk about it without crying.

So like, it's just been a really traumatic year and I don't know how folks recover, I don't know how long recovery takes.

I'm hopeful that one day, I'll be able to approach teaching with the joy that I've always had.

- So today was a pretty good day, actually.

I had more of my freshman than I'd been getting and we had a pretty productive day and that's not generally been the case.

I've really struggled with that group.

I've been trying to do a lot more game related stuff.

I do these, they're called breakout boxes.

It's basically like an inverted escape room.

So students have to use the chapter that we've been reading in our book to solve a series of clues.

And most of my students like reading just like if you hand 'em a chapter you tell 'em to read and answer some questions.

It's almost like a non-starter.

But when you do a breakout box, they'll read a chapter instantly 'cause there's like, you know, there's an incentive to it 'cause you get to solve clues.

So they take a long time to plan, but for me to get them to practice some of the skills, it's been worth it.

One of the things I've really struggled with is then keeping students in class.

So by the end of class, I only had three of my 15 students that had come 'cause there's just this sense that they don't have to stay till the end.

And I don't think any of us really know what to do about it at any of the levels.

- Hey, what's up?

It's the end of the school day on Thursday.

We had an all day field trip today.

The kids loved it.

When we got back, we had a little extra time before the end of the day, so I took my class outside.

So a group of students who are not in my class, who I don't have a great rapport with just because I don't see them every day like I do my own students, or for as long as I do my own students, were kind of lagging behind and still playing.

And so I was like, you know, hey, when that bell rings, that means that we're done playing.

We gotta go, you know, line up, get back in the building.

And I was getting a little bit of some back talk from a student and I say, hey, so and so, I don't think that you could come outside with us anymore.

I don't like, you know, not being listened to.

You know, I feel like that's pretty disrespectful.

And so he flipped me off.

In that moment, like, I took a couple steps and I almost lost my cool, but I remember that like if this kid has already escalated, this is not the time to talk to him about this.

It just got me thinking about the lack of preparation that teachers have for deescalating situations like that.

Suspensions, they don't work.

The data proves that.

The data also proves that our discipline practices at MPS are very racist.

The student population of MPS is 50% Black and African American, except when we look at the suspension data, Black and African American students make up over 80% and a lot of that misbehavior is subjective.

So once again, in a district where 80% of the teachers are white and a majority of our students are Black and brown people, there's a disconnect there, too.

As white teachers, not only do we need restorative practices training mandated, we also need anti-racist training mandated ongoing, unlearning the harmful stereotypes and biases that we have subconsciously been fed our entire lives.

Student behavior is worsening and our response to it is stuck.

Doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity and our district has gone insane because that is what we do every single day.

- It is Friday, April 28th.

Today, I had therapy, which is always good.

This person's actually a grief counselor because there's a lot of loss that I've felt in my transition.

Teachers are asked to do so much with so little and there's often very little time for us to care for ourselves.

And I think that's why we see a lot of burnout happening amongst teachers.

I think we definitely could attribute a lot of the teacher shortage to the lack of district support.

- I feel like I don't have a whole lot else to say.

I think there's a lot of talk and there has been the last couple years, especially with referendum money and the ESSER money about the mental health of students and like that is incredibly important.

Like, we have a lot of students that come with a lot of needs, but like we also have teachers that are just really, that are really struggling and I think there's just not a lot of time for them to pursue maybe their mental health.

- This week was especially difficult because I turned in my resignation for next year.

I will no longer be teaching.

And I have a lot, a lot of complex, conflicting emotions about that.

I don't want to wake up on a Sunday dreading the rest of my week.

I don't want to wake up and cry, or get ready for work and cry, or drive to work and cry, or get to work and see a teacher friend and cry in front of them.

Like, I was pushed to my breaking point this year.

But like I said, so many of these issues are systemic.

Putting more money into teacher's pockets is not addressing student behavior.

There is so much that is just not working in MPS and we have the power to change it.

We just don't have the leaders.

Leadership in MPS, leadership in the teacher's union is lacking.

A lot needs to change and we need to do it together.

Yeah, I don't know.

That's a rough note to leave off on, but, you know, I hope that kind of explained, you know, why I came to this decision and maybe why other people are coming to this decision, too.

Because, I mean, there's no secret.

There's a mass exodus of teachers.

We need more support.

We need support from society, we need people to use their voice and be more vocal.

Speak up.

That's it for me today for this week.

Thank you, again, Scottie and PBS for this opportunity.

I appreciate you.

- We did ask the teachers union to respond to the leadership issue, but did not get an official comment by deadline.

We reached out to MPS for comment on the Angela Harris situation and the mental health of teachers.

The district responded by saying, "It is against district policy to discuss medical or personnel records.

MPS does provide a menu of free resources to employees that include mental health needs."

(bright guitar music)