What does a healthy exit look like?

What if you realize, as you are training for X, that you don't want to do X?

If it's piano lessons, you stop.

If it's med school or law school, you've got a problem. Called: "Lots of debt."

One of the nice things about tuition-free teacher residencies is, at various points in the process, you can stop without debt.

You can realize "Hey, I signed up in good faith. But now that I'm around kids all day, maybe this isn't for me."

By embracing and welcoming the notion of teachers exiting during training (including helping them think about "what's next" -- other professions they might want to pursue), you reduce the number who quit later (at more perilous times).

Here's a nice healthy exit story: Max. Tall dude, Harvard alum. I asked him to share his tale:

Dear MATCH Teacher Resident,

Hi there. My name is Max and I was in MATCH Corps at the Middle School in 2009-10. I started out in MATCH Corps about 70% sure I wanted to be a No Excuses teacher. I enrolled in the Teacher Residency.

I really loved much of the Residency: working in groups, practicing the different parts of a lesson and getting feedback on presence and delivery. I think it's a rare opportunity to have an expert coach you in the leadership skills that go with being a classroom teacher. I learned a lot from listening to my coaches and fellow trainees. Still, the fall was tough for me as a tutor. I had one student decide to withdraw from MATCH and that was discouraging.

Through the winter and spring I got more confident with my methods and work with students, their families and my peers. I still felt the deep challenge of this work, but I was developing stronger professional relationships with my students and I knew that they were making strides academically.

When I actually got to student teaching in spring, I was pretty thrilled. In my first few lessons I made it work on pure adrenaline and enthusiasm. As we got further into the spring, however, I started to think seriously about my plans for the next few years. Though I found many of my lessons immensely fulfilling, I realized, perhaps subconsciously at first, that I did not feel ready to commit 100% to being a teacher.

My decision to leave MTR was in some small way a result of some lingering doubts I had since that rocky fall. But mostly it came from a desire to explore other interests and passions of mine before committing wholeheartedly to a career. I think that in order to be a good teacher, you need to be ready to unflinchingly put your all into it. I wasn't there.

If I ever go back to pursuing teaching, I'll make that decision from the empowered standpoint of knowing that I want my life to center on my work. I decided to leave MTR right before April break, before the job search process. I finished MATCH Corps in June and felt immensely proud and satisfied with the work I had done all year. Right now I am living in San Francisco working for the Sierra Club and figuring out what's next.

I have to say, Orin and MG were 100% supportive of my decision. They still keep in touch with me, even now.

Good luck with MTR, your tutoring and your time at MATCH. Whatever path you choose, you've got an incredible year ahead of you!

The goal here is maximizing both the happiness of individuals (by not coercing them to stay in a teacher prep program when it's not the job they want or not the job they'll excel at; by giving them a healthy, safe landing) and maximizing student achievement (by reducing the number of rookie teachers who are doing the job out of obligation instead of desire).

Comments

Submitted by David on

"I . . . felt immensely proud and satisfied with the work I had done all year." It's at least worth noting that to make a good career teacher, you have to know enough to avoid saying things like that. I'm glad he's not teaching, and I hope he never does. But not because he has doubts. Most teachers, even great and long-practiced ones, have doubts. But, the kind of person who would make a good career teacher would express guilt and remorse, acknowledge that he had failed to show even a modicum of tenacity, and eventually, perhaps he would grow into the kind of thoughtful person that would make a great teacher.

Submitted by Michael Goldstein on

David, I suspect you aren't familiar with the context. We have 2 programs run in parallel. One is full-time tutor. The other combines tutoring and teacher training. Max was describing his work as a tutor. Where he excelled: the kids made really great learning gains; the parents were impressed; and he showed perfect tenacity....he stuck with that work to the end.

Submitted by mathteacher on

How does the obligation to go into teaching work? On the MTR page, there is a statement that students commit to teaching in urban school for two years. How are they held to that obligation? Are teachers who quit before the end absolved of that responsibility? Or do they have to pay MTR back? If that's the case, it benefits their future students, but sets up a situation where MTR gets screwed by losing all of the man-hours of teaching that trainee. You guys don't yet offer a master's degree, right? Is that the plan? Because if so, there's a much greater opportunity cost to bailing from the program in April. At that point, one is nearly done with those valuable little letters (M.A.T.) which complement a young person's resume so nicely.

Submitted by mathteacher on

I'll preface this last thought by saying that I don't know the specific of MH's personal situation. I can think of a lot of valid reasons for leaving. However, I do think it's crappy role-modeling for his students. ( I know he kept at the tutoring bit and did good work, and perhaps they didn't know he dropped out, but bear with me.) I can't speak for MATCH (though I imagine it's the same), but I know that at Brooke we are constantly telling our students that they shouldn't give up when things are hard. We fight tooth and nail to keep kids at our school when they want to leave to go to an easier school. Sure it's their right and they have the choice. Why? Because we know that in March the only option is a BPS or charter school where very few kids make it academically. And we know that our kids don't have the luxury of a Harvard degree to their names to back up that choice. We know that even if they are fighting tooth and nail to leave, they'll likely be back talking about the insanity at their new school or asking for their spot back. And unfortunately, that can't happen. They don't have any recourse, but someone with a degree under their belt does. Because the MTR doesn't even have to be mentioned. The last thing I would want is one of our kids to leave our school, or, even worse, leave a high school or college, because they could look back at their tutor/mentor's example and say, "Well, he quit his program and landed on his feet. I can do the same thing." The situations, sadly aren't the same.

Submitted by Michael Goldstein on

Hi Paul, Thanks for the thought. Some of this is about framing. If you change majors in college, did you "quit"? Or did you simply learn something about yourself and decide to go in a new direction? I think of "healthy exit" as the latter. People should be allowed to try new things. They should be allowed to then stop doing them. The kid example, to me, is not analogous. I know that's dear to your heart (and mine): of course we don't want a kid to quit a hard school to go to an easy school. Max wants to work hard whatever he does, so it's not equivalent. If a kid chose French 1 as his elective this year, and next year - while most kids take French 2 - he chooses wood shop. He's just trying to find what intrigues him. I don't think that's quitting; I think that's finding the right thing for him. We explicitly URGE out trainees to opt out if they're not finding it pitch-perfect. I think quitting, in this context, is taking a full-time teaching job and leaving midyear. Or taking a full-time tutoring job and leaving midyear.

Submitted by mathteacher on

OK, I guess I was being too harsh on the kid. I'll cede the point. But I think your response raises an interesting question. If we can agree that healthy exits make sense for all involved, then the timing of the healthy exit can be pondered. Colleges and traditional (well, my) high schools set a pretty formal date for healthy exits from individual classes. I think in HS, we had to bail from classes by 1/8 of the way through a full year course. In college, there is usually a shopping period to try out classes and then a date by which you need to withdraw without the class showing up on your record, right (though I never did this, so I don't know)? Majors in college were much more fluid, though if you got deep into one and weren't already double majoring, you were in pretty deep trouble if you wanted to switch, right? (We only had to declare by the end of sophomore year.) Do you think people in your program should have a date by which they have to make a choice to either fold or go all in? In HS, I quit the band after 10th grade. I don't consider myself a quitter - I had other interests at that point. But if I had quit mid-year, that would have been a problem, right? I think it depends on how much of drain it is on your resources to have people back out at the last minute. Does that put you guys in a bind for staffing summer school? Does it kill morale in the program? Perhaps the right date is Christmas or February break. I guess people will quit whenever they feel like it, but perhaps if you are going to encourage people to think hard about whether they want to continue until they get a full time teaching gig (which, I agree is a good idea), there should be a time frame for that. When I was a Citizen Schools Teaching Fellow, I pretty much knew by the end of my first year that I wasn't going to stay in out-of-school time education. I was more interested in the hardcore academics of school. But I stuck with the program until the end, realigned my expectations, requested specific experiences, got what I could get from the program, and when it was time to start applying for "what's next," focused on classroom teaching jobs. I guess my point is that I think your program is valuable, and that even if someone has made the decision that they are not going to be classroom teachers in No Excuses charter schools, there is something to gained by finishing out the year...

Submitted by Michael Goldstein on

As usual, we agree in the end! Yes, timing question. The way it is right now more or less aligns with what you suggest. Roughly March. Ie, before the job search (which happens April and May, and well before summer teaching). I assume we'll tinker a bit with this each year. And sure: the earlier the realization the better. Still, we're getting something in exchange for the open door policy. Trust. We can have reasonably open conversations about whether they're willing to go all-in on this type of teaching. The feel of the program is we want to have the types of conversations you'd have with your little brother or sister.

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