Pencils Down

By Michael Beyer and Nallely Suárez Gass

The K-12 education sector is isolated from the wider economy, causing teachers and school administrators to feel stuck in jobs they no longer want and without clear pathways to pivot to new careers. By examining the career journeys of 20 former educators, we learn the reasons so many educators are seeking to leave the profession, from the consta

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erie Publishing LLC
• Release date: Sep 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988798613

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Praise for Pencils Down

"Educators are rockstars. Seriously, which other professionals are able to be experts in public speaking, persuasion/influence, and data analytics... all in a single day? Which is why educators deserve a rockstar guide to building a great career. And that’s exactly what Nallely Gass and Michael Beyer have designed with Pencils Down!"

-Jeremy Schifeling, Former Kindergarten Teacher and Founder of Break into Tech

"Pencils Down helps educators redefine their value proposition in the job market. Education is a tough field to be in, and we should celebrate those willing to make the sacrifice.  Instead, we see constant challenges thrown at them. In this book Mike and Nallely offer examples and solutions to change directions.  I recommend this book to educators wanting to keep their options open."

-Donald Hyun Kiolbassa, C.P.A., J.D. Author of Best-Selling book Tao of the Side Hustle

I truly enjoyed reading Pencils Down…it is illuminating and pulled me in! When I think about the qualities that make someone truly successful, I reflect on people with passion, knowledge, and skills and that can transfer from one industry to the next. Educators aren’t just meant for classrooms. They bring a unique blend of empathy, brilliance, communication skills, and the gift of making complex ideas understandable. To me, these qualities are highly regarded, resonate with diverse groups, and are undeniably valuable.

-Rae Ali, Chief People Officer 

"Pencils Down captures the emotions behind the difficult decision so many of us make, myself included, to leave Education for other endeavors - the feelings of anxiety and exhaustion, anger, betrayal, followed by shame and guilt, fear - not necessarily in that order, and not necessarily linear, and definitely with ebbs and flows. Once you finally surrender and commit to choose yourself: your health (both physical and mental) - you slowly start the process of healing. We didn’t go into Education to want to leave it, but the system has created conditions that has made it unbearable to stay. Pencils Down helped me see my story play out in so many different nuanced ways in the lives of so many others. It made me realize that I’m not alone. However, instead of taking comfort in that, I’m frightfully afraid of what this means for the future of public education in our country. I am afraid for our children and our future generations. Pencils Down is a call to action."

-Rita Raichoudhuri, Ed.D.,former Superintendent of Kalamazoo Public Schools

"In one word: Honest. Pencils Down offers a real, tangible narrative of the problems facing educators across our nation and offers many paths forward for those looking to shift their careers, as well as giving hope to what can be a very isolating feeling of distress.

Although Pencils Down speaks primarily to teachers, all members of our society who have a vested interest in education should read this and take note of the strife and burdens that our society lays on the hearts of those responsible for educating and in many ways, raising our children."

-Mickey Olhava, McHenry County Federation of Teachers - Local 1642, President and Illinois Federation of Teachers, Vice President

As a former teacher, principal, and administrator, the framework described in Pencils Down helped me create a plan when searching for my next job. I highly recommend this book to every educator even if you are staying in the profession and simply want to develop a long-term plan for when you retire.

-Dina McReynolds-Everage, former teacher and school administrator

Career journeys of educators who left the profession,

and what we can learn from the crises in education

Pencils

Down

Michael Beyer

Nallely Suárez Gass

Pencils Down

© 2023 by Erie Publishing LLC

Edited by Joseph Gustaitis and Brent Mix

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Erie Publishing LLC

1824 W. Erie St. Chicago, IL 60622

If you are interested in publishing a book with Erie Publishing, send an inquiry to [e-mail]

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above or by contacting the authors.

Print ISBN: 979-8-9887986-0-6

eBook ISBN: 979-8-9887986-1-3

For my wife Mary and our two children, Charlie and Cece.

Michael Beyer

To my friends who inspire me, my family who supports me, and the people who trust me with their livelihood. Special thanks to my husband, who is the coach to the coach.

Nallely Suárez Gass

Why are our schools not places of joy? Because too many of us respond to outrageous edicts by saying, Fine.

–Alfie Kohn, 2011¹

Preface

The development of our book has taken several unplanned turns. We originally imagined a technical manual educators could use to match their skills with new careers. While interviewing former educators, we realized we needed to address the issues educators are facing, forcing too many to leave the profession. We added a chapter on burnout and wellbeing, and a chapter sharing suggestions for how we can improve the situation, so educators won’t want to leave the profession.

As we finished the manuscript and began to solicit endorsements from friends and colleagues, we encountered a new twist from a longtime friend. A professor of a highly regarded college of education, who has trained hundreds if not thousands of teachers during their very successful career, read our draft and offered feedback which we took to heart. They also praised us for addressing issues that need to be discussed but declined to offer an endorsement because they were concerned the book would encourage educators to leave the profession. Our friend admitted that just recently, after decades training and coaching educators, they had begun acknowledging that it is acceptable to leave the profession under certain circumstances. Our friend wasn’t proud of this, but that is another reason why our book is so important.

We don’t know of another profession where there is a taboo against encouraging people to quit if their job is making them unhappy or unhealthy. Why is it that we expect teachers and principals to continue doing jobs they no longer enjoy? This is a symptom of how much we expect educators to sacrifice in our society. This isn’t a healthy norm, and it needs to change.

We want to be clear from the outset that we do not want to encourage educators to quit the profession if they still find joy and fulfillment in their jobs, which most educators do. There are three groups of people we hope will read our book. The primary group are educators who are reaching or are already past the point of burnout, and simply need help transitioning to a new career. Some of these educators have realized the profession isn’t the best fit for them, while others are exhausted and need a change. It is likely these teachers will quit regardless of our book, but at least they will have some well-deserved and affordable guidance when they quit. We anticipate the second group of our customers will be the friends, family, and school administrators who buy the book and give it to teachers and fellow administrators that are burned out but need encouragement to take the leap and find a healthier career.

If this book enables educators who are burned out and frustrated to quit and find a career better suited for their needs, that isn’t a negative outcome. For those of us who have worked in schools, or have a had a child enrolled in school, it is not a positive experience when we are forced to deal with an educator who no longer enjoys their job. If we as adults don’t want to work with these educators, why should our children be forced to sit in their classrooms every day over the course of an entire school year? Enabling educators to quit when it can lead to healthier outcomes for all shouldn’t be discouraged.

The third group of readers we hope will pick up our book are non-educators, be they parents, community and business leaders, or policy makers. We want them to realize what educators are experiencing. We need to understand that education should not be treated differently than any other sector. We should work together and demand every school and every teacher has what they need so that our students succeed. But we need to first admit our students won’t succeed if the adults responsible for teaching and caring for them are themselves struggling and feeling like failures, and too many that feel trapped in a profession they no longer enjoy.

This was demonstrated when Nallely received a text message a few weeks before our book was to be published. It was the from a teacher who simply stated, I don’t know why I came back. They scheduled a call and Nallely learned the teacher was feeling physically ill before going to work, but throughout the conversation the same themes came up: I signed up for this, I can’t quit now, I would be a huge disappointment to the students. Nallely asked the teacher what they would tell a friend, perhaps in another profession, if they had the same issues with their job? Would they simply say to tough it out? Would you ever tell another person that they are a disappointment because they did what’s best for their physical and mental health?

Here is the good news for anyone recoiling at the notion educators might quit because of our book: every issue highlighted by our book is entirely fixable, if we want to fix it. We offer a handful of solutions in a chapter of our book, with one that can be implemented in a matter of months and could lead to significantly positive outcomes for educators, while others are akin to moonshots. Throughout our book we share commentary that includes suggestions to help educators and improve education. The former educators we interviewed offer their own insights for improving our schools. We can continue to put our heads in the sand and expect educators to sacrifice themselves for the rest of society, or we can agree to collectively accept responsibility to improve our education system for our students, our communities, and our educators.

We hope to hear from our readers. We are here to help support educators find a new path that brings them joy, but we are also ready and willing to help districts and communities bring joy to their schools and make education one of the most attractive professions imaginable. Our children deserve it, and so do our educators.

Contents

1. The Cumulation of Crisis in Education

2. Why Pencils Down

3. Journeys

Mary | Life Stages | Customer Success

John | People Oriented | Real Estate

Caitlin | New Horizons | Sales

Tanisha | Gradual Pivot | Tax Preparation

Nishat | Strategic Pivot | Marketing

Vicki | Teaching as Leadership | Franchise Owner

Ryan | Culture | Corporate Training

Dr. Alexandra | Integrity | DEI Consulting

Katie | Flourishing | Therapist & Musician

Carrie | Advocacy | Researcher

Jeremy | Innovation | Marketing Director

Bryen | Flexibility | Entertainment

Kristin | Networking | Management Consultant

Kim | Boomerang | Director of Innovation

Cassidy | Purpose | Product Management

Melinda | Self Interest | Entrepreneur

Albert | Mindset | Chief of Staff

Mike | Gratitude | Strategist

4. Work | Life

Burnout

Work-Life Balance

Wellbeing

5. Career Advice

Step 1: Take Inventory

Innate:

Required

Acquired

Step 2: Finding the right fit

Compensation

Challenge

Culture

Company

Step 3: Applying and interviewing

6. Improving the Education Sector

Conclusion

Appendix

About the Authors

1

The Cumulation of Crisis in Education

American education is in a crisis.

The crisis is not the culture wars raging in and around school or the school shootings. Nor is the crisis the one described by Diane Ravitch in 2013, fighting back against high-stakes testing and the privatization movement.² The current crisis is not what was described in the 1983 report published by Ronald Reagan’s White House, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, which set off waves of legislation and policies foisted on schools, from the Texas Miracle in the 1990s to President George Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, which created the national high-stakes testing environment Diane Ravitch would later denounce. Today’s crisis is not the same as the one in the 1960s and 1970s when Militant teacher unionists were inspired to protest and strike by the civil rights movement."³ The current crisis is not the same as in the 1950s when schools were battlegrounds for desegregating our society on one hand, while simultaneously being blamed for the United States falling behind the Soviet Union after the public relations stunt of Sputnik was put into orbit. Today’s crisis is not the same as when Congress and the FBI investigated educators for allegedly indoctrinating students into Communism in the 1940s, or the decades before that when teachers unionized and aligned with working-class labor efforts, while supporting women’s right to vote. All of these crises brought stress and led Americans to question everything about our schools and educators, from their legitimacy and effectiveness to their morals and decency.

The crisis facing education today is the logical, corrosive effect of a system that has been under constant attack. Dana Goldstein’s thoroughly researched book, The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession, documents many of these waves of attacks on public education since its inception in the 19th century. Her book was published in 2014, and a decade has passed during which we have witnessed several new and frightening attacks on the profession. Critical Race Theory (CRT), originally a construct developed for professors in law school, has been used by detractors to claim schools are teaching children to hate white people, with some critics attempting to blame crime waves on teaching CRT to students. The fight for transgender rights has similarly been connected through conspiracy theories to social and emotional learning. Both transgender rights and social-emotional learning have been used in claims that educators are groomers and pedophiles. Bullying, depression, suicide, and sexual harassment, by no means new challenges for educators, have become more problems that educators are now expected to help solve due to the perception of their increased prevalence via social media and communication saturation. Violence in schools, from mass shootings to threats against educators and recorded fights made public through social media have similarly increased and put stress on the education system.⁴

The current crisis is the cumulative result of these endless waves of attacks, threats, scandals, and public hysteria, using educators as society’s punching bag and schools as our battleground. This accumulation of assaults and condemnations is anticipated to cause increased teacher shortages for generations, potentially crippling schools and districts, harming communities and our economy as American students will receive a weaker education than previous generations due to the shortage of educators.

It is easy to dismiss the idea that a looming teacher shortage is a crisis because it’s not entirely new. There has been a teacher shortage in many communities for decades, which justified the rise of Teach for America (TFA), arguably one of the largest education staffing organizations in the country. Since 1989, TFA has placed nearly 60,000 teachers in hard-to-staff schools. While the teacher shortage seems to mainly harm communities and schools already struggling with other issues, we argue that schools that aren’t experiencing teacher shortages and have enough bodies to fill all their jobs might be silently suffering due to a dwindling pool of applicants, causing a diminishing of qualities and diversities.

What has changed to make the educator shortage a crisis?

The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t cause the shortage, but it did make visible the working conditions of a career that has become far less desirable and a decline in public esteem that started before the pandemic. When schools closed during the pandemic, millions of parents were forced to participate in their child’s education at home. Parents witnessed how unprepared many of our educators were for the digital world. Our schools and districts were even less prepared than the educators, as parents found their local school lacking in basic technology and equipment. During the pandemic it was no longer teachers who had to beg for supplies through websites like Donors Choose, but millions of parents who had to scramble to keep their own children engaged day after day.

The declining allure of the teaching profession was further weakened by people who saw how difficult it was to educate their own children. Prospective teachers were left wondering why anyone would willingly be responsible for a classroom of dozens of children, day after day, for 30 or more years. The ‘generous’ pensions teachers have been accused of demanding were temporarily removed from the public debate agenda when people realized it might not be the golden parachute many had envisioned.⁵ Despite so many people realizing how difficult a teaching job actually is during the pandemic, some parents grew weary and frustrated from dealing with their own children and demanded educators return to teach in person. Although these experiences might have helped teachers win empathy and support, post-pandemic, everyone seemed to quickly move on and attempt to return to ‘normal.’ Discussions about how to improve education, such as funding that would prevent teachers from begging for basic supplies or offering training and equipment on how to teach in the increasingly complex digital world or evaluating the wellbeing of educators were forgotten.

Teachers, like so many other caregivers, were heralded as heroes during the early months of the pandemic. By the announced end of the pandemic, professionals who serve as caregivers were seen as disposable front-line workers whose only value was to make our lives comfortable. School buildings were forced to reopen, yet most offices remained closed. Educators realized just how different a class of worker they were considered by the public they served. This, despite educators laying the foundation for professionals with college degrees in nearly every other sector who gained more leverage at work during the pandemic.

The speed of this turnaround, from heroes to scapegoats, should make every teacher question why they are continuing in their role and make any future teacher take a second look at their planned career path.

Although it has not been widely declared a crisis yet, the indicators suggest it is just over the horizon: As one analyst put it, "In January 2022, a National Education Association survey found that 55 percent of educators were thinking of leaving the profession earlier than planned, nearly double the number of teachers who said the same in July 2020. The next month, a Gallup poll revealed that K-12 staff suffer higher burnout rates than any other segment of the U.S. labor force, at 44 percent. Most educators have not left, and many never will. But some are following through; they’re walking out of their classrooms and away from the careers they thought they’d have for life.⁶ The trends began before the pandemic when enrollment and completion of teacher preparation programs dropped by approximately a third between 2010 and 2018." ⁷

Lower morale, burnout, and threat of educator shortages are leading to some innovative ideas, such as using online tutors as a sort of co-teacher to decrease the workload on teachers.⁸ A new nonprofit, Transcend, has a mission to support innovative designs in education to improve the satisfaction and retention of teachers, which they argue will improve student experiences. The nonprofit explains, Our teachers are struggling, and, while teacher shortages and a dwindling pipeline are not new phenomena, recent dissatisfaction and resignation trends are shedding more light on the need for change. They cite statistics that half of the new teachers leave the profession within the first five years and the percentage of ‘very satisfied’ teachers dropped from 62 percent in 2008 to 12 percent in 2022.⁹

Not every school district has an educator shortage, although even the most desirable districts are seeing fewer applicants. It has been well documented the shortage tends to be in districts and communities that face other problems, like generational poverty.¹⁰ These added stressors on schools are compounded by the funding model of education, which relies on local taxes, leading educators in hard-to-staff districts to earn lower salaries than peers in more affluent communities. So, although the burnout and lower morale is affecting nearly every school in our nation, the resulting shortage of workers is hurting the schools that have been under the most stress. However, it can be argued the schools that haven’t needed to rely on TFA due to shortages have also suffered, because when a pool of qualified workers shrinks, the quality and diversity of the candidates tend to decrease, causing the quality of education in schools without shortages to become lower quality. Policy makers need to address these compounded inequities, but we can’t continue to expect educators to solve large scale issues they did not cause, such as the widespread poverty and widening income gap in our country. Rather, the question we are focused on in our book is: If so many educators want to leave the profession, why don’t they?

In our research, we surveyed over 500 educators about leaving the education profession to find a new career path. When asked, What is the primary reason you have not already switched careers/professions? four of the most common responses revealed educators

Do not know how to identify opportunities to switch careers/professions

Previously tried to switch careers but were unsuccessful

Believe they are unqualified for a new career/profession

Anticipate a decrease in salary/benefits in a new career/profession

The fourth reason is alarming in light of a report from the Economic Policy Institute revealing that teachers were paid 23.5% less than U.S. professionals with similar education and experience, and pay gaps are as high as 30 percent in some states.¹¹ All economic data suggests teachers should be able to switch careers and gain a significant increase in salary, and yet the vast majority surveyed do not believe this is the case and do not change careers even when they want to. Educators feel stuck in the profession. This includes school principals, who tend to have significantly more experiences and skill sets than teachers in areas that are transferable to a wide range of sectors and careers, including operations, human resources, project and program management, budget and grant management, procurement, coaching, policy, governance, leadership, customer service, and client and stakeholder management.

From our experience working both with educators in career transition and with corporations across the country, we discovered that hiring and human resource managers outside of education do not understand the value educators can bring to their organizations, apart from easy-to-match jobs like corporate training. This misunderstanding indicates that companies and our economy are failing to utilize a valuable pool of highly qualified, experienced workers who are ready and willing to fill vacancies.

In our conversations with educators, we realized the isolation of education as a sector has kept the field separate from every other industry in our economy. The job of an educator is seen as a narrow career path which few people can leave once they enter. This separation is a detriment to the educators failing to find new careers and to the companies failing to hire experienced workers, but also to the field of education itself. The isolation of education as a sector prevents experienced workers from other industries pivoting to become teachers and fill vacancies because most states require teaching certificates earned through college degrees, regardless of advanced skills of experienced workers who might consider becoming teachers. This walling off of education prevents the interaction and exchange of personnel and ideas between the larger economy of workers and the education sector that trains young people to one day join that larger economy.

An annual career day, when parents volunteer to describe their jobs to their child’s class, is one of the few consistent, widespread interactions between industry and education. The other consistent perforation occurs when professionals from other fields win seats on school boards and, because they might manage a business, and despite never having worked a day in a school, somehow feel they have the knowledge to tell superintendents, principals, and teachers how to do their jobs. In contrast, when educators do successfully switch industries, they rarely, if ever, land a seat on the Board of Directors or as an executive of a company in a sector in which they have never worked. The isolation of education enables the strange yet widespread assumption by many people that they know how education should operate and function, and yet it is rare for workers to switch into or out of education.

We argue that the isolation of education, which prevents educators from finding new careers and workers in other industries from becoming educators, fosters and encourages the use of educators as the scapegoats and schools as the battlegrounds in America’s political and cultural debates. Schools are one of the few remaining institutions to which we all belong or feel ownership of through enrollment of our children and the taxes we pay to fund schools. And yet so few of the people leading the debates have experience working inside the walls of education or alongside a former educator.

This is all to say that although the current and potentially worsening crisis of educator shortages¹² needs to be addressed, it also highlights the need for other, related changes to the sector. We argue that this crisis should be embraced. This sentiment was echoed by our interview subjects who expressed concern they might be participating in a project that could harm a vital institution in our society but even more so expressed a desire to help their colleagues gain the flexibility, benefits, respect, and renewed sense of self-worth discovered in their career changes. At least one interview subject stated the most difficult part of quitting the profession was leaving behind colleagues who wanted to leave but could not. It was a sentiment that sounded like something a combat veteran might share.

Educators need to adopt the outlook of other professionals as described by a former educator who told us, There are zero organizations that exist in the world who are going to put your interests before the interests of the organization. The mere fact of an organization existing means that it has to put its own interest first in order to sustain. What that means is, if you’re not looking out for your interests, who is? Why go on strike to demand a better salary or more respect, when you can walk out the door and find what you need and what you deserve without raising a picket sign? Pencils down, quit your job, and reclaim the time you have left.

As you’ll learn by reading about the career journeys of our interview subjects, the walls separating the field of educators from other industries are not as challenging to overcome, nor as permanent as they might seem. Several of our subjects have left education and returned years later with promotions in the field of education and a renewed sense of purpose. Let’s begin to tear down these walls. Educators should not feel so isolated from seeking jobs and careers in other industries. Hiring managers can benefit by learning to acknowledge the value of teachers. The public, and in particular policy makers, need to truly understand the crises causing educators to quit a career that teachers and principals spend years preparing for and serving in.

2

Why Pencils Down

We decided to write this book because our two paths converged at a critical time in the field of education.

Nallely had a very brief stint working in education, but she has helped plenty of teachers and administrators find new careers. Coaching professionals isn’t just a job for Nallely, it is her passion to help people find professional happiness. How Mike and Nallely met shines a light on how serendipitous events in personal and professional moments can turn into new business opportunities.

Nallely has been working for over 30 years. She started as her uncle’s secretary, and waitressed, bartended, worked at a blood bank and at a financial bank, and was a teacher’s assistant, all before she graduated college. Nallely studied economics and management at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), which didn’t offer the same prestige or connections as the main college campus in Champaign-Urbana. Yet, when she graduated college, she received job offers from Northern Trust Bank, Sprint, and IRI. How did she accomplish this feat?

UIC had a career office that allowed students to bid on interviews, so Nallely bid on several that piqued her interest. She then adopted the mindset that it was her full-time job to get a job. She participated in every mock interview she could, took classes on writing resumes, and researched the companies she applied to. When she was interviewed, she made sure to highlight her breadth of work experience and her flexibility. They liked her logical answers she confidently gave due to her practice, and her knowledge of their companies she gained through research. 

When Nallely received the three job offers, she talked with her cousin. He knew the workforce from a corporate perspective, and recommended she accept the job at IRI because it would give her experience and exposure that she didn’t currently have. IRI helped round out her experience and opened doors by exposing her to big accounts, consulting for companies like Sara Lee, Hershey, and Kraft. They offered her