"Maybe it is selfish for people to be angry at other people for leaving. But that's only natural... That's how we survive."

The school that I work at is essentially in its fourth year in operation. The first year, 8 faculty members left in the middle of the year. The second year, there were 6. Last year, there were 2. The number was decreasing, and it was an optimistic sign that our school culture was improving, that we were moving towards better establishing ourselves as a stable community supporting the academic and personal growth and development of students and their families. Three weeks in to this new school year, 2 faculty members announced their leaving within the next week. This sparked a variety of reactions, emotions, and comments from the rest of the faculty that I found at the least very thought-provoking. These 2 faculty members are leaving to take other jobs. I don't know all the personal details of why they're making these moves to other jobs at this time three weeks in to the new school year, nor do I need to know. I know they both have contributed so much to this school and value our students so much that they would not be making this move at this time unless they pretty much had to. I trust them in that. I have to. That's what a safe, productive urban school has to be built on. But no one can overlook that something like this does have a huge impact on students. In a profession that is so based in relationships, in an urban community where it is not uncommon for students to come in with pre-existing emotional scars from parents walking out of their lives at a young age, and in a school that has already historically had a hurtful teacher turnover rate, the damage that teachers leaving can do has the potential to be absolutely devastating. It's so different than perhaps in the corporate world when, for the most part, people celebrate you and throw you a little good-bye party when you've contributed a lot to the company and now are moving on to bigger and better things. In education, you're almost blamed for leaving in the middle of the year because our work in education is so personal, so built on relationships and community, and when you leave in the middle of the year, you leave a void in that community. Should it be this way? I want to be empathetic to my peers who are upset and angry over our fellow faculty members leaving, but I have to explore the possibility that they're angry because of selfishness. They hurt because of the difficulty that they'll have to deal with and the pain of the students that they'll have to see. But saying that makes me feel insensitive. Maybe what I need to understand is that I can't understand because I've never faced loss like some of our students have, like some of our faculty have. I've never had someone who was (or who was supposed to be) a guardian, a role model, a mentor to me walk out of my life, abandon me, forsake me. I can't understand how much that hurts. I can't understand how much that complicates your feelings and your experiences. Maybe it is selfish for people to be angry at other people for leaving. But that's only natural. That's only human. That's how we take care of ourselves. That's how we protect ourselves. That's how we survive. Is it wrong for my peers to be angry? I can't answer that. You feel how you feel. It's about how you cope with it and what you do next that matters.

So what's my role in this? What am I supposed to think? What am I supposed to do?

how long? how much longer?

As a young working professional in a social culture and era in which it is not uncommon for young professionals to change jobs a number of times before they decide to stay put for the majority of their lives, it is not uncommon for me to be asked how long I see myself working at the school that I'm currently teaching at. I probably even get asked a bit more frequently than your "average" young working professional since I moved 360 miles from where I lived for all of my life prior to moving, so family and friends from "back home" want to know when/if I'm coming back. Well, I don't completely know yet (who really does?), but my current plan is to stay put for at least two years. I don't believe you can fairly and fully enough determine how good a teaching job is until you've been there for at least two years, especially if one of those years is your first year of teaching ever. You've first got to be there for a full year to build rapport, assimilate into the school culture, and let the faculty and students get used to you. Once that's had a year to percolate, then you can get a true(r) feel for what it's like to work at that school and make a better determination of if you want to settle down there. So, as far as it's up to me, given no unexpected extenuating circumstances occur, I plan to stay put where I am for 2-3 years before I "re-evaluate my life". But although I may be postponing the "hardcore", thorough re-evaluation of my life, the biggest, probably-most-determining factor of that future decision is a recurring theme in my thoughts: how will I support the future family that I do desire to have? News flash: teaching is not exactly the most highly valued job in American culture. Sure, people will say nice things and give whole-hearted compliments, but at the end of the day, we see what people value by where they put their money, and it's not in public schools that serve 9 out of 10 U.S. students (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-jennings/proportion-of-us-students_b_2950948.html). I don't care a whole lot about that for my sake -- I care for the sake of society and for the direction in which society is going in given what it values and doesn't value -- because I don't teach for the money in the sense that I don't teach to get rich, but I do teach for the money in the sense that I wouldn't do this for free because I like to eat and have a roof over my head. And one day, I would like to get married and raise kids, and when that day comes, I would like to be able to provide for my future wife and kids to also eat and also have a roof over their heads, and that's not something that I just gain the ability to do overnight. So I have to start asking now if my current position will enable me to do that.

This came to my mind because I was talking with a co-worker today who made the observation when she came to this organization a few years ago that there were many young employees A.K.A. singles with no children. Given that she was also a young professional at the time, I thought that that observation provoked a particularly mature pondering in her: is this organization conducive to being married and raising kids? Because it doesn't really look like it... Today, there are a handful of married employees in our organization (though I would say that the majority continues to be very young people, in their twenties, single with no children), but my co-worker has some serious questions about (1) how they do it and (2) how the quality of those relationships is (perhaps, to phrase it a bit more pessimistically: how much longer they can do it for). Is it just too consuming of time and energy to work at this organization, at least as it is now, and also have the commitment you ought to have (or the commitment I believe one should have) to marriage and child-raising? I believe that the answer is different for everyone because everyone is different and everyone has different capacities. But I'm not sure what the answer is for me yet.