The Teachers Are Not Alright
Like many teachers, when Kristen Playter started her career at 22, she was hopeful and excited. She loved working with students with special needs, and loved learning how their brains worked. But over the years, the job became harder and harder because of the lack of support she received. Eventually, all of the small moments of feeling left out to dry led to a falling out with this career she loved.
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Nora McInerny: I'm Nora McInerny and this is terrible. Thanks for asking.
Teacher 1: it's a weird time to be a teacher. first of all, you know, I have been teaching for the last seven years at a Title One school, um, where damn near all of our students have, um, trauma and, um, you know, socioeconomic factors that are barriers to their learning and in so many ways, barriers to their functioning in these spaces. Um, Yeah. And all of that said, I, I, I love our students so much. Um, it is heartbreaking sometimes to see the deck sort of stacked against them.
Teacher 2: I taught second grade and third grade, and both of the years that I taught second grade, um, I had a student die on my roster. My first student passed of an asthma attack. I carried him up three flights of stairs to the nurse in front of my other students, and I was 22 years old. The second child was killed in a drive by shooting. She was killed with her dad. She was in the back of his truck. I remember holding my breath, um, as we all do all of this, uh, my educator friends in a city such as ours where the crime and the gun violence is so high.
Teacher 3: It's dangerous right now um, for queer people, for transgender people. Um, It's dangerous right now for teachers to express their support almost in that department. Um, and so I would be lying if I said that I wasn't kind of scared to do this. Um, I'm still going to because I know that it's the right thing to do.
Teacher 4: you had to be on a hundred percent of the time. And also felt like no work life balance at all because all of that quote, free time that everybody who is not adjacent or in the field of education claims that teachers have, is actually spent worrying about teaching, grading assignments and then creating lessons to teach.
Teacher 5: There's an underlying judgment and labeling of struggling teachers as underperforming instead of just needing support. I call it the I Heard Movement. I heard things about that teacher. I heard things about this teacher. And then drawing conclusions. There simply isn't the trust that we are the professionals in the room and the support from the community to back it up. The ones that can make it for the long haul can compartmentalize adapt, or simply, be okay with not being okay
Kristin Playter: It's upsetting and it's kind of scary to me, especially cuz I have young children in the public education system. know, what's gonna become of our system
Nora McInerny: I want to take us back to 2004.
(Yeah! by Usher comes up)
Nora McInerny: Yeah! by Usher is on everyone's radio. A new online platform called The Facebook has just launched. And....Kristin Playter is walking into a high school in suburban Missouri, for her first day of schools as a teacher. She's 22 years old, with little life experience and even less teaching experience.
Kristin Playter: I end w up with my first classroom without doing any student teaching, I think I had like a two week like crash course. Like, Hey, you're about to start teaching. Here's everything you need to know for before you start.
Nora McInerny: The only experience she had was a year as a para professional, which is an assistant to a special education teacher. And when she walked into that first classroom, she had just enrolled in night classes to get her teaching license. So she was gonna learn how to teach on the job.
Kristin Playter: My first classroom was, was reading. It was reading all day long. And it was some special needs students and then there was some RegEd students who were just kind of behind on reading and it was high school.
Nora McInerny: And pretty quickly, Kristen realizes her experience as a para is not enough- she has no idea how to guide these students.
Kristin Playter: I walked in and I had a kid throwing a chair in my room and calling me a bitch and I, all I wanted him to do was read out loud or something, you know? I think I just was shocked all the time, like, just, well, what's wrong with these kids? And these kids are so mean to me. And, you know, I did a lot of yelling and I was teaching by yelling a lot. , because I didn't know how to get to control of my classroom. I didn't know how to lead them.
Nora McInerny: Kristen is drowning. But a few months into her job, help arrives.
Kristin Playter: thank goodness the district I started in had, um, instructional coaches. So it's like a teacher coach. I had two women. One was a special education instructional coach and one was just a reading instructional coach. And these women would come in and they would watch me teach a lesson and they would give me a bunch of notes on like, here's what went well, here's what you need to improve. They'd get up and they'd teach a lesson in my room and I would watch them and how they would model, how to get the content out or how to create a bond with a student. And I remember the best advice I got during this time was, You cannot communicate with these students by yelling at them like, you're, they're not listening. And I'm like, well, I don't know how to get their attention. She said, you have to calm yourself down and your voice, you need to be talking like you and I are talking right now. And if you are too stressed out and you're screaming, you need to step away and figure out how to calm down. And if you're modeling for them, that screaming is how you get your point across they're gonna do the same. So make sure, like, let's, let's just like calm it down a little bit, you know?
By January I was so stressed out but these women came and saved my life. They didn't help me. Like they saved me. I was gonna bail. Like I was, I couldn't do it. And they, they were just like, just hang with us for a little bit. Let's get you through the first school year and then you can kind of decide if you wanna keep going or not.
Nora McInerny: So Kristen stuck with it. And she was able to make it to the last day of school. By then, she felt more confident as a teacher, thanks to the help of these coaches.
Kristin Playter: It started white knuckled screaming my way through it. And then thankfully these women came and they helped me to learn how to basically do my job well. And this is a position that was phased out later by this district. And I've been in three districts and this is the only district I've been in where they had this position.
Nora McInerny: Kristen's experience with these coaches was rare. Not many first year teachers get that kind of one on one instruction on how to be a good teacher.
Kristen got support that first year, but as her career progressed, there would be more times where she found herself once again drowning, hoping someone, anyone, would throw down a life preserver.
And it seems like many people in education are drowning these days. The same old issues that teachers have always suffered persist- lack of funding from state legislatures, low pay for educators.
But we’re also in a particularly tense time in education. The pandemic put intense strain on teachers, and all of us frankly, who had to navigate online school.
Politicians are using classrooms as their battleground.
This year, Black History Month is unfolding alongside a coordinated effort across the country to limit the teaching of race and racism. Critical Race Theory, or CRT for short, is not taught in K 12 schools, but it's nonetheless become the latest flashpoint in the country's culture wars, from school boards to state houses. Since the start of last year, more than half of all states have introduced bills banning the teaching of CRT in public schools.
In september. The Flagler County School Board voted to remove four books from the shelves of Jack's high school, all of them dealing with anti racism and LGBTQ plus issues. It's not just here in Florida. Across the country, school districts are removing books from their curriculums and libraries at a record pace, saying they're harmful to children. And of course, teachers regularly lead active shooter drills, and are left wondering how they would react if the unthinkable happens.
Teaching is a job that is absolutely necessary. And it is also becoming a job that demands so much from teachers.
For Kristen, like many other educators who exist in this reality, eventually all of this would become too much.
(music)
Nora McInerny: Kristin was not a little girl who played school with her friends. She wasn't the kid in class who looked at the teacher and imagined herself at the front of the room. Kristen was a little girl who loved the human brain.
Kristin Playter: I used to tell my parents I wanted to be a brain surgeon. But I found that it's really intriguing to me to learn about disability and how it affects learning and how it affects the processing of information, and behavior as well.
Nora McInerny: She became interested in human behavior because growing up, her next door neighbor was a kid with intellectual disabilities
Kristin Playter: I used to babysit him off and on and, he had some severe behaviors and he was nonverbal. and his just way of going through life was really, really intriguing to me. What he would eat, what he would not eat, how he interacted with his little sister, how he interacted with his little sister's friends. He could sit and watch, trains for like a half of a day and not get up once. You know, like just things, just watching him and being around him was really, really fun for me. Um, and I did get paid to babysit him, even though I would've done it for free. I eventually in high school, started getting involved with Special Olympics. Um, I was trying to get some community service hours in and, um, coaching Special Olympics, again, it is just fun. It's just fun just going through, being close to these kids and seeing how they process life. Um, and overcoming their challenges was also inspiring to me.
Nora McInerny: So when Kristen graduated high school, she thought, maybe teaching special ed would be a good fit.
Kristin Playter: And my parents are very high achieving professionals. Um, kind of came from nothing and my mom built up a really great dental practice in our area and my dad was a financial advisor. And, um, basically they had pretty high expectations for, um, my sisters and myself and they, you know, mom was like, well, you're just, you won't make any money, like it's not a good profession to go into. And, you know, I used to be super, super compliant and, you know, really aimed to please. And so like, I went in to college undecided and I basically, um, wound up changing my major five times. Not one of, not one time was a education. Um, but you know, I ended up graduating with a communications degree, which is a really good like catchall kind of degree. So basically I leave college and I'm back home without a job and I start substitute teaching while I'm trying to find a job with my, my communications degree. I really enjoyed substitute teaching and of course I was only selecting the special education classrooms, so I end up hearing from a friend of a friend of a program where you can go and, , you can teach all day and then take night classes to get certified, as long as you have a bachelor's in something, they don't care. They'll take you, especially in special education, there's always so many openings. So, I think, well, I might be doing this and I, I get out of, um, substitute teaching to get some more, you know, routine in a classroom and I've become a paraprofessional for about three months, the last three months of the school year. And then I kind of realized like, okay, yeah, I think, I think this is it. And by this time, my parents are pretty thrilled that I finally landed on something. They don't really care anymore. They're like, you know, you're 22, uh, going on 23, like, let's just get you out of this house. So, They support me, they put me through my, it's called an alt certification program. They very gladly pay my way through it, which God bless them. It's such a gift to be able to have that. And you know, looking back, I'm kind of wondering like if they hadn't paid for me to do that, would I, did I really, was my desire strong enough? I don't know. but my path was this, it opened up. So I was like, well, here I go.
Nora McInerny: Kristen dives right into her new career. This is when she signs up for night school and gets her first job as a high school reading teacher. She has that hard first year, but the instructional coaches help her get through it.
Kristin Playter: And then my second year of teaching was like one of my favorite years that I ever had. Because I had the experience to, you know, figure out like, oh, proximity is a way to get attention. So, when I see a kid is starting to doze off, I'm just gonna go stand by them and teach from that location for a little bit until they kind of sit up straight, you know, just little tricks like that. And I was back into my same content, but by that point, you know, the script I had, I'd started to memorize it a little bit. So, you know, I kind of knew what was gonna come next with, my content that I was teaching every day. And then I could start to also kind of relax it a little bit and pull in a little bit of other things that I wanted to into the classroom. So I didn't have to just like teach from this one script from this one curriculum, you know, as you get better at your job, you relax a little bit more and you kind of start to look around and you're like, oh, I could pull this in because this is what's going on in the news and this, they, they're talking about it and this can apply to whatever, you know, reading comprehension lesson we have for the day. It really, I think that's when it clicked, like, oh, this is a job that I can do and I can do it well, and I can have fun at it.
Nora McInerny: One of the things that really clicks that second year, is how to tailor her interactions with every student based on their specific disability.
Kristin Playter: You kind of earmark kids when you first start the school year. Like, oh, this one's gonna be a problem, or I'm gonna have to spend some extra time with this one. Or, this one's coming in with a lot of baggage and it's gonna affect what's going on. Or this one's just chatty, So, you know, as you go on, Then you get better at meeting those kids where they are and getting to really appreciate their quirks, you know? And like the one who called me a bitch and threw a chair, cuz I wanted him to read like I had the biggest heart for him by the end of that school year. And I ended up having him again the next year. I got to know him better and he'd start to talk a little bit about his home life and I had a lot of questions cuz it didn't seem stable, but you could tell he was coached very well on what to share and what not to share. And we had a lot of concerns as a building. And then you build up a lot of like empathy for the kid, you know? And I still think about him today, like I wonder how he's doing, it's about 20 years ago now, so. some people stay away from special education because they think all the kids are complex and awful and big behavior challenges, and it's just not the case. You know, they're just really just kids trying to get through school, and it's a little bit difficult for them in certain areas, for certain reasons. But you know, when, when you finally get your legs under you and you sit down and you have the conversations with the kids, then you, you start to connect with them and you're like, oh, this is, you know, you're actually why I'm getting up every day to come to work.
Nora McInerny: 3 years into teaching, Kristen needs a change. She feels like she has her sea legs under her, and now she wants to work in a new area of special education.
Kristin Playter: So I ended up leaving that district that was very supportive and coached me up, and that's kind of was their reputation in the city, was like they coach up young teachers and then those young teachers go off for other districts. I wanted to teach a different classroom in special education. I wanted to teach life skills.
Nora McInerny: Life Skills is a class that teaches students skills that will hopefully allow them to live independently in their community. Life Skills classes can include practical lessons on things like cooking, maintaining good hygeine, or how to use public transportation. Life Skills teachers also work with students on social skills like maintain friendships and being part of your community.
So Kristen starts applying, and is offered a new job in a neighboring district to run a Life Skills classroom.
But in this new district, new teachers like Kristen, are treated very differently.
Nora McInerny: When Kristen arrives at her new school, she is suprised at how different the environment is. One of the things that shocked her the most, was that instead of giving new teachers support, like Kristen had, she saw the new teachers at her school being punished.
Kristin Playter: I saw teachers in my new district get penalized and get put on um, what's called a pips, professional Improvement Plans, for really kind of like what I deemed to be honest, mistakes in the classroom as a new teacher. So I kind of am looking around talking to, you know, my department mates and this, these new teachers, there was one in particular who I thought was a great new teacher. Now granted, did I spend all day like observing her in her room? No. But like I overheard her questions in department meetings and she seemed to really have a passion for the position and for the, the school. And you know, I would kind of dip in sometimes and see her and she seemed like a great teacher to me. But she was really embarrassed cuz her first year she got put on a PIP and she didn't really, you know, understand why. It was just, I saw struggle in places that I hadn't really seen it before. And it's new people again trying to start out. They're trying to do a good job and you know, teachers are so much like students. Like we need affirmation. We need to be met where we are, and we want to, you know, feel like we're being, we're valuable in some way. And if you don't, If admin is not able to treat us and give us what we are expected to give our students, the disconnect is so huge. Like, it's just, it's bad all around.
Nora McInerny: I want to spend a few moments understanding Kristen's job. Because a special education teacher is doing something very different than a classroom teacher. Yes, she's teaching her students some of the same material that all students learn, but she also has to tailor that learning to each student. Any child receiving special education services has a legal document called an IEP.
Kristin Playter: So an i E P is an individualized education plan. So for a student to receive special services, in a school district, And it might be the special services might be something just like speech. It could be occupational therapy. Um, and it could be more of what I saw in my classroom. So I taught life skills, which was usually a lower functioning, um, special education student. So like I'd see intellectual, um, disabled, intellectually disabled. Um, so Id is what we would call it. Um, and so because of that diagnosis, Then I'd be able to provide programming. So like, as the, the IEP team would sit down, and that would include parents, it'd include if that student had a regular education teacher, it would include principal, counselor, um, school psychologist, um, who probably diagnosed that student.
And we'd kind of talk about, well, what is the programming need to look like? What classes does this student need? What goals, what academic goals or, you know, even functional goals do we need. Does this student just need help, like navigating the building by him or herself, you know, that could be a goal in an iep. Um, you could pull out like reading comprehension goals. And so it's, it's, it's a huge document. You have accommodations, modifications for the classes. Um, you have to talk about state testing in this document, you have talk about a transition plan, like what are we prep, prepping the student when they leave high school to be able to do. It's a lot of just documenting the you know, just very comprehensively, what is this school doing for this student to serve them with their disability?
Nora McInerny: Part of Kristen's job was not only providing those accomodations herself, but also making sure that if a student went to a non-special ed classroom that the teachers there knew about those accomodations. And making sure all of the accomodations are met is soo important, because an IEP is a legal document and teachers must treat it like a contract between the school and the student.
Kristin Playter: I will say usually in a special ed classroom, you are kind of naturally providing individual accommodations modifications. A lot of times though, when that student goes to a regular education class, that's where you really gotta work with that reg Ed teacher to be like, Hey, so-and-so's coming to you and they have like 30 accommodations that you need to meet. And then you usually see the RegEd teachers face like, What now? Um, and so then I'd have to kind of try to coach like, okay, so here's what it looks like. And a lot of times I would send para support with that student so that they'd have an adult, but sometimes they don't have that. So a lot of times, you know, I'm trying to coach the student like, Hey, if there's a test, we can read the test to you. That's an accommodation you have. So you need to tell me on test day and we need to make plans so you can come out to me so we can read the test in a separate location. You know? And it can be something like that. can be something like this student just needs proximity. They need a teacher next to them prompting. Sometimes it's positive reinforcement. You know, a student needs to know they're on the right track. A lot of it is like, They're kind of pre-filled, like you can kind of choose from a bank, but then you can also completely make up your own too. You can write in your own. If the I e P team gets together and they're like, okay, this is weird, but like, this student really needs to be sitting, um, on a beanbag chair in the front of the room holding a clipboard, and that for some reason that student can lock in at that point and they can learn. So you would need type that into this document, which is legal. So a lot of times it's something like, I might notice that accommodation's not being met because I maybe have a para in that class who's noticing the teacher's not doing it. So then I'd have a bunch of conversations back and forth. Sometimes I would have to alert parents, but if the teacher just flat out refusing that teacher then could be put on a PIP because they're refusing to fall into place with this special education plan. The parents could have legal action too. Um, which, you know, special education law is a very, very difficult, like it is, it's, there are, you know, most districts have their own lawyers and they have to be very well versed in are we not, are we are, are we not providing what we say we will in this document? And if you are not, that parent would absolutely have the right to a lawsuit pretty quickly.
Nora McInerny: Part of Kristin's job was to keep an eye on all of her students and make sure their IEPs were met, on top of teaching her own life skills class. And one thing Kristen is starting to learn about this job, is how much time it takes to do it well.
Kristin Playter: on a busy week, be there 50 hours or more a week, maybe 60 at the most. And a lot of that was my paperwork. I could not do it during the school day. So to keep up with the special, special education paperwork, I had to do that after school. And when you're learning how to do it as you do it, it is very time consuming. Now, at the time, of course, I'm early twenties, I don't have a family um, and you know, there's a lot of young teachers around too. So, um, In some ways it was kind of fun, like, it's like hang out, talk, kind of swap like crazy stories from the day, get some work done. Um, and then sometimes you'd end up, like, we'd go out drinking too. Like we drank a lot. We'd go the young teachers in the building, you know, it was kind of like, well, where are we drinking this Friday? Or you know, what are we doing? You know, it's Wednesday and I had a hard day. Let's go like grab, grab something to drink. So it was kind of became like socially important for me as well. I knew I was working a lot and I knew like sometimes I'd come home at three o'clock in the afternoon or four o'clock and I'd fall asleep on the couch watching TV before dinner, and I wouldn't wake up till eight and I'd be like, wow, I'm really tired. But again, like it was just me that I had to take care of.
Nora McInerny: Any of us who have been in our 20s and tried to prove ourselves in a career know what she means by "taking care of herself" : eating takeout, forgetting to excercise and letting stress just RIPPP through her body.
Which worked...until it didn't. Because seven years into her career, Kristen met her now husband. They got married, and started talking about having kids.
Kristin Playter: unfortunately with special education and life skills, you can get pretty severe behaviors and it can become very dangerous. So the first time I left, I was noticing the student in the room next door was, uh, physically assaulting the teacher a lot, and there didn't really seem to be a great behavior plan in place to stop that or correct that. So I was thinking of getting pregnant. I. And the student was supposed to come up to me the next year and I had just had a really, really hard time getting a very physically aggressive student, moved to the correct placement in my district. Now, they actually had, uh, a behavior program where this student that I had, Was a better fit, but it took me the whole school year get her moved over there. So that really burned me down to the ground. And like, I was just like, I, I don't want my to be this amount of stress where I'm worried about my being, But these kids were, they, some of them had a hundred pounds on me. So the amount of stress you have when you're trying to, first of all just teach. Trying to get content out, but you're also trying to protect yourself and your students who have disabilities, who have processing delays, so a lot of the time it's really stressful to try to get kids to safety when a student is escalating and being physical, you know? And so, Just that amount of stress that you would have on the daily coming in. So I left to go start my own tutoring company. And then I found out real quick, I did not wanna be a business owner. So, you know, I took a couple years off. Um, I, I actually went and worked for my dad for a little bit, um, cuz I thought maybe I could do what he does. He's a financial advisor and I absolutely could not do what he does. Not at all.
Nora McInerny: So Kristen learns financial advising and running a business were not for her, but this time away from the classroom was very important. But this was when Kristen got pregnant and gave birth to her two kids.
And once they got a little older, she started thinking about her students again...and what it would be like to get back to the classroom.
Nora McInerny: When Kristen returns to teaching after having her kids, she knows things have to be different. With two small children she can't be working 60 hours a week and stressing herself out. So she tries to find a job that will fit her new phase of life. She finds a job as a Life Skills teacher in the same school district where her kids go, so they will all be on the same schedule. Another she set a boundary around her time.
Kristin Playter: I just decided I have to protect my own personal time. So I became a contract time teacher and it became, if I don't get it done during my contract time, it's not going to happen. Um, and you know, my last year I, for the first time ever, I would get emails, um, from the district, like, Hey, you're behind on this, and you're behind on that. And I'd say, I understand. I've asked you guys to support me by giving me a paperwork day where I get to a substitute teacher. Now granted that's more planning for me cuz I'd have to put in sub plans, but then I could go sit in a small office somewhere and I could just crank out that paperwork without being distracted and they wouldn't provide it for me. So I was like, you're gonna have late paperwork. Now, would I have done that as an early teacher? Absolutely not.
Nora McInerny: But she's doing it, and we're proud of her for setting boundaries and speaking up for what she needs! Does that mean the school understood her boundaries? Not always. Did it mean the school always respected those boundaries. Definitely not. BUT...she had let go of the guilt about not doing the admin part of her job perfectly.
But even with a new mindset, Kristen realized being a special education teacher was still so challenging.
In May of 2022, after Kristen had been back in the classroom for a little bit, things started to unravel. At the end of that school year, almost all of her colleagues in the Life Skills class resigned.
Kristin Playter: So I lost a co-teacher and I lost about six paras. They were leaving because they kind of saw what was coming down the pike and they didn't want anything to do with it. They were terrified of what was coming because my program was blowing up. We were getting about 14 new students, all boys, and we needed to hire about 10 or 12 paras and I needed two new co-teachers and I was going to be one of two returning people in the program.
And the reason I stayed is because I had, um, someone in my department, you know, I was telling him, I'm like, I think I gotta go to, like, I just don't think I'm up for this. And he's like, listen, you could really dig in and you could build up this program exactly the way you want it. Did you ever think of that? And I'm like, oh, I didn't. I like to be bossy. I like to be in control of things maybe. So I like, yep, you know what? I'm gonna come back. I'm gonna be the hero of the year. And you try to get all these new people settled in and I'm gonna lead PDs, you know, professional developments for the paras and we're gonna have a great little family down here. And all these new kids, it's gonna be, it'll be tough, but we'll, I'm gonna be the person, I'm gonna be the lady in charge down here.
Nora McInerny: Even though Kristen is excited to be in charge of the Life Skills program, she's not naive about what that means. 14 new students means 14 IEPs she needs to learn. She has no idea what each students' disability looks like and how to best manage it. And she has to figure all of this out with new staff.
Kristin Playter: I came back this last school year and I came back knowing it was going to be probably my most difficult school year ever. But I was up for it because I really, really cared about this population of students and I really wanted the building to be great. I wanted to stay here very badly. I didn't want to change again. I was really tired of changing classrooms.
So we show up, our classrooms have been remodeled, but we have no furniture. Um, and so I have a new co-teacher and then I have next to me a substitute co-teacher who's filling in cuz that new co-teacher who had been hired was out on um, maternity leave. So I've got those two new people. the para situation it fluctuated sometimes we'd have 12 on staff, sometimes we'd have 10. Like it was, you know, just up and down the whole time. So I had all these new people, new kids coming in and no furniture. We had to like beg to get some old furniture back into our space cuz the new furniture we ordered wasn't in and the new thing that they had put in the classroom that was two doors down from me, so it's still, part of my program was called, um, it used to be called a safe room and that's kind of what I, I used to call it and that's what I'm gonna call it. But it's a room, it's got padded walls. you put a student in who's maybe super aggressive, um, Attacking other people, maybe destroying a classroom. And the idea is you put 'em in this room and you close the door and there's a, a button on the outside that locks the door from the outside. And so you have to hold down that lock in order for the door to stay locked.
And when we showed up on the first day of school, and by this point we'd been in meetings for about a week. So we were watching this room and it was not fully built out yet. Um, we kept asking, when is this gonna be done? Like school starting in five minutes, when are you guys gonna get done? We get no answer. No answer. First day of school, my assistant principal, he had to move a bandsaw out of that room for the, before the first day of school started, because there was still construction equipment in it. And again, like I've got a brand new teacher in that classroom. She's a first year teacher. I'm actually assigned as her mentor. And she's just looking at me like, what is going on here? And I'm like, I, I don't know. I'm, you know, I'm trying to apologize even though it's not my fault. Like, w we'll get it figured out. So we've got, now we have a room, but it has no door on it. Sure enough, first day of school starts and there's severe behaviors right off the bat. And in that classroom there's maybe f. Four or five kids tops. You have to have really low numbers. If there's, you know, a kind of a severe behavior room kind of deal, you don't want a full classroom. And we had no door. And so we're having to like blockade kids in this door using like bean bags. And my admin did come down and he would help with the beanbag barricade. And it was so unsafe and so insane cuz the kid would be pushing out, trying to get out through the beanbag.
Nora McInerny: And these aren't like three year olds.
Kristin Playter: Right. Let's emphasize high school children. Um, which, I mean some of them are basically full grown adult size. , our, our one guy who used utilized it the most, um, say six two, probably 180 maybe 190 and really fast. So you were in trouble, if he got out the door, cuz he, you, no one could catch up to him. You'd have to get in a car to tr track him down. Like he was just so fast. And life skills by the way it tends to be women and it tends to be the paras tend to be older people. That's just who gets pulled to these jobs. So we have that going on and we're still begging like, can we get a fucking door on here guys? Like, can we like get this wrapped up? Why it's taking so long. On top of that, we also had a student who was medically fragile and would have seizures all day on the floor. He was blind, he was deaf. He could not move himself out of the way.
Nora McInerny: Now, watching someone have a seizure is so traumatic. They are completely helpless, and if you're watching it, so are you. Kristin is in charge of keeping this child safe, while also keeping the kid who is lashing out safe but also away from the other students. All the while she's trying to teach the new paras how to handle these situations. It's physically and mentally exhausting for her.
Kristin Playter: That student who was seizing had a really great one-on-one para. She would map and write down how long each seizure was, and she really took really good, impressive notes because he had these really, really difficult medical needs. And she'd look up with at me with these big brown eyes and be like, um, it's, the seizures are this long, or it looks like he hadn't been breathing for this long. You know, should we call an ambulance? And I'd be like, I don't know. My degree's in special education. I should not have to answer these questions. Like, let's get the nurse down here. And like we were all just our, we were, we were just stressed. The stress was, you could probably smell the stress in that program. And then I'd pop down to my classroom and go try to teach like, How to, you know, cook a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. You know, like it was just, it was nuts.
Nora McInerny: And it was nuts because Kristen was starting to wonder if either of these students even belonged in her classroom. Many big school districts like the one she was in, have special programs for kids with severe medical needs or who have a lot of aggressive behaviors. So Kristen starts asking her administrators for help.
Kristin Playter: They were so hands off and so just, we would email and email and ask for admin help with, you know, some pretty severe para issues we were having, and like no one would respond. And it's just, you know, we were putting in, in an email like, Hey, this is dangerous. This person is not doing their job. This student is, you know, very, very aggressive and they're doing nothing to prevent it. Like, you know, we'd say things like this, this can be prevented, but we need an admin to come talk. And like, they were so hands off, it was just, we probably asked 15, 20 times before someone would come down and have a, a simple conversation.
Nora McInerny: Kristen said you could probably smell the stress between her and her colleagues. I imagine that as toxic fumes seeping out of their pores and making the room feel humid with anxiety. It's such a visceral way to describe this...and it's unlike any job I've ever had.
Something we say among our team here when things feel overwhelming is "we're just making podcasts". Because nobody's life is in danger if the story structure of an episode is meh. Or no one's physical body is in harm if we forget to mix the audio to -16 LUFS.
But that's exactly what Kristen has to worry about. She is responsible for the health and wellness of these children with disabilities... and things are starting to spin out of control in her mind.
Kristin Playter: Two summers ago I worked really, really hard with a therapist and a psychiatrist to wean myself off of antidepressants. I had been on them for kind of a really crazy family thing that happened and it triggered depression, which I'd never had dealt with before. So I'd been on it for a couple years and I really wanted off. So I was really proud of the work I'd done in the summer leading up to the school year. Like, okay, I'm, I'm back off, my brain chemistry feels really good. I would say by mid-September I was calling the psychiatrist and my therapist, like, I gotta get back on, I can't. The stress level, the anger level, um, being put in this position, you know, and also like trying to transition 14 new kids in the building
I would just come home and just have to lay down. I couldn't really do much for my health. Now, another crazy batshit thing I put myself through, I'd had surgery over the summer on my Achilles tendon, so I was in a boot. So I was healing from this surgery and it was not going well. I ended up getting blood clots as a result of this surgery and I couldn't walk. I was in pain a lot. Even if I got 10 hours of sleep, I wake up exhausted. I was short, short-tempered. I was at home. I couldn't really do much. Like kids are doing sports, my husband's running them around, he's cooking dinner. I'm just kind of laying catatonic at home , kind of dreading what's coming the next day, you know, and then again, like having to get right back on the antidepressants, um, which was really upsetting for me. But I at that point knew like, if I'm gonna get out of bed and keep showing up to this job, like I have to come, I have to medicate, I have to get my chemistry leveled out.
The district eventually moved the medically fragile student to a medically fragile program. So he did leave our building and we did have our most severe student go to a behavior program where he belonged. Now the issue was, it took a lot, a lot of documentation and us really, really pushing for these things to happen. It wasn't like a supervisor came in and was like, oh, this is all bad. Let me help you guys. It was more like we tell them what we think is wrong and what we think needs to be done, and then there would be a big, huge dialogue about why that's probably not correct from their perspective, even though, you know, they're not down there every day. So you get really, really, really worn down and really pissed off even when the kids get moved to the appropriate place. You are at that point are so upset that this was happening to you daily and the district seemed fine with it. Um, and there's no apologies for anything. Don't expect an apology. Like we're sorry we loaded you guys like this. This was crazy. No one's ever going to apologize. Sorry, we started you with a bandsaw in the safe room. That was crazy. Nope. Not one person owned up to why that happened. Like they just keep it moving. So even though the leadership, the issues are glaring, they're never gonna own up to doing us dirty and having us start our year like that.
What the school did do was bring in a counselor for the special education teachers to talk. Kristen encouraged the staff that worked under her to talk to these professionals.
They'd come up all red face sobbing, like, you know, and then they, they'd have to go back to work, you know, cause like the kids, the kids just didn't piece out for the day and thought, oh, it's a mental health day. Like they, we still had to do our job. So I make sure I go down last, and again, I, at this point, I, I already have my psychiatrist, I've got my therapist, so I feel good about, but I'm just kind of curious, like, you know, Hey, how did this go today? And she, this woman is looking at me like wide-eyed. And I go, how was it? And she's like, um, well what you guys are going through um, and she's using words like I you know, trauma, like group trauma and she's, you know, could have fo filed lawsuits if you guys want. This is unsafe. You're not getting support. she's really just kind of like telling me like, this is terrible. And I'm like, yes, yes, yes, I agree. I go, but now what do you do with that information? Like, she's like, well, you know, the district gets insurance because they provide an e a p program and if they don't provide, you know, a safe working environment, then I have to report back to my bosses. then your bosses have to probably go through training to learn how to support you guys better. Now, I don't know if that ever happened. I have no clue. But what happened from that day was, It really gave us like some verbiage and some understanding that we have a professional sitting here and telling us our working conditions are unsafe and that we're going through trauma every day.
Nora McInerny: Even with those two students out of her classroom, and getting back on antidepressents, by February, Kristen had enough.
Kristin Playter: I emailed my admin like, Hey, I'm gonna resign. Where's the letter to sign off? Here it is. No one asked me why. No one asked me if, you know, I can reconsider for any reason, like the,
Nora McInerny: There's no exit interview, I assume.
Kristin Playter:no, no. Um, the most I got, I turned in my keys to my head principal on the last day of school and all she did was ask, what are you gonna do next? But she wasn't even really that interested. She was like typing on her computer and I was, I should have said like, I'm gonna go to Disney World and be Mickey Mouse she was not paying attention.
I made friends with one admin who was not over me and he said that, their admin team would talk about what was going on in the program and there was just a lot of like hand ringing and like, we just don't know how to help them. Oh well. So they kind of, I think just knew it was gonna be a really hard year and they were fine with it. And they're fine with losing me in the mix because maybe they assumed it was just too hard of a gig. Maybe. I don't know. They could also be happy I'm leaving, maybe I'm a pain in the ass. I don't know. No one ever told me I was, but again, that would require someone to sit down and have like a conversation and that didn't happen.
Nora McInerny: While the response from administrators was underwhelming, when the last day of school came in May, Kristen's students and colleagues showed up.
Kristin Playter: I started the day in the hallway with another para who was leaving as well, and she was asking if I was emotional. And I'm like, you know what? I've not been emotional at all. I just know this is the right move for me. I gotta get outta here. I don't think I'm gonna cry at all today. And then, you know, jump cut to like five minutes later, I have a student handing me a card. And this, this student, he pasted on a fake mustache all day, all year, had like sticky tape on it. And it actually looked really good on him. he'd peel it off and while he ate, he'd set it on the get on the, uh, tables at the cafeteria and he'd eat his lunch and then he'd stick it back on. So he walks up and hands me a card and he's pretty monotone, here me, miss here, miss Plater. Okay, thanks. And so then I open it and it's just, it was a really cute kind of generic card, but he handwrote thank you for helping me this year, Mrs. Playter. And that was it. I, I was waterworks, um, from that moment on. And, um, I didn't stop. The sweet people in my program, who, again, we were down in the trenches, we really bonded these sweet people, put together a goodbye video with the kids saying hilarious sweet things about me. And, you know, we had a bunch of food and, um, the video was like, I can't remember what the question was that was asked, but like, what did you like about Ms. Playter? And, you know, the, some of the answers were off the wall, like, well, she loves butterflies. And it's like, I don't love butterflies. Why are you saying I love butterflies? It's because that student had a butterfly on that day. And then one student who was kind of out of it, his mental health had slipped a lot. We had been talking a lot about me leaving, and then when they asked him on the video, you could tell he hadn't really processed that I was leaving. So on the video he is like, what? Ms. Plaster's leaving?
But you know, some of them would say like, I was funny, or we had, we had a good time cooking. We, I ran a car detailing shop with the kids. So like some of them would talk about cleaning cars out and, you know, playing music and like, there were a lot of sweet memories like that. And, you know, they all say goodbye on the video. And I got like this giant gift basket and you know, and I, we had a huge breakfast and I just, I sobbed through the whole thing and I mean, it's, it, it was surreal. It was, it was, it was, it was a day I will, I will not forget. It was really a great day.
Nora McInerny: By now, you can probably hear how much Kristen loved her students. Even with the kids who had severe needs, helping them didn't stress her out. That's part of the job. The thing that drove her to quitting was the lack of resources to help them. And so she knew by quitting she would get more peace. But she was also so sad to leave her students.
Kristin Playter: I know who took my room is taking my room as a teacher who came back from maternity leave. Um, so she's moving up into my classroom and the only thing that really helps me really be at peace is I, they have a really quality driven, amazing teacher and, and in place, and they actually hired a behavior specialist for the lower tier room with the safe room, which is what they need. And now we actually have like the correct teacher in the position, which is very nice that my district's able to pull quality people still, you know? that's just not the case in a lot of places. It's like, when do you lose a quality teacher with all that experience, someone else shows up who does not have that. And, um, you hope that they learn how to have it eventually, and that they'll stick around and, you know, and be with those kids and help them get through, however many years they have in that building. You hope that someone shows up like that. So it, it helps me quite a bit to know that they have it.
Nora McInerny: Kristin is at the very beginning of her new chapter. She's working on freelance writing projects, because she wants to work from home and have a flexible work life. She's also really looking forward to being more available for her kids.
Kristin Playter: but also too, like I know I will continue to do something with the special needs population. I, I truly enjoy that still. And that is, it's still rings true from when I was a kid, so, At some point I will get back. Not the teaching, I don't think I'm gonna teach again. I really highly doubt it. Um, but I will do something with a special needs population because it fulfills me in a way that nothing else does.
(music)
Kristin Playter: Kristen's story is unique because it is hers. But for anyone in education, this story, of a teacher joining the profession because she loves working with kids, and slowly being beaten down by the demands of the job, is also a really familiar story. Teachers everywhere are burned out, underpaid, and don't feel supported.
And that's just the work environment, they are also teaching through some very heavy times.There's a lot of you out there that are carrying some of that heaviness, and just know, you're not alone.
Teacher 1: I hope it gets better. And I hope that the generation coming up under us is able to make sense of, of the mess that we're leaving behind for them. So, I appreciate all of my teacher friends in the trenches. Thank you for giving me a space to talk.
Nora McInerny: Thank you to Kristen Playter for sharing your story with us in this episode. [name the teachers in the waterfall too]
This week, our Premium feed has a bonus episode with another teacher story. You can become a Premium member right now to hear the story of Aaron Case, a Texas Teacher of the Year in 2018, who after winning the award..quit.
Aaron Case: it was a constant reminder, when I was tasked with something big that, oh he's got it. or Oh, it, he can't mess this up or whatever. Cuz I've achieved this thing. So the pressure was there,to outdo what I did or to take on more or to have, I called it adults in suits every time it happened. But there would be there five groups of five or six people that would just show up in my room during a lesson.
Nora: You can join Premium right in your Apple Podcast app. Just look for the episodes titled Bonus Episode and sign up with your Apple ID. You can also join our NEW Patreon club, which also gets you access to bonus episodes, ad free episodes, plus our full back catalog. Over there our episodes are organized by theme, and it's a space to talk about episodes with each other and our team.
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Terrible Thanks for Asking is produced by Feelings and Co. Our team is me, Nora McInerny, Claire McInerny, Marcel Malekebu, Jordan Turgeon, Megan Palmer.
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