During my first class of the day, I asked a question to my students, or rather to their avatars on the screen of our online classroom. I waited for an answer but received silence. As none of my students turned on their cameras, I couldn’t know why I didn’t get a response, but some were likely on their phones or back in bed. I started to cry at the futility, and for a profession I no longer recognized.
Today, I am one of hundreds of thousands of public school teachers who left education since the start of the pandemic, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In doing so, I lost the promise of loan forgiveness that I’d been counting on. My balance of nearly $50,000 will need to be paid back, in full.
