Hey Mark,

I appreciate your feedback and I definitely see your perspective. I'm lucky to still be working and trust me, I love my job, but that doesn't mean the environment I work in isn't incredibly difficult. I'm not usually a complainer and I've worked plenty of jobs, but there were plenty of people who I came in with who were in the military for years, if not decades, and said teaching stretched them more than the military ever did, or as policemen.

By the end of the school year, about 30% of my fellow first year teachers had quit. It was incredibly discouraging to look around at biweekly training sessions to see less and less of my peers and friends show up and have people text in our group chat that "this was too much for me. I can't do this anymore." Simply surviving to the end of the first year is my life's greatest accomplishment, and I don't say that lightly. A lot of people feel like the first year of teaching is like fraternity hazing, and this is a link if you want to read more:

https://hechingerreport.org/the-first-year-of-teaching-can-feel-like-a-fraternity-hazing/

I would argue that to reduce the intense turnover in education that you don't see in any other profession, more teacher support in terms of mental health is necessary. Do over 50% of engineers quit within their first 5 years? I would argue that supporting teachers is the only way to make the system-wide attrition rate go down.

Anyways, thank you for the comment, but you can bet I'm certainly not the only teacher in an urban environment that feels this way.