A Response to Farewell to Teaching Letters Everywhere
A new epistolary sub-genre has emerged on social media over the past few years: the Farewell to Teaching Letter, in which a devoted, conscientious, and often “award winning” teacher explains to the world why he or she can no longer continue working in the classroom. If you are a teacher, you have no doubt received links to such letters, likely as a gesture of solidarity from well-meaning friends who think you would appreciate the fact that here at last is someone who gets it. And maybe you do appreciate it. But I would like to suggest here that you should not. Probably these letters are benign in their intent. The writers, often teachers in their first several years of service, take great pains to establish their credibility as friends of public education and advocates for children. They assure us that their love for children is what drove them to the classroom in the first place, and that nothing would make them happier than to continue to work with these wonderful students on into pe
