What it’s like to be a first-time teacher in a classroom that ‘didn’t have anything’
Illinois has managed to stay ahead of a national teacher shortage, but a closer look as schools restart reveals a lot of churn and burnout.
By Susie An
For her very first teaching job Carolina Vallin was thrust into a Chicago second grade classroom, with little knowledge about her students and no time to learn the curriculum. It was March, more than halfway through the school year, and she was starting from scratch.
“My classroom didn’t have anything,” Vallin, 24, remembered. “I didn’t have a calendar. I didn’t have letters of the alphabet for a word wall … We don’t have pencils anymore. That kind of thing sets a classroom back.”
The Burbank native helped Illinois boost its teaching force at a time of need, but she came into this desperate situation only months after graduating from her teaching program in December. Vallin was grateful other teachers helped her find her way at this Chicago public school on the South Side. But she didn’t get any professional development or official mentoring. Back in May, she said things felt chaotic.
“It’s been tough,” Vallin said. “Their teacher left in December. So they’ve been with different subs from January to March. They’ve missed out on a lot — behavior, emotional, academic. They were very much behind.”
Vallin is now teaching a summer school class that she calls easy in comparison to her spring assignment. It’s given her time to catch her breath, put things in perspective and plan ahead for the coming school year.
Later this summer, another new crop of teachers will enter the classroom to replenish a field facing a national shortage. Illinois has managed better than other states to stay ahead of the shortage, but a closer look reveals a tremendous amount of churn and burnout. Educators say support for both old and new teachers like Vallin is key to really making life in the classroom work.
“We have evidence that a strong induction and mentoring program determines the rate at which teachers, new teachers will stay in the profession,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, one of the country’s two major teachers unions.
What’s behind Illinois’s low teacher vacancy rate
Illinois has a relatively low teacher vacancy rate of 1.5%, according to an October 2021 survey from the Illinois State Board of Education. The state issued more than 10,000 licenses so far this year for teachers, administrators and support staff. That’s more than the total in 2021 and also in 2020. However, teacher vacancies tend to be higher in low-income districts and for certain positions like in bilingual education or special education. And an NEA survey this year showed 55% of teachers were thinking of leaving the profession earlier than planned.
Pringle said if schools are having trouble retaining teachers, that could mean less mentors available to help new teachers who might already find themselves in stressful classrooms like Vallin.
“Not only are we throwing at our new teachers … these additional challenges, but they don’t have those other teachers to guide and mentor them in ways that help them to grow,” Pringle said.
Vallin said there were teachers there to help at her school, but she didn’t really have anyone to turn to for official mentoring.
“There are days where I’m crying to my mom or to my brother because I’m just so stressed,” she said. “Sometimes it’s just anger at the situation that [the kids] are going through. But other than that, I have not found a group that I can talk to about it.”
Andrea Evans is the interim dean of the Goodwin College of Education at Northeastern Illinois University. She said it’s an increasingly tense political environment for teachers where communities are debating things like book bans, race and guns. But she said students haven’t been scared away.
“Our enrollment was pretty good in the College of Education, and it was actually up, year over year, during the pandemic,” Evans said. “We actually have more people coming into the College of Education during that time. There’s something about that, in your professional life, in being able to do something that’s essential.”
Evans said the college just started having first-year teachers come back to share their experiences.
“The advice that they gave was just valuable, because they were just in our classrooms a semester ago, and now they have a full-time teaching job,” she said. Evans asks the new teachers to tell the students, ‘What is it that you want to tell these candidates that you wish you knew.’ ”
The Illinois State Board of Education launched a new program with the state’s major teachers unions to pair first- through third-year teachers and clinicians with mentors — and everyone gets paid.
The state is also spending extra money to bring in more teachers of color to work in their communities, through programs like Grow Your Own Teachers that offer teacher candidates a path to certification with support and scholarships.
Focusing on the fresh start ahead
Vallin is looking forward to workshops before school starts and dedicated time to set up her new classroom. She’ll be a bilingual ed teacher this year, the position she originally wanted. She wants new teachers to get the proper onboarding and support they need.
Last year certainly felt like baptism by fire, but it’s not those stressful moments she’ll be hanging on to.
“I’ll see a student who no one expected to get a concept and it’ll click for them,” she said. “In my head, I’m crying because I was like, ‘okay, it worked.’ She’s getting it, he’s getting it.”
It’s those little lightbulb moments, she said, and earning a student’s trust, that keep her going.
Susie An covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on Twitter @WBEZeducation and @soosieon.