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I taught for 11 years. In that time I worked in some pretty hard environments and when I tell stories of putting out a fires in classrooms, confiscating knives, breaking up fights between seven foot teenagers and dealing with the odd Ja’mie, eyes roll. I think Chris Lilley in his mockumentary, Summer Heights High, was pretty spot on. Although difficult, I wouldn’t trade those experiences. However, personally having my life revolve around marking 70 essays every weekend, just wasn’t doing it for me anymore, so I got out.

At the end of 2006, a lot of my teacher friends started to put down their red pens and move out of the classroom also. They had just had enough.In fact all around me teachers were marching out the door into other professions. They were making real life choices, not ones about money either. In fact all of the talent in this story were more than happy to take a pay cut and have less holidays, to achieve a life/work balance. I thought there is a story here. So I started to research, talk to teachers that no longer wanted anything to do with teaching and the story wrote itself. As you will read, I interviewed AEU President Mary Bluett, Victorian Minister Jacinta Allan, other politicians and academics. I also spoke with teachers who loved their profession and university students who were just about to enter it.

Statistics today show that the average age of teachers is about 47 and that graduates stay in the profession for about five years. Teacher retention continues to be  a major issue not only here but overseas and the article tries to discover why.

The feature “Classroom Burnout Triggers Teacher Opt-Out” was published in Melbourne’s The Age Newspaper in its Education Supplement on Monday February 26, 2007. It was released during a week when the issue of teacher retention was big news.

You may also download the pdf file of this article directly from my website.

The article has been used by the Doxa Youth Foundation in their submission to the Victorian Parliament’s Inquiry into Effective Strategies for Teacher Professional Learning.

It has also been used as a reference in the paper titled “Burnout Confirmed as a Viable Explanation for Beginning Teacher Attrition,” by the University of Southern Queensland.