This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 77 of the Cult of Peticody Podcast.

In this episode, I'm going to read to you a letter I wrote to school administrators on

behalf of teachers.

Dear school administrator, I begin this letter with some hesitation because I know you were

a teacher once.

Nothing I say here should be new to you, so why would I ask you to take the time to listen?

It's because I talk to teachers every day.

They share their thoughts on social media, in the comments they leave on my blog, and

in private emails.

I see how many of them are struggling.

Some are engaged in a healthy struggle, the good stress of working at a challenging

job.

If we think of teacher stress as a continuum, I would put these teachers at the healthy

end.

At the other end, the struggle has a different character, a kind of desperation that goes

beyond good stress.

Teachers at that end of the continuum are panicked.

Many nights they go home and cry.

They don't sleep, they can't concentrate, and they are thinking seriously about leaving

the profession altogether.

After listening to thousands of teachers tell their stories, I have reached the conclusion

that there is one deciding factor that determines where teachers will fall on that continuum.

...