Chapter 5: What It Takes to Stay: Three Stories of Teacher Retention

Jae-da, a veteran elementary teacher of 15 years, shared with me, “It [teaching] frustrates me. It definitely frustrates me. Does it frustrate me to the point that I want to leave? No.” Jae-da chose to stay in the profession and such a decision—to stay or leave—plays itself out among the many who currently teach every year and, unfortunately, many more are choosing to leave. In fact, teachers have been leaving the profession at increasingly higher rates since the 1990s (Boe, Cook, & Sunderland, 2008; Ingersoll & Merrill, 2010; Liu, 2007; Provasnik & Dorfman, 2005). This failure to retain teachers has resulted in a recent trend identified by Ingersoll, Merrill, and Stuckey (2014): a less stable profession.