Hannah Ketring-Brown(NASHVILLE, Tenn.) — An educator who publicly shared her frustrations regarding the schooling system is speaking out on why she’s leaving her teaching job and becoming a lawyer instead.
Hannah Ketring-Brown posted her thoughts on Facebook earlier this month in hopes her words would spark change within Metro Nashville Public Schools.
Ketring-Brown taught for five years — four of which she spent at Cole Elementary School in Tennessee.
The 27-year-old third grade ESL teacher’s official resignation date is July 31, when summer school is over.
“I’m going to miss it so much. I’ll miss getting 50 hugs a day,” Ketring-Brown told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “With law, I want to go into immigration law so I can work with the same population but in a way that allows me to better provide for my family.”
Ketring-Brown said her disappointment with low pay, a lack of resources and political officials’ “obsession” of testing within the schools were three reasons why she chose to leave the classroom.
“I work with a lot of children where it’s their first year in American schools and to hold them to the same standards is not a realistic expectation,” Ketring-Brown said. “It typically takes them six to eight years to learn academic language … it doesn’t count towards anything so they’re wasting [learning] time.”
Like many other teachers, Ketring-Brown said she would dip into her own pocket for classroom expenses that weren’t covered under a $200 stipend she’d receive.
In her Facebook post, Ketring-Brown admitted that she had “a little more freedom to speak than some of my colleagues” about her teaching experience.
“For the most part, we’re not sick of the kids. We’re not sick of teaching. For me, welcoming a kid on their first day of American schools never gets old,” she wrote in part. “Seeing a student ‘get it’ after struggling a lot with a concept never gets old.”
She went on: “I’m sick of getting dinged for test scores every year when some my students don’t have food at home or clothes that fit. I’m sick of all the good things that happen day after day in Metro schools being drowned out in the ‘failing schools’ narrative. I’m sick of higher and higher expectations for teachers without accompanying pay increases. I’m sick of my colleagues’ care for students being manipulated to get more work out of them with less pay. I’m sick of the teacher martyr trope.”
She concluded, “Teachers deserve better. Kids deserve better. Do the right thing, Metro. Thanks for listening.”
Ketring-Brown isn’t the first to publicly post her reasons for resigning from a teaching job.
On April 16, The Washington Post published a copy of Sariah McCall’s 905-word resignation letter addressed to South Carolina’s Charleston County School District superintendent.
McCall was approaching her fifth year of elementary teaching when the job’s demands took a toll on her. She resigned and opted to wait tables instead.
Nearly 1,000 people commented on Ketring-Brown’s post, many of whom claim to be fellow frustrated educators. Some even said that they too are leaving the teaching profession.
“There were many who said, ‘I left the field too.’ That was really sad to me,” Ketring-Brown said. “But I was encouraged to see there were teachers who are sticking with it and saying, ‘Yes, these are problems but we want to stay and improve the system.'”
On May 16, more than 1,000 teachers at Metro Nashville Public Schools rallied in a “sick out” after an expected 10 percent salary raise dropped to 3 percent due to increased insurance rates.
Although she’s leaving her job this summer, Ketring-Brown continues to participate in those rallies and advocate for Nashville schools.
“I deeply care about public education in Nashville, and I’m going to have a daughter in public school in a few years,” she said. “A 10% raise sounds small, but for morale it will make teaches in Nashville feel valued or listened to.”
Ketring-Brown will begin her first semester at Belmont University College of Law in August. She hopes to keep working with international families, as she did when she was an ESL teacher.
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