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For the Love of Learning: A Teacher Who Quit is Used to Show That Teachers Stay

We know that too many teachers quit. 

Gabrielle Wooden taught for 2 years and quit and is featured in an article about how teachers don't quit.
 

We know that between 40 and 50 percent of teachers in the US quit inside their first 5 years.

In Alberta, we estimate that 1 in 4 teachers quit in their first 4 years.

So when I saw an article titled "Despite Reports to the Contrary, New Teachers Are Staying in Their Jobs Longer", I was more than a little suspicious.

The article featured the picture to the right of Gabrielle Wooden. She taught in Mississippi for a whopping two years before quitting to become an account manager for Insight Global in St. Louis.

Wooden belonged to Teach for America which is an organization that undermines children's basic needs and is an accomplice to the corporate take over and privatization of public education.

This article from the Center for American Progress is yet another example of the shameful spin that corporate spin doctors spew on the public.

We treat teachers so badly they leave. This is true for many reasons. In the US, teachers are paid poorly and treated even worse by having their priceless work reduced to meaningless scores on bad tests. In Alberta, teachers are paid well, but workload is a problem.

That Gabrielle Wooden was used to show how teachers don't quit in an article that readily admits its own narrow focus when she taught for only two years highlights another glaring problem. Education is desperate for professional, honest and genuine journalism.

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Joe Bower

Joe Bower teaches in Alberta, Canada.