I Taught Students With Unimaginable Upbringings. After Quitting, I'm Coming Back.

Crushed by a throng of bantering teenagers, I moved past the armed policeman and through the metal detectors. It was my first day of work at Dorchester High, an urban school in Boston. My soon-to-be students included a 17-year-old arms dealer and an adolescent prostitute. It felt good to be home.

I became a teacher to save teens' lives because my high school teacher saved mine. I was suicidal as a youth, the result of a savagely abusive childhood. In elementary school, I was like my more bookish Dorchester High students: a question-asker, a book lover, a kid desperate for approval.

A kid like "Herleen," who had immigrated from Haiti a few years prior, and asked me point blank if I would adopt her. Who wrote down a memory, during a brainstorming exercise for our memoir unit, "the time my father rapped me." I understood her misspelling. That second R was an error.

At age 12 I hit puberty and became more like my louder, bolder, edgier students. I fought back against my abusers, ran away, and found home in Bridgeport, Connecticut, then murder capital of the United States. Janus House, it was called. A homeless shelter for kids. The staff were wonderful humans. I didn't get hit. I didn't even get screamed at. Before long, though, I was pulled from Janus House and locked up for 16 months.

By the time I got out, I was broken. I still liked books, but I didn't like living. I was ready to go. I had a plan and was moving toward a launch date. My English teacher changed my mind, simply by seeing me, respecting me, and putting a voice to my good qualities. My destiny was established. I was to become a high school English teacher, a lifesaver in disguise. I earned a Master of Education degree and spent 17 years in classrooms working with at-risk youth.

I don't know if it was me or the books, but lives were saved. At Rogers High School in Newport, Rhode Island, I was trained in a groundbreaking adolescent literacy program, designed to teach not only reading but the love of reading to adolescents who tested far below grade level.

The magic lay in the tantalizing titles in our classroom library, books about topics related to the kids' own lives. It lay in the fact that I read books aloud to the class, in the same wonderful, comforting way teacher did in kindergarten. It lay in the community created in a room full of struggling teens allowed to be themselves, speak their truth, and experience the thrill of academic success.

In that classroom, there was music, laughter, and honesty. Kids like "Jelani," who spent most of his days in the dean's office for mouthing off at teachers, interacted with his classmates and me with intelligence and respect, because within our walls, his intelligence was respected. I left that classroom 18 years ago. I am crying as I type this.

When I moved to North Carolina, I was hired at an urban high school. I brought with me my engaging young adult books, my respect for every teenager, and my strategies for classroom engagement. And they worked. Before winter break "Dakari," a ninth-grader who started the year reading at the fifth-grade level, left a note on my desk. It said, "I used to hate reading. Hate, hate, hate. Now I just can't stop reading. Sometimes I read in class and don't pay attention and I get in trouble, but I won't let that happen again."

Outside of my classroom, though, it was a whole different dynamic. Both students and teachers were treated with intimidation and threats, designed to enforce a strict code of behavior. As a woman raised in the liberal Northeast, where voices are loud, opinions are expressed, and unions protect workers from unreasonable demands, I was ill-prepared for this cultural shift. It brought me right back to my abusive childhood. Eventually, I reached a breaking point.

In 2016, for all the reasons teachers are leaving the profession in droves, I quit teaching. I got two books published, earned dual certification as a teen life coach, and began work as a freelance journalist. I'm doing great.

But the kids aren't. Adolescent anxiety and depression rates have skyrocketed. Chronic absenteeism is rampant around the nation. Fourteen-year-olds are dying from opioids purchased on Snapchat. I can't sit in my comfortable home reading the headlines and shaking my head.

I work miracles through my life coaching practice, but those miracles happen only for the kids lucky enough to have a parent who finds me. As a teacher, I was able to support a hundred kids like me a day. As a coach, I work with one kid at a time. The difference is stark.

My alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. in my teaching years. I would sign in at the school at 7:00 a.m., leave the building after 3:00 p.m., and grade papers into the evening. Now, I have time to sit outside, smell the flowers, and listen to the birds. My favorite is the tough, bossy Carolina Wren, whose song sounds like this: Teacher! Teacher! Teacher! Teacher! For years I've talked back to Wren, saying, "I hear you, but nope. Not anymore."

An article published by Chalkbeat in collaboration with USA Today reports that, while teacher attrition is rampant across the U.S., North Carolina has the highest level of teacher turnover post-pandemic.

When we teachers leave, we're walking away from kids like "Gabriela," who walked across miles and miles of nighttime desert to escape torture in Guatemala. Who would come to my classroom during her lunch period and, despite my protests, clean my bookshelves and tabletops. Who turned away to hide her tears when I told her, in faltering Spanish, that I wouldn't be back next year.

Since the pandemic, the headlines on the visible struggles of teens are never-ending. Dramatically increased depression, anxiety, and suicide rates. Social media "addiction." Abuse and death in residential treatment programs. Pressure to send nudes, which are then shared across the internet. The list goes on and on.

In my discussions with teens, I hear the underlying struggle and pain that leads to these external symptoms. Disconnection from peers. Crippling insecurity. A perception that they don't measure up to their parents' expectations. I understand what's happening. I understand why. And I think, I hope, I understand how to fix it.

Teacher! Teacher! Teacher! Teacher! the Wren yells. I think of my own high school teacher, and how she helped me find reasons to live. I think of Herleen, Jelani, Dakari, Gabriela, and the thousands of other faces and names I adored, who adored me back.

I think of the books that were devoured, the laughter that roared, the smiles sparked by a paper handed back with an A at the top. I think of the ineffable warmth of respectful, joyful, engaged learning. I pull up the Google bar, type in "English teaching jobs," and hit ENTER.

Cyndy Etler is a certified teen life coach and the author of two award-winning YA memoirs about her experiences in Straight Inc. Her work has work has been featured on The Boston Globe, Today, CNN, HuffPost, and other outlets.

All views expressed are the author's own.

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