
# Teachers across Reddit are burnt out and quitting the profession. 

Over the last couple of months, we've analyzed increasing rates of teacher burn out, frustration and a feeling of helplessness across teacher Twitter and Reddit. This made us want to investigate the question, "Are teachers __really__ getting burnt out, resigning and moving onto new positions or is it just what we are seeing within an enclosed environment?"

This took us to the /r/teaching and /r/teachers subreddits. Here we pulled data from 2015-2022 using the Reddit API to analyze over 27,000 comments and posts using keyword phrases like "Burn out", "Quitting" and "Resigning".

Analyzing at this data, we compiled a graph in gif form below. It visualizes all incidence usage for the above mentioned keywords and the rate they are used over a trend line. 

![Teacher Gif Final ](//images.ctfassets.net/4yflszkpcwkt/6oir17rJGfc9rUf8sGvcfK/5e3ce875469193ce45f6dbac7f6d1bf1/Teachers_Final.gif)

## The main points we found:
#### 1. There was an initial spike around the delta wave, followed by a massive uptick during the omicron wave that has continued after we compiled this data on January 27th, 2022. 
#### 2. The data does not show other terms like "leaving the profession", "parent disrespect" and "administrative incompetence" which also had increasing usage over the last couple of months - specifically after the winter break. 

Teachers for the most part seem burnt out, spread thin and not cared for as a whole. Many are looking for new jobs within the [educational sphere](https://www.npr.org/2022/02/01/1076943883/teachers-quitting-burnout "Teachers Quitting Due to Burnout - NPR"), just not as a teacher. We can attest for this via our growing number of applications for curriculum specialist roles anecdotally. 

We've also included an interactive Tableau visualization. It shows every comment made that we compiled, and gives a better picture into what teachers are saying about their situations. You can notice a tone shift in 2022 while looking at these:

<iframe src="https://public.tableau.com/views/RedditTeacherBuronoutVisulaization/BurnoutInteractive?:language=en-US&publish=yes&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link&:showVizHome=no&:embed=true"
 width="1200" height="800"></iframe>

### Anecdotal Stories
Working in EdTech, we speak very frequently with teachers. In the last year, we've seen spikes in frustration like we haven't seen since our company began. Some main points we'd like to call out:

1. Many teachers leaving is causing a __heavier workload__ on the remaining teachers causing them to teach more students, not give students enough attention, and look for __asynchronous content__.
2. Lesson planning has become __difficult__ with the hybrid model- many teachers are looking for online lesson plan content. If you are a STEM teacher, check out some of our free lesson plans [here](https://www.inspiritvr.com/lesson-plans "Inspirit Lesson Plans"). 
3. __Students aren't used to authority__ - they struggle to listen to teachers and lash out more due to over a year of online learning. This also leads to teacher burnout and stress. 

### Data Considerations

We also want to include subreddit growth over time relative to comment usage as this helps paint a more clear picture. Data we pulled for subreddit growth and comment growth is below. Notice the large spikes in the more recent years over both the trend line and subreddit growth. 

/r/teachers subreddit growth rates (data via subredditstats.com):
- 2015-2016: 27.4% growth rate
- 2016-2017: 33.9% growth rate
- 2017-2018: 39.25% growth rate
- 2018-2019: 61.8% growth rate
- 2019-2020: 47.47% growth rate
- 2020-2021: 57.7 growth rate

/r/teachers burnout/quitting comment growth rates:
- 2015-2016: 14.2% decrease
- 2016-2017: 72.2% increase
- 2017-2018: 10.0% increase
- 2018-2019: 27.0% increase
- 2019-2020: 74.6% increase
- 2020-2021: 30.2% increase
- 2021-2022 (forward looking estimate from Jan data): 84.6% increase

### Overall, we believe this data helps show what a lot of teachers are discussing in online communities.

__They feel burnt out, overworked, underappreciated and don't want to work in unsafe environments__. Having to worry about student quarantine lists, PPE requests and handling students who are more than ever zoning out for other social medias is only adding to the stress they are facing and causing worse educational outcomes. 

In the future we will be analyzing data for other communities, stay tuned for more. 
________________

If you're a teacher, parent, student or school administrator looking for awesome free 3D STEM resources, please check us out! We have hundreds of 3D [study guides](https://www.inspiritvr.com/study-guides), models, [simulations](https://www.inspiritvr.com/simulations), [lesson plans](https://www.inspiritvr.com/lesson-plans), [worksheets](https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Inspiritvr) and more - all 100% free, no strings attached. Thanks for reading! 

Read about and visualize teacher burnout across Reddit via our analysis of 27,000+ comments and posts including keywords like "Burn out" and "Quitting" across /r/teaching and /r/teachers. 

Teacher Burn Out on Reddit

Teacher Burnout on Reddit, Visualized

## Teachers across reddit are facing an increased rate of student misbehavior since going back to in-person classes in late 2021. 

Over the last couple of months, we’ve analyzed instances of bad student behavior in classrooms causing increasing frustration in the teacher community. We decided to investigate the question: “Is a bad behavior by students a widespread and growing problem?” 

To understand this better we analyzed over 19,000 comments in r/teachers and r/teaching subreddits. We looked for keywords like “bullied by students” and “student misbehaviour.” 

To further analyze the data, we compiled the following visualization in the form of a gif. It visualizes all incidence usage for the above-mentioned keywords and the rate they are used over a trend line.

Note: This data has been normalized keeping in mind the growth of Reddit users over this period of time and in turn growth of the subreddits.  

![Teacher Misbehavior Gif](//images.ctfassets.net/4yflszkpcwkt/W58f6TsDztoFrK9NUfzPD/b822292b6d20512551bbc4faa52616a8/Teacher_Misbehavior.gif)

## Main observation

* There has been a large increase (~5 times more) in complaints as compared to the previous normalized highs even as the community grew 10x.

The normalization against subreddit user growth can lead to some confusion while digesting this data. For example, the 1083 bar may appear lower than the 266 bar but it still shows a much larger mention count. 

Our main aim was to show the increased usage of the target terms even with increasing numbers of subreddit subscribers. This also does not include reduced activity per average user as the subscriber count grew for /r/teachers and /r/teaching.

## Anecdotes

During our calls with teachers, many times we hear about frustration due to distractedness. We believe this built up frustration by students is then released in their classrooms. 

Looking forward, the combination of digital resources and engaging in-person lessons might be able to help to remediate distractions from students and better support their learning. 

## Overall, we believe this data helps us show the problems a lot of teachers have been discussing in their online communities so that we can begin to address them.

In the future, we will be analyzing data for other communities, stay tuned for more.

P.s. If you're a teacher, parent, student or school administrator looking for awesome free 3D STEM resources, please check us out! We have hundreds of 3D [study guides](https://www.inspiritvr.com/study-guides), models, [simulations](https://www.inspiritvr.com/simulations), [lesson plans](https://www.inspiritvr.com/lesson-plans), [worksheets](https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Inspiritvr) and more - all 100% free, no strings attached. Thanks for reading!

Take a look below at mentions of student misbehavior across Reddit. You will find our analysis of 19,000+ comments and posts including keywords like “misbehaved,” and “bullied by students,” across r/teachers and r/teaching from 2016-2022. 

Chart displaying "student misbehavior" comments and posts on /r/teachers and /r/teaching from 2016-2022. 