Alexandra, im so excited to be here with you today. I could not put down the teachers. It was like reading a novel, even though its its very deeply reported. So just to give some background before your past books have really dived into the lives of high school students, fraterties, sororities and nurses. What made you write about teachers . Ive always been drawn to education. I think i keep coming back to the education beat. Its just its really where my heart is for teachers. It just seemed like the teaching profession was getting more and more difficult. Things were changing. I didnt know why. In 2019, that was the first time that demand outstripped supply for u. S. Teachers by more than 100,000 people. So i was wondering, where are they going and why is this happening . So i ended up wanting to write a book that amplifies teachers voices in sort of, you know, as you say, a readable novel like way. So its not, you know, so its not dry and its something that people can get engaged with because its so important that we listen to teachers. Its so important that we hear what theyre saying, because i think that the key to fixing our Education System and youre also a substitute teacher yourself, which is clear in the book, its very personally and professionally meaningful to you. Can you tell us about why you started doing that, how you got into it . Yes, subbing was completely separate from the book. I was surprised to see an article in a local paper and this was prepandemic. I was surprised to see an article saying that there was a substitute Teacher Shortage and that districts were hurting. And so i went to a nearby district and i said, is this really true . And i talked to administrators and teacher friends and assignment secretaries, and theyre all like, yes. So i said, okay, well, i could sign up. I could do it. You know, once every couple of weeks. So i thought i would just do it once every couple of weeks. But i found it so rewarding to work with the students and to be around the staff. Just teachers are just theres just the best people that i ended up solving a lot more frequently than i expected to last year. I ended up subbing more than 150 days out of 180. So its kind of where my heart is right now. Wow. And how did that inform your experience reporting the book . Yeah, thats a good question. It was great. I do want to make clear that the schools where i subbed and the people, the students and the teachers who were with me are not in the in the narratives or the essays in the book. Thats not i was not under covering the school, but it really gave me a great sense of what teachers were telling me. Teachers were talking about, this is what happens at Parent Teacher conferences. This is what a lockdown drill is like. This is back to school night. And then i found myself last year. I ended up long term subbing and i didnt even i never expected to do that, but a couple of days before august open house in a school where i had short subbed short term many times a school was a lot of the new third grade class and there was no teacher. And so they asked if id cover the class until they could find a teacher, and i ended up subbing from august all the way to winter break. So thats when i got to experience. Okay, now im on the teacher end of the Parent Teacher conferences. I had to do a an active shooter lockdown drill i was doing back to school. Might presentations and it really gave me a better sense of what teachers were going through. At the same time, i was trying to write a book while also subbing, which was very difficult and very time consuming and did not have a lot of sleep. But im glad i went through that because 70 of teachers have had to work a second or more jobs just to be able to continue to afford to be a teacher. And so for me to go through that and to see how difficult that was and how there just were not enough hours in the day i felt was a really good experience for me to understand. As i wrote the book. And im sure talking to teachers, too, while youre substituting, probably informed your teaching practices as well. Yeah. So i followed three teachers for a year for the book. I followed miguel a special ed teacher out west, rebecca and east Coast Elementary School teacher and penny, a middle school math teacher. So i was talking to them every day, involved with them at all times. And so yeah, i would ask them advice if there was a student i wanted to do better at connecting with or if there was a lesson. I wasnt sure about. I had these experts right there who i was talking to anyway, so with miguel, for example, techniques he used with his special ed student, i started using with special ed students who were in my classes when i short term subbed, for example, or rebecca has this thing where she sings in class all the time. Thats how she keeps kids entertained and engaged. And so i started teaching kids. I started making up silly raps just to get them to remember a math strategy or a reading comprehension strategy. And it worked. They really they would beg for the raps because we would do little dance offs and stuff and when i also when i subbed, it also gave me a better sense of what to ask the teachers i was following whether it was miguel pena and rebecca or whether it was hundreds of other teachers. I interviewed for the essays in the book. It just gave me a Great Foundation to to understand where they were coming from and to know what it was to ask them about which which i hadnt. I mean, its great that these two things in my life dovetail at the same time, because that wasnt something that was planned. So you follow these three teachers. Can you tell us a little bit about your reporting process where you sitting in their classroom . Because i felt like you were in the book. Oh, thank you. No, i wasnt. For several reasons. One, with the pandemic, it was harder to get into School Buildings. Schools were you know, you have to show id, you have to be approved to get in. And so thats not something that i wanted their administrators. Or parents or community or students to know about, because these teachers, they really bared all in their personal lives and their professional lives, and they wanted to be completely, 100 candid. And for them to do that, they couldnt be outed. So their schools couldnt know they were participating in this book. In many cases, their families didnt know the parents of their students didnt know their names are changed in the book, certain identifying details are changed. I dont specify exactly where they live and things like that. So it was really more of being in touch with them every day, right . When i mean, you must have known you needed to through your substitute teaching experience some of the daily challenges of teaching. But what surprised you about some of the workplace issues . Teachers are dealing with . Yeah, theres so much more than than i had expected. Theres so much more going on than the public really knows about. I think one of the things that surprised me was the the outrageous things that parents think they can say to educators that they wouldnt say to anybody else, just the just the blunt rage that they direct toward teachers. Its it was mind boggling to me. That was surprising to me. I think some of the things that schools tend to cover up was surprising to me. Like a brief example, penny had her school, had mold in the classroom, and teachers were getting sick because of it, including penny. And she went to the principal role and the principal who in that particular school was not supportive. I will say that miguel and rebecca did have supportive administrators. The principals reaction was to paint over the mold, which didnt solve anything. People were still getting sick. The school still wasnt a safe environment. And that just seems to be something that some School Districts think is okay just to, you know, cover up bandaid approach and then proceed as as they were going. Yeah, the mold example was really striking. And i know we we hear other teachers talk about not having air conditioning when its hot or or heat when its winter. I mean, that the School Buildings themselves didnt seem like comfortable workplaces to say of nothing else. Yeah, there was in september rebeccas classroom. I think the heat index was over 100 degrees. And she was describing students like draped over their desks with heat fatigue and they couldnt get anything done, you know . Right. This week, as as were as were talking, its going to be 90, 90 degrees this week. And School Systems, hvac systems, havent turned over to air conditioning. This is also a testing season. So students are going to be taking these supposedly important high stakes, standardized tests at a time when they cannot possibly be comfortable in their classroom. You write, the public stigmatizes the teaching profession, yet also expects teachers to solve all problems and blames them when they cant. Can you talk a little bit about that cycle and how that plays out . Yeah, well, i think we learned during the pandemic and i want to say that i dont focus on the pandemic because the pandemic didnt cause the problems we see in education. It just sort of laid them bare for everyone to see. I think people realized then, okay, so where depending on schools and therefore teachers for child care, for food, for food insecure communities where depending on them for a whole lot of things that go way beyond academics, were depending on them for things youd normally depend on a social worker for for a mental health. Theres so many things that are now placed on schools which makes teachers the safety net for society. And thats a problem for so many reasons, not the least because teachers arent paid to handle that and theyre not trained to handle many of these things. And ill give a quick this is a bit of a downer example, but its an example of how teachers are sort of bearing the responsibility of societys failures between the 2012 sandy hook massacre and the 2022 rob school massacre. The only substantive change in society was that districts trained teachers to hide their students and barricade the doors. Thats it. Thats all thats changed. And so again, we see, okay, so societies fail or failure is are placed on teachers shoulders and at the same time were getting this as you mentioned, this rage from parents. And i think you refer to the book as a student, as consumer attitude, where teachers were telling you things. And this is a real quote from the book, like, i pay your salary and i can get you fired. Why do you think our society has this attitude towards teachers . Because other societies dont know. And i think our society didnt used to when i was in school, it wasnt that way. I think there have been a lot of changes in education that have led to this sort of blaming teacher narrative in education. And i think it probably started in earnest with no child left behind and high stakes testing. And that led to an atmosphere in which teachers were judged by how their students did on a particular test on a particular day, which is so wrong. A kid can come to school with a stomach ache and have a bad test score. A kid can not be well fed at home or not have involved parents or be homeless or experienced some sort of trauma and for all these reasons, having nothing to do with the teacher, they could not have a great test score and then in the early 2000s, teachers were then blamed for students poor test scores and sometimes their jobs or their salary or bonuses could depend on these factors that were out of control. They could be the greatest teacher in the world. But if you have a student who just experienced a trauma at home and, you know, tanked the test, theres theres nothing you could do about that. It sort of created a climate of fear and competition in schools. And i think parents got hyped up because the government was also focusing on tests as a measure of school success. So that started it. I think social media is also another part of it because it increases the polarization of people and people feed onto each others negativity and you know, as, as, you know, with like yelp reviews, people are more likely to get on social media to rage against something than they are to to praise something. So that was another problem then during the pandemic that created a whole new issue where parents wanted their kids in the physical buildings at school and they blamed the teachers for that not being able to happen, which is also misplaced, also wrong. And then you have certain politicians sort of pouncing on that and using this whole idea of parents rights as a way to galvanize parents in order to achieve their political goals. And that created this us versus them, parents versus teacher attitude. So all of these things kind of were building and now i think were at this Tipping Point where its its i mean, its been too much all along. But i think in my opinion, thats the trajectory thats led to today. Right. So now were seeing this is parent right movement where these like this legislation is being introduced across the country that would restrict classroom discussions on topics like race, racism, lgbtq issues. From your reporting, what kind of toll is that taking on teachers or how are they experienced in this . Oh, its so hard because teachers are the only professionals who are trained and certified to deliver and develop child appropriate, age appropriate content to our nations children in schools. Nobody else, just teachers. And now theyre being told that they cant teach certain things or mention certain things because of an individuals political views, that is hard. Its also hard because teachers just want to do right by kids. Teachers are these compassion knit, selfless, nurturing people who just want to do right by the kids. And if there is a child who belongs to the Lgbtq Community and teachers arent allowed to talk about it and lets include Guidance Counselors too, because Guidance Counselors are included under this umbrella to if youre seeing a child suffering because there are lgbt. Q and theyre being discriminated against, maybe there are problems at home because of it. And youre a trusted adult whom the student comes to and then your School District is saying you cant do anything about it. I mean, thats heartbreaking. Yeah, its when you think about how parents portray teachers or how society portrays teachers, there was a moment in time where teachers were called heroes, especially at the start of the pandemic. But you write in your book that thats kind of a problematic label. Why is that . Well, it goes back to what we were talking about before in terms of teachers being societys safety net. Teachers will do anything for kids teachers. They will donate kidneys. They will adopt students who are in the foster system. They will and they they do all of these things, but they shouldnt have to. And also, i mean, society should be taking care of people like that. Teachers are the ones you should be focusing on teaching. However, theres also this idea now that if a teacher doesnt martyr herself and shes not a good teacher, and thats why its not right to call them heroes, because, one, they shouldnt have to be. And two, lets just talk about teachers being good teachers because of their teaching, not because they have to slip food into kids backpacks when the kids are out at recess, just to make sure that the kids wont go home hungry, which is something that a lot of teachers do. Yeah. I mean, time and again, your book is capturing teachers doing more with less like fewer resources, fewer support. Can you share some examples of what that look like in the classroom . Oh, gosh, you mean you mean like the the food in the backpack . Yeah, well, miguel went out of his way for a homeless student in many ways. He felt that because the student didnt have a male role model and the childs mother was pretty apathetic and not involved with education and pretty hard on the child. You know, miguel, would. Would step in and sort of secretly buy the child something at the book fair. So he would have something to and just try and be a constant presence in his life to make sure that the kid felt like he had some sort of anchor. And, you know, i dont want to do any plot spoilers, but he turned this kids life around completely. This is a child who the year before would bolt from the classroom every few days because he was angry about something. And by the end of his year with miguel, he was like a model student. I talked to teachers who would give their students their personal cell phones even after the student graduated, just so they could be there for the student and teachers. Are 94 of teachers by their own classroom supplies and thats an average of about 500. A teacher, many spend more. Penny, who i followed, spent 2,000 one year. Thats just for classroom supplies. Beyond that, sometimes theyre paying for a kids glasses or furniture or field trips or things like that. Theyre just they will do anything to to help their students. They call them my kids. That struck me, too. They always say theyre my kids, like ill do anything for my kids. Their job does not stop when the School Bell Rings at the end of the day, not just because they have more grading and prepping and lesson planning to do, but because theyre always thinking about their students. Theyre always thinking, how can i reach this student better . This student seemed like he was struggling today. What can i do . What . Maybe i should reach out. What can i do to make him emotionally better . Because teachers, its like they adopt all their students and they they they just want to do right by them and make their lives better, even broader than just at school and even in terms of that prepping and planning, you you mentioned the teachers in your book are working such long hours to get it all done. And i think that kind of goes into the what i think you call a myth is teachers get summer off year jump. Yeah. I mean, thats a teachers i yeah. Why is that not not the case necessarily. Well well so teachers arent paid for their work during the summer, theyre only paid for the school year. But then when they are supposedly off during the summer, they have professional development. They have to take continuing education classes to keep up their certifications so they can keep being teachers. School districts change the curricula all the time, which means that teachers have to spend the summer redoing their lesson plans and learning the new curricula. And theres just so much that theyre doing over the summer. They come back to school earlier than than everybody else. They stay later in the school year than students do. Its just they they dont have summers off. Thats thats not true. So you started this by talking about how demand for teachers is outpacing supply and Teacher Shortages have been in the news recently. Districts are s