Why do teachers leave? NYC students investigate

A girl with a white headband stands next to a boy in a white T-shirt seated on a windowsill.
P.S. Weekly producers Mateo Tang O’Rielly (right), from Central Park East High School, and Katelyn Melville, from the Brooklyn Institute for Liberal Arts, examine teacher turnover rates at their schools. (Carolina Hildalgo/P.S. Weekly)
P.S. Weekly is a student-produced podcast that casts light on important issues in the nation's largest school system. The Bell's team of 10 student producers who come from different public high schools work alongside Chalkbeat NY's reporters to bring you stories, perspectives, and commentary you won't get anywhere else.

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When schools have high rates of teacher turnover, students lose connections to trusted educators, and new teachers who fill the openings are often less experienced.

Producers Mateo Tang O’Reilly, from Central Park East High School, CPEHS, and Katelyn Melville, from the Brooklyn Institute for Liberal Arts, BILA, compare turnover at their schools and examine how turbulent relationships between teachers and administrators might play a role in retaining or losing educators.

David Wertz, a former music teacher at BILA, shares his experience about his struggles with administrators, ultimately driving him from the school. And Candice Ligator, a teacher-turned-administrator at CPEHS, reflects on what supportive relationships between teachers and administrators can look like — helping us think differently about how that dynamic could be rebuilt.

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