High attrition rates, burnout, and lack of support have created a national teacher shortage. With low wages, long hours, and working with children, teaching is not a career path for everyone.

One middle school teacher at a charter school in East Boston kept an audio diary of her first year out of college, and first year on the job. She asked us to not use her name to protect her job and future prospects.

“I was living in Boston and working at a cafe and I needed a job paid more money,” she said. Then she I started applying for jobs and landed a gig at a charter school in East Boston. “This was the first one I got. A lot of it was just financial. There was rent to pay and I wanted to have salary.” She explained that for her and many of her peers, teaching served as a stop-gap and a resume builder, before landing a job in a chosen field, attending graduate school, or deciding on a career path.

The job was particularly fulfilling on days when students gave enthusiastic responses to her lessons. “There are moments where the students get where I want them to get without me leading them there. It's just like sliver of the magic I bet really great teachers feel,” she said, “It makes me wonder if as a second year teacher, I would have more of those moments. And then as a third year teacher, if I would have even more.”

As the year continued on, these moments never became enough to stave off exasperation. The long hours were wearing her down and she felt a lack of guidance from more experienced teachers. On one train ride home from work she said, “I am feeling pretty demoralized right now. It's practically May, and I'm still having trouble,” she said, “My day is ending with the feeling pretty beat down by the students.”

During her last week of classes, she reflected on the lack of continuity for students. With new assistant teachers coming in and out of the classroom every year, she wondered if it made the students distrust her. “I wonder if they sense that teaching for somebody like me is a strategic career move, a stepping stone,” she said, “Maybe I'm doing this year of service, but ultimately the greater service is to myself.”

Even she was only in the school for a year, she developed close relationships with some students and families. One of these students approached her during her last week and asked if she’d be back in the fall. “I told her the truth,” said the teacher, “I said no. And she asked me to stay. She said, ‘Why don't you just come back next year?' I didn't know what to say.”

“It crystallizes the suspicion I have that I am abandoning these people,” she said. Based on her experience, and what she saw in the school, she thinks the system of hiring teachers in their first year out of college is a problem. “The adult in the room probably themselves doesn't really feel like much of an adult, and these young students’ intellectual development is left in the hands of somebody who is not trained to develop them intellectually,” she said.

“It's a cliche to say, ‘Oh I learned more than my students,’ but in my case I've gained a lot more than my students have from my presence [in the school],” she said. “I've gained a line on my resume. I've gained connections. I've gained the ability to say I taught for a year and have people be impressed by that or say something like, ‘Oh teaching is so hard!’” She said her story is similar to many of her peers, who entered teaching straight out of college with no intention of pursuing it as a career. She learned that the “revolving door” of recently graduated teachers doesn’t benefit students in the short-term or districts in the long-term.

“The only circumstance in which I believe people should be teaching right out of college is with adequate and very intentional support for more or less the entire year,” she said. “And I think I got some of that, but I don't think that there are wider structures in place to give me all of that.”

WGBH News’ coverage of K-12 education is made possible with support from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation.