The Weight They Carry: Life as a teacher in Mississippi

• The question before lawmakers this session is whether we will protect that progress or allow it to erode by continuing to ask teachers to carry more than any profession reasonably can.

I taught middle school in the Delta for several years. At the end of each school day, I would collapse into the chair at my desk, completely drained from the emotional, mental, and physical demands of the job. But there was always more work to do. There were parents to call, daily behavior reports to complete for students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), exit tickets to grade, lesson materials to prepare and print for the next day, and a classroom to clean. Together, these tasks formed a list that I never once had time to complete. 

My experience is far from unique. In the Mississippi Board of Education’s December meeting, the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) presented data showing that there are currently 3,815 teacher vacancies across our state – 851 more vacancies than in 2024 and 1,040 more than in 2023. These numbers represent thousands of students who are not being adequately served by their schools and thousands of educators in understaffed schools who are being asked to fill in the gaps. As a former teacher, the scale of the crisis is staggering, but it is not surprising. 

Not a day goes by that I don’t picture the faces of my former students or think about my former coworkers, who deserved far more pay, more support, and more respect than the system offered them. Their experiences are why I care so deeply about The Weight They Carry: Life as a Teacher in Mississippi, a new report from Mississippi First that explores why teaching is an increasingly unsustainable career in our state.

The Weight They Carry captures the voices of nearly 1,000 teachers across Mississippi, and the message is clear: many are considering leaving. More than half of respondents reported being somewhat or very likely to change districts, leave the state, move into another education role, or exit the profession entirely within the next year. Teachers emphasized in their responses that these decisions are rarely driven by a single issue. Instead, they reflect a set of compounding pressures that build over time. While compensation was a major focus of our survey, teachers also consistently raised concerns about workload, student behavior, and school leadership. In survey response after survey response, educators told us that staying in the classroom was compromising their financial stability, their well-being, and their sense of professional worth.

Together, the vacancy data from MDE and Mississippi First’s survey data point to a clear conclusion: as a system, the teaching profession undervalues educators and treats them as disposable, even as vacancies grow and attrition rates remain high. Mississippi, as a state, needs teachers to stay, but we are not creating the conditions that make this possible.

This should concern every Mississippian. In recent years, Mississippi has emerged as a national leader in education, posting meaningful gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Those gains did not happen by chance. They were driven by teachers who adapted to new requirements and standards, implemented new instructional practices, and did the hard, daily work of helping students learn. If we want to sustain this progress, we cannot afford to take for granted the educators who made it possible.

Prioritizing retention requires confronting the reality of what teachers are carrying. It means restoring the real value of teacher pay, which has never matched the hours or intensity of the work and continues to erode without consistent raises. A current proposal in the Mississippi House, which would raise teacher pay by $5,000, is an important and encouraging step in the right direction. The Senate Education Committee has similarly indicated an intention to increase teacher pay by at least $5,000 this year. Both of these measures reflect a growing recognition that compensation matters and that incremental changes are no longer sufficient. But pay alone will not resolve this crisis. We also must confront the shortcomings of current school staffing models, address workload, strengthen student behavior systems, and invest in strong, stable school leadership. The Weight They Carry offers recommendations across each of these areas. 

Teachers enter the profession to help children and make a difference. I often think back to the moments that made my own time in the classroom meaningful: Friday afternoon sing-alongs before dismissal, the pride on a student’s face after earning a hard-won grade, the sweetness of watching a class grow into a community. Those moments mattered. But they did not ease the demands of the job, which were nearly as intense in my third year as they were in my first. I left the classroom in 2022, not because I stopped caring, but because the work became impossible to sustain.

Many of the teachers in our schools are carrying that same tension. If we want them to stay, we must take seriously the weight they carry and commit to building a system that does not ask educators to choose between caring for their students and caring for themselves. Mississippi has shown what’s possible when we invest in effective teaching. The question before lawmakers this session is whether we will protect that progress or allow it to erode by continuing to ask teachers to carry more than any profession reasonably can.