What Do You Do When All Your Friends Have Left?

Hey, Teachers!

The close of 2023-24 may not have been so easy if you lost a friend in teaching--or several. Some of us have lost friends in teaching because they have passed away, retired, quit, or moved location, and many of us have been left to stand alone at the edge of a school building painfully waving goodbye to teacher friends who have abandoned the system or exited the profession altogether for one reason or another.

How do we cope with abandonment on the job?

"Teachers leaving" isn't done to us, but we feel the repercussions. And sadness. It's happening every semester across this nation. The profession is less attractive. New teachers are at risk for early burnout and defeat. Veteran teachers are hanging by a thread to get to retirement.

Our friends make decisions that affect the dynamics in our schools, grade levels, and departments.

Maybe you lost your one colleague or confidant, and this is clouding your world and making the vision of tomorrow seem less promising. And you're wondering what the upcoming school year will look like without the colleagues you've counted on for moral and pedagogical support.

What can you do?

First, accept that this is a challenge.

Being left behind in a school setting is tough. Maybe you're questioning what the new environment will be without the strong stewardship you've always known, affecting professional development discussions, curriculum decisions, and sharing of best practices. When we experience new shifts in personnel, new faces, and feel stressed about having to teach new colleagues "the ropes" about our unique niche in the building, teaching becomes more burdensome.

Maybe you've been handed more roles than before, and your plate is even fuller now that trusted colleagues are gone. Maybe you lost a mentor, team lead, or chair. Or you feel you failed a new teacher who has decided teaching is too overwhelming and devaluing to stay.

Second, develop a plan-of-action for handling the loss.

When our friends have left, here's how we can continue to build our own self-efficacy while processing personal and professional changes related to attrition and retirement:

1. Recognize we are strong and worthy educators in our own right, separate from those we have called our personal leaders. Although we may miss certain directives, insights, and counsel from colleagues we have grown to know, love, and admire, we can accentuate our own value and worth as equally impactful.

Consider making a list of the wonderful things you've garnered from teacher friends who are no longer in your teaching space. Also consider developing your skills based on those exceptional examples. Identify personal goals in your professional world that are hinged to the exemplary status of the colleagues who have positively influenced you.

2. Extract the best advice, practices, examples, and wisdom from those relationships, and house these golden nuggets in retrievable places to reflect upon later or when you're in a bind. Sometimes, we forget to organize our thoughts, notes, the thank-you's, a small acknowledgement that meant so much, and other information our teacher friends have shared with us or given to us.

Consider keeping a running log, digital file, keepsake box, or other organizational space for finding not only templates and other tools to use in instruction, but the mementos, sentiments, and shared interactions that have kept you going interpersonally. This includes emails, handwritten notes, feedback, and letters of recommendation.

3. Keep relationships alive with teacher friends who remain accessible. Just because teachers have left the physical building or online learning setting doesn't mean we can't remain friends and keep in touch outside of the school system. Relationship-building outside of school is a priority for emotional stability and our mental health.

Being a support and allowing our friends to support us can increase self-confidence and student outcomes when we focus on building self-efficacy by continuing to cultivate meaningful relationships with those who understand our struggles and goals.

4. Initiate positivity and goal-setting to remediate gaps that occurred because of vacancies in personnel. Fill those roles to the best of your ability because likely, newly hired personnel will not know the "what" or the "how" that made your missed colleague so valuable (and irreplaceable) in your circles of influence. Take the ball and run with it, so to speak.

This means...

Avoid waiting for administration or other colleagues to "fix things". How can you continue the legacy of a powerhouse colleague by emulating, replicating, or teaching those best practices to others? What projects, dreams, goals, or committees can you immerse yourself in that would honor the colleagues who are no longer there with you?

5. Trust in the process and the "ebb and flow" of disappointment (and triumph) in public education. Although much of "school" is predictable, teachers leaving often isn't. Sometimes, a bad school year for a colleague means retiring early, quitting, or relocating. But this is the nature of the beast. Administrative shifts, policy changes, and community demands can also affect what happens in a school year and how you and your colleagues are supported or unsupported, feel strong or weak, and perform well or fail to some degree, and make decisions about how much you can take.

Embracing change is a cornerstone of resilient teaching. And this is also a life skill.

In smaller circles where we have felt safe, when someone leaves that circle, we may not feel capable and we may lose a sense of belonging, especially if we're handed a torch or asked to fill shoes that seem too big.

Emulate in the present what has been your rock in the past.

This is how we both acknowledge and remember our teacher friends who have been positively influential. Our mindset is key. Loss can trigger trauma, can destabilize us, and can even cause us to question how we'll move forward.

But...

Magnifying what we CAN control is paramount in coping with transitions and more isolation or loneliness on the job. We must remain steadfast in our personal and professional goals knowing that sometimes, we are left behind but in that deficit, a flourishing of possibility can prevail if we apply the right tools to our thinking.