How lack of visible career pathways keeps educators stuck and learning stagnant
At the start of this school year, elementary school teacher Alexandra Batista Rodriguez stood in front of her students with a different kind of energy. For 10 years, she had taught in a special education classroom at a charter school. She cared deeply about her students, but year after year, she felt her impact lessening. The bureaucracy grew heavier, her spark dimmed, and she wondered if she was truly helping the children she so loved.
Yet, she stayed because she didn’t know there was another way.
That all changed when she discovered microschools – small, community-based learning environments that educators build and run themselves. For Alexandra, it was like a window opening. She could build the school that her students deserved, one that honored their individuality and gave her back the feeling of purpose she had been lacking. Three years into launching her microschool, her students aren’t the only ones thriving. She walks in each morning full of energy and optimism, her students sensing the difference.
Alexandra’s story is inspiring and the start of an important movement.
Research shows that a staggering 67% of US K-12 teachers are either dissatisfied or only somewhat satisfied with their jobs. That’s more than 2.5 million adults walking into classrooms every day while knowing they deserve better. Yet only 6% leave the profession each year for reasons other than retirement. In other words, nine out of ten educators who want to go, stay.
Why? Because they don’t know what else is possible.
Most teachers are not looking to abandon the work of educating children. They want to keep working with students, to feel that deep sense of purpose, to grow in their mastery, and to have the autonomy to do their jobs well. As motivation researcher Daniel Pink notes, humans thrive when they experience purpose, mastery, and autonomy. Teachers long for all three, but many feel them stripped away in traditional classrooms.
And still, they stay.
When educators stay in roles that drain them, the impact extends far beyond them. Classrooms grow heavier, less joyful. Burnout becomes contagious, and learning suffers. Schools lose the very energy that makes education transformative. Parents and policymakers often wonder why outcomes remain flat despite new reforms. The answer is hidden in plain sight: millions of teachers want change but don’t know it’s possible to have it.
Imagine if they did.
Imagine if every teacher understood that they had options beyond the traditional classroom. They could create their own dream schools, shaped around the needs they see every day. They could join or launch microschools, build innovative programs, and serve children in entirely new ways. Each path would allow them to remain educators while gaining the flexibility, purpose, and rewards they deserve.
When teachers succeed on these alternative paths, students succeed with them. Classrooms become laboratories of innovation. Communities gain new anchors of learning and connection. And the profession itself regains vitality. Teachers like Alexandra remind us that this is not only possible, it is already happening.
But the tragedy is how many aren’t aware it’s an option.
Every year, millions of teachers continue walking into classrooms they no longer believe in, unaware that they could design one of their own. They remain stuck not because of lack of talent or courage, but because the pathways forward are invisible to them. And when they stay, the cycle of burnout deepens: the cost of which is measured in careers cut short of their full potential, talent left untapped, and the dampened spirit of children who sense when the adults guiding them are weary.
If we want classrooms full of joy, innovation, and purpose, we need to show teachers the pathways that exist. We need to invite them into entrepreneurship, innovation, and ownership. And we need to remind them that the dream classrooms they imagine can, in fact, become real.
Because when teachers know what’s possible, they don’t just stay in education; they lead. And their leadership doesn’t just transform classrooms. It revitalizes the very future of education.