18/08/2025
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๐๐๐๐๐๐ | Chalk Dust and Burnouts: The Quiet Exodus of Teachers
by: Hyacinth Jann Remonde
The chalkboard stuck in time, its surface smudged with the faint traces of yesterdayโs lesson. The classroom smells faintly of paper, the air heavy with the chatter of fifty students crammed tightly into desks. Yet the teacherโs chair is empty. No footsteps that echo through the hallway, no voice that calls the class to order. Somewhere beyond the four corners of the room, another public school teacher has quietly walked away. Another name was added to the growing list of those who loved the work but could no longer live the cost of staying for the bare minimum.
In the classrooms across the Philippines, an empty desk at the front tells its own quiet story. The chair eerily pushed into its proper position, a pen holder still on the table, but the teacher who once sat there with the passion to teach the overcrowded room is nowhere to be seen. The departure rarely came with fanfare, no farewell ceremony, and no send-off. Just a resignation letter, a stack of unfinished lesson plans, and the echo of a voice that once filled the room.
Bell rings, students glance at the doorway, hopeful, expecting their teacher to walk in. Instead, another teacher arrives, papers in hand, eyes tired from a day that never seemed to stop ticking. The lesson continues, but something is amiss.
For many teachers, leaving the Department of Education isnโt a snap decision. Itโs a slow wearing-down process filled with late nights accompanied by stacks of notebooks to check, lesson plans due before sunrise, and weekends lost to paperwork. Itโs teaching fifty students in a room that is built for only thirty-five, speaking louder to be heard over the hum of overcrowding chatter, smiling through the headache.
Payday comes, but the envelopes are thin. Meticulously budgeted, rent, groceries, tuition for their children, and whatโs left is barely enough. Some stay out of love for their students, and some go out of love for their families.
Beyond the school gates, life moves differently for those who have decided to leave. A former science teacher now takes customer calls from a desk in Makati, her weekends free, and her salary is almost double. A young English teacher boards a plane for Japan, where chalk is traded for whiteboard markers, and the class sizes are smaller. They carry their skills with them, but the classrooms they left behind remain heavy with the weight of their absence.
In a high school in Bicol, one Math teacher now teaches four grade levels. He moves from room to room, lesson after lesson, with barely time for a sip of water. Students learn what they can, but the rhythm of the year is broken.
Deped says the numbers are proportionate to its size, pointing to small salary increases and allowances. The teacher group says otherwise, that the exodus is a warning sign, a quiet crisis in plain sight.
Inside a modest home in Cavite, a teacher folds her last stack of school uniforms. Running her fingers over the pen and chalk stains that never quite wash out. Tomorrow, she starts a new job.
โI didnโt leave because I stopped caring,โ she swallows a lump in her throat. โI left because I couldnโt keep going.โ
The classroom waits, frozen in a pause that no bell can break. The students wait too, learning to adjust to the shuffle of unfamiliar faces at the front. On the chalkboard, faint ghost lines of lessons past linger, a silent testament to the hands that once moved with certainty across its surface. Outside, life rushes forward for those whoโve gone: better pay, saner hours, smaller rooms, and the bittersweet relief of breathing without the weight of fifty expectant eyes.
๐ผ๏ธ: Mark Kevin Oliverio
